In addition to Challengers of the Unknown and Green Arrow, Kirby’s stint at DC in the 1950s saw him do 30 short stories and some covers for the various fantasy and science fiction anthologies.

Several of those stories were reprinted in the 1970s, including this one in HOUSE OF MYSTERY #199.  Originally printed in MY GREATEST ADVENTURE #17 as “I Doomed the World”, here it’s called “He Doomed The World” to accommodate the introduction by host Cain.

The story is a typical not-entirely-plausible ending story, where a rich inventor is hypnotized by aliens to send four explorers to the extremes of the Earth in a plane to destroy the world. The art is excellent, though, with lots of detailed images. I especially like the panel highlighted in the scan there, where Kirby draws this incredibly good looking and complex statue. There’s really no reason for that to be there, but I kind of like that he goes to that extra effort.

Published February 1972.

WHERE MONSTERS DWELL was the longest running of several 1970s Marvel books which reprinted the Atlas fantasy/monster stories from the late 1950s and early 1960s. #36 includes a reprint of the Kirby/Ayers story from STRANGE TALES #97, “The Impossible Tunnel”.

The story is about a man who attempts to dig a tunnel underneath the Atlantic (with the odd notion that people would be able to drive from America to Europe. Guess you’d have to build several gas stations down there as well). On the was he and his crew encounter a giant octopus and a Utopian civilization, with the usual twist ending results.

This gives Kirby and Ayers a chance to show a lot of the stuff they were so good at drawing, such as the fanciful digging equipment, the giant octopus and a few details of the undersea civilization.

Published July 1975

The idea of doing a comic continuing themes from the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY film is even stranger than doing an adaptation of the film, but Kirby did it, and it allowed him to draw some interesting science-fiction stories (as well as eventually launching MACHINE MAN).

The 7th issue looked at the giant floating baby that closed out the movie, with another astronaut being transformed by the Monolith. Kirby imagines this “New Seed” as a cosmic explorer, going from planet to planet, observing them in various stages of evolution, finally settling to observe a scene on a dying planet and a pair of lovers struggling against a savage mob.

2001 is a pretty minor Kirby work of the era, as he generally had some interesting ideas but didn’t really stick with them to develop them fully. Still, he did throw in some good images, and was well inked by Mike Royer in this issue (with Frank Giacoia inking the cover).

Published June 1977

Hail Hydra!

Kirby did the cover for this issue, inked by Mike Esposito, and did the layouts for the 12 page Shield story, finished by John Severin, his return to Marvel (he previously did work at Atlas in the 1950s, including an issue of YELLOW CLAW that he inked over Kirby, and would eventually settle in to do a lot of issues of SGT FURY). Since it is just Kirby layouts, the final product does have more of a Severin look, but there are still a lot of Kirby elements.

I think what we’re meant to learn in this issue is that the minions of Hydra are truly incompetent. They fall for one sucker trap after another in this one, and in one scene they have two dozen guys in green costumes on a sidewalk next to a ridiculous battering ram ship, and one of them says “we must get inside before we’re seen”.

Published September 1965

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.

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

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