Chic Stone inks this cover (*), from soon after they finally realized that the Thing was the breakout star of the FF, not the Torch, and brought him in as the co-star for STRANGE TALES. Kind of a shame they realized that after the point where Kirby was drawing anything but covers, as it would have been very fun to see what he could have done with a series starring Ben. Good cover here, always good to see close-quarters combat in the Mighty Kirby Manner.
(*)possibly Sol Brodsky
Published 1964
In “Doctor Vundabar and His Murder Machine” Kirby has a lot of fun with his new Big Barda character this issue after her debut the previous issue, as she exercises out in the yard for the opening splash, shows off her strength as Scott takes delivery of a Civil War cannon for his act. While Scott and Oberon practice the act, Barda enjoys the scenery like nothing she’s seen on Apokolips but gets attacked by Virman Vundabar’s men.
![Mister Miracle #5 [1971]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2005/07/Mister-Miracle-5-1971.jpg)
And yes, Kirby even makes a point about how the name “Virman Vundabar” is goofy, so don’t bug me about it. It’s Granny’s sense of humour. She named “Scott Free”, after all.
Scott flies off to the rescue, and winds up in the car wash of doom. God, just those bizarre connections that Kirby could make work. Great scene with Scott, having escaped, standing behind the gloating villains not aware he’s there.
Letter column plugs the next issue with Funky Flashman, who “doesn’t know the meaning of the words ‘Fair Play’ or, if he does, he’s never bothered to practice it”. Ouch. I’ll have to get to that issue soon.
Also in this issue, the first chapter of the “Young Scott Free” story that leads into the classic “Himon” in #9. A great story as you get a look at Granny Goodness and her treatment of her “orphans” and their indoctrination and Scott’s early defiance, leading to his first encounter with Metron.
Mike Royer inks the 22-page lead story, his first issue of this title. It’s kind of notable because this is the issue where he changed Barda’s face on the first go-round, prompting Kirby to take the original heads from the photocopies of the pencils so they could be restored, so the copies of these pencils have those faces removed and Royer was much more faithful after that. Colletta inks the back-up and Royer inks the cover, with some touch-up by Neal Adams to make the weapons look more obvious (the original version appears in COMIC BOOK ARTIST SPECIAL EDITION #1).
The S&K reprint for this issue is “The Invasion of America”, a Boy Commandos story from DETECTIVE #76 (1943), previously covered from another reprint. A fun story, I especially like the scene with the kids coming into New York harbour, talking about how the role of their own countries in New York history.
Published 1971
Ka-Zar arrives in New York on his search for Zabu, held by Kraven. For some reason Kraven decided to keep the sabre-tooth tiger in his hotel room. Kraven attacks Ka-Zar in the lobby, where Ka-Zar uses his battle cry to inform Zabu that he’s there.
Zabu with the sheathed feet cracks me up. Zubu in general is always fun. We need a team-up of Zabu and Lockjaw. There’s some fun as Kraven and Ka-Zar battle above the city, but it ends kind of abruptly as Kraven is wounded and lives up to his name, and Ka-Zar encounters the Petrified Man and has to return to the Savage Land for a story Kirby wasn’t involved in.
Sam Grainger inks the 10-page story.
Published 1970
Another in the string of odd cover assignments Kirby was given in the late 1970s, this one featuring I believe the first solo outing of Moon Knight. He always was the Batman of the Marvel universe, so I guess a giant chess board makes sense.
Al Milgrom inks on this one. I especially like his linework on the chess pieces in the foreground.
Published 1976
Kirby provides a new cover for this issue’s reprint of FF #36 (1965), inked by John Verpoorten according to the Kirby Checklist, Joe Sinnott according to the GCD. Verpoorten looks more likely as Sinnott had a few distinctive touches in his work from this era that are missing. Also of note, Medusa is wearing something closer to her later mask on the cover rather than what she wore in this issue.
This issue opens as Reed and Sue publicly announce their engagement, getting a lot of press attention. Unfortunately, Sue also took this as a time to unveil one of her least flattering hair-cuts. Meanwhile, the Wizard (who makes a brief misguided name change to the Wingless Wizard this issue. Ooooh, “Wingless”! Scary) has gathered a few of the other super-criminals, Paste-Pot-Pete and Sandman, along with new recruit Madame Medusa, to form the Frightful Four.
Following a party with the Avengers and X-Men (where the scripting has to go through a few hoops to explain Professor Xavier’s presence, since he wasn’t openly associated with the X-Men at the time) the villains attack and are able to defeat the three members present.
Fortunately Johnny is off admiring cars, and Alicia is able to send a signal off to him and he manages to rescue his team-mates and Alicia from floating off into space and defeat the villains.
Of course the Frightful Four would return several times in the next year, but the real lasting legacy of this issue is the introduction of Medusa, leading to the Inhumans and some of Kirby’s best supporting characters.
Chic Stone inks the story. This reprint is edited down to 19 pages from the original 21, with a Yancy Street gag from the beginning and a scene with the Torch a few pages later missing.
Published 1970
Dan Adkins inks on this 1970s cover, as Cap explains to the junior Avengers which way they’re supposed to look on a cover for maximum effect. Hey, this is Captain America, he was doing this before they were born, he knows how to pose for a cover, and the first rule is “Face Front”.
Published 1976
This is the last of the four half-issues of AMAZING ADVENTURES that Jack Kirby wrote and drew featuring the Inhumans, and was also the last (in publishing order, he probably drew it earlier) original material by him from Marvel for five years (not counting the cobbled-together story published in FF #108). Of course they’d be hitting the reprints pretty hard for their Kirby fix in those years, with an average of over five books a month with Kirby reprints. I think Marvel actually printed more pages of Kirby while he was over at DC than DC did.
Anyway, back to the Inhumans. This is still a lot weaker than the writing he would be doing in just a few months, and Chic Stone’s inks seem especially rough compared to his usual work. A shame, as I’m sure he did have some good ideas for the oft-delayed Inhumans series that these four half-issues don’t really show.
Picking up from last time, the Inhumans uncover the Eye of Yin as the Mandarin had planned, and he’s able to take the eye from them and absorb its power into his rings. Of course one of the first things he does is turn on his loyal underling, which is a scene I like in a low-rent Doom/Darkseid kind of way.
After an all-too-brief battle Black Bolt is able to defeat the Mandarin kind of easily, and then, well, I guess the Inhumans return to the Great Refuge and lived happily ever after, never bothered by humanity again.
Published 1971
When I talk about Jack Kirby artwork on WWII flag-draped super-heroes of military rank, you know I’m talking about…
Captain Freedom?
Yep. Kirby did a bunch of covers in 1942 for this Harvey Comics character who appeared in SPEED COMICS. Don’t know too much about the character, he was apparently a newspaper publisher named Don Hudson who sometimes had a kid gang group the Young Defenders helping him. The handful of covers Kirby did were certainly good (though there’s some disagreement over which are S&K and which are Simon solo).
The original art for this cover was up for auction a while ago. Check out the scan here.
Published 1942
John Romita stepped in to draw the Cap story in this issue, so the only Kirby art is the cover, also inked by Romita.
Yes, Cap at the mercy of the evil frenchman Batroc zee Leaper. I always liked Batroc, such an absurd character, and charmingly over-written with random french expressions and accents.
Published 1966
This Kirby/Everett credited cover always looked a little odd to me for some reason. The Captain America figure almost looks like it’s pasted on from some other source, and the inks seem oddly heavy in places, maybe not over Kirby at all. Still not bad looking.
I do wonder how this cover came about, over a year after Kirby had last drawn the book. [See the comments for some additional speculation on the origin and composition]
Published 1970