Kirby’s second book for Pacific in the 1980s was SILVER STAR. Starting life as a screenplay proposal co-written with Steve Sherman, which is quite different from what the comic ended up as. It’s been a few years since I’ve read it, so I’ll be interested to see what I think of the series now. I recall it having some really good moments, especially towards the end, but not quite managing to tie everything together.

In the opening chapter we meet Tracy, a young girl with some sort of mental connection to Morgan Miller, a 21-year old soldier in Vietnam. Morgan develops super-powers during a battle, tossing an enemy tank around. He also slips into and out of a coma-like state, and is given a silver outfit as shielding. While he’s in the coma, he meets Tracy in a dream-like realm.

Sensing danger, Morgan tells Tracy to leave that realm, and is attacked by Darius Drumm. While that goes on, we find out, through a doctor and a government agent, that the powers these people have are the result of experiments conducted by Morgan’s father on post-atomic survival.

It’s an interesting, but not captivating, start. The best thing is probably the villain, Darius Drumm, and the battle scene in Vietnam in the beginning. The art is a bit of a mixed bag, too. A few strong bits, but overall just slipping a bit from most of this other work.

Some very strange dialogue in this issue, in particular the classic “don’t rattle your gonads in my ears”.

Mike Royer inks the 20-page story and cover. The song Tracy sings at the beginning is credited to Kirby’s daughter Susan.

Published 1983

The story this issue is”Bedlam In The Baxter Building”. As opposed to “Bedlam AT The Baxter Building”, which was from FF ANNUAL #3. This is of course the second last issue of Kirby’s FF fun, and the last complete story (as #102 begins a continued story).

The issue opens up strong, with some downtime for the FF and Ben showing off some dance moves. And yes, that is Alicia. I’m not sure exactly what happened to her hair in this issue. Anyway, Kirby/Sinnott drawing the Thing dancing. Cool.

There’s another good scene later where Ben is showing off for some kids in a park.

The main story isn’t as good as those scenes, and I think they’d have been better off spending another 17 pages of Ben showing his moves. It’s a trifle involving the Maggia, Marvel’s clever name for an organized crime gang, buying the Baxter Building, evicting the FF, hoping to steal their technology. The Maggia goons manage to defeat the FF rather easily but of course they come back and win in the end. While the plots for the last handful of issues aren’t as good, the action scene are good, and Kirby was still clearly having a lot of fun with scenes like the first one.

Published 1970

Kirby’s final stint on Captain America was one of his longest of the 1970s, behind only KAMANDI, with 22 issues, 2 double-sized annuals and a big tabloid comic. 553 pages in all. It was an uneven run in some ways, but it had a lot of fun stuff.

#208 had one of those fun moments with the introduction of Arnim Zola, the Bio-Fanatic. He’s just one of those crazy Kirby villain designs, like Modok, that just make me smile.

While it ended on an incredible up note, this otherwise isn’t one of the highlights of the run. It features Cap in South America, having just escaped from the Swine’s prison. He’s attacked by a large red monster we get to know as the Man-Fish, which is the (at this point in Kirby’s career) obligatory two-page splash, which is one of the weaker ones. I generally like the ones with detailed backgrounds you can get lost in rather than just two figures fighting. Cap then gets recaptured by the Swine and his men, and is about to be killed in a pit along with the Swine’s cousin Donna Maria when the Man-Fish returns, killing the Swine (which seems like a rather anti-climactic end to his story) and then fighting Cap until his master, Zola, shows up and calls him off. In the middle is a short subplot about SHIELD and the Falcon looking for Cap. While it mostly looks good, the story is just a bit light and unfocused.

Frank Giacoia inked the story, while Joe Sinnott inked the cover.

Published 1977

In 1973, MARVEL SPECTACULAR picked up the Thor reprints from SPECIAL MARVEL EDITION left off the previous year (with enough of a gap that they added an apology for it on the first page). “The Power of Pluto” is reprinted from THOR #128. As we open, Thor is recovering from the battle with Seidring. I find it amusing that his bed is in the shape of a viking ship, as it makes me think of those race-car beds made for five-year-old boys. Anyway, proud papa Odin visits, actually feeling guilty for weakening Thor, leading to his injuries, and dispenses ironic Odinic justice to Seidring. Meanwhile, on Earth, Hercules proves to be as smart as a bagful of hammers, as he lets Pluto convince him to sign a “movie contract” that really consigns him to rule the netherworld in Pluto’s place (although, to be fair, that movie set Pluto built for the ruse was spectacular). After recovering with some hunting and dueling in Asgard, Thor seeks out Hercules to avenge his honour from his defeat two issues before, only to see Herc under siege from the denizens of the netherworld, and comes to his aid.

They’re victorious after Pluto departs, but Hercules knows he’ll still have to deal with Pluto taking his contract to Zeus, which even Thor knows is a bad thing.

This whole sequence with Hercules is rousing good fun, with some of the best fight scenes Kirby ever did. I’ve got it all in scattered formats, so I’m looking forward to seeing it straight through in black and white (and I find Colletta somewhat improved without the colour, as long as they’re able to get a solid reproduction source) in the upcoming ESSENTIAL THOR v2.

They also pick up the “Tales of Asgard” reprints, which were running a year behind, so this issue has “The Challenge” from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #116. This is one of the stories where Loki tries to trap Thor, this time by encouraging King Hymir of the ridiculously big crown to challenge Thor to various tasks. Thor almost fails, but thanks to his charm with the ladies and his willingness to kill the King he triumphs, much to Loki’s frustration. And I have to say, those Asgardians let Loki get pretty far before they finally realized he was a villain.

This was one of those eras where they apparently thought word balloons on the cover were what sold comics, so this issue reprints the original cover from THOR #128, but with some superfluous dialogue and much brighter colours.

All inks by Colletta.

Published August 1973

The issues of MISTER MIRACLE after the other Fourth World books were cancelled don’t get that much attention, as they mostly shy away from the big cosmic over-arching plot and tell simpler adventure stories. They’re fun books, for the most part, but seem to show a bit of Kirby trying to figure out exactly what DC wanted from him after they’d responded to two years of some of the best work of his career with multiple cancellations (though that was largely a DC thing, very few books they launched in that era lasted much longer than the average Kirby book).

MISTER MIRACLE #13, “The Dictator’s Dungeon”, is a few months after the companion titles had been cancelled. After Scott Free practices yet another close escape, this time from a train, Ted Brown is captured by a flying ship, piloted by odd man-ape creatures (which Kirby calls “aboriginal”, but I’m not certain he’s using it in the right sense). Scott and Barda are also accidentally captured by the same ship, breaking in and cleaning house.

The ship takes them to Mount Everest, where we meet King Komodo, a masked man who’s taken control of the abominable snowmen of the region, and who turns out to be Nazi war criminal Albert von Killowitz, who Ted had recognized and escaped from in Korea some years earlier. Of course they defeat him and take him in eventually.

It’s an odd story, with some promise that it doesn’t quite manage to achieve. There are a lot of nice things, especially the characterization of Barda and her interplay with Scott and Oberon. There’s a cover layout that’s been printed a few times that shows Kirby considered a “Big Barda and Her Female Furies” series, and I’m kind of sorry he never got a chance to do it, as he always had fun with the character even in small scenes.

“That Jockey of the Ink Jars” Mike Royer inks the 23 page story and cover.

Published 1973

Here’s one that always fascinated me. The Spidey figure on the cover of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #35 is a Kirby figure (usually attributed to Ditko inks, but I never quite saw that). Don’t think it’s ever been reprinted in any other version in English (unlike some other covers with paste-ups which reverted in reprints), but someone dug up this foreign reprint. Click for a closer look at both covers.

(see comments for more, including a reprinting of the original in an English edition that I didn’t know about)

I will say that the modified version is the more attractive cover, with a great Spidey figure. I’m not sure exactly why the original was seen as needing altering, though. Too unflattering a pose for the hero? Did it make Spidey’s butt look too big?

MARVEL’S GREATEST COMICS #43 offers an almost complete reprint of “Klaw – The Murderous Master of Sound” from FF #56 in 1966, including the cover. Joe Sinnott inks, of course. In the main story, Klaw, from the recent Black Panther storyline, returns to attack the FF with new powers and a new costume, hoping to lure in the Panther. He seals off Reed and Ben in the lab while attacking Sue. There’s some great Reed/Ben interplay in their scenes this issue, like Ben asking “How come ya never cook up any gizmos that work better on guys who can stretch?”.

The FF prevail in the end, thanks to a remote assist from T’Challa with a delivery of vibranium.

As all this occurs, the Inhumans remain imprisoned, with Black Bolt becoming injured trying to escape, while Johnny and Wyatt Wingfoot continue their search for the Inhumans with Lockjaw, the teleporting dog. God, I love all these characters introduced in just the previous year of the book.

Unfortunately, this issue removes the last tier of panels from the final page, which set-up the Surfer/Doom storyline, since they were skipping it in this book, having reprinted it in MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION the previous year (which, looking at the dates now, is odd. They were reprinting the second major Surfer story in one book while reprinting the first one in another).

Published 1973

The first SUPER POWERS mini-series was five issues, with Kirby doing all the covers, plotting the first four and writing and penciling the last issue. In a bit of an coincidence, when this series came out, Kenner released a line of action figures that had the same eight heroes and four villains that are featured in this book. What are the odds.

In addition to the cover of this issue, Kirby also drew an ad for the series that, kind of redundantly  appears in the first issue. Both cover and ad are inked by Mike Royer.

I like how the play it coy about who the master villain is in the ad and in this first issue. It’s pretty subtle, that shadowing figure in blue and grey whose minions appear with a loud “Boom”.

I’d be curious to read what Kirby’s actual plot for this issue was. It’s not a bad first issue, given the extended ad nature of the book. Pretty much just Darkseid sending his minions to give extra powers to various Earth villains. The art by Adrian Gonzales and Pablo Marcos is nice, except that there’s too much of an attempt to make it look like Kirby on the surface elements. Lots of squiqqles and cosmic energy dots, while shades of their own style seem to bubble through at times.

Worth a look, but not too long a look.

Published 1984

DC did a collection of Christmas stories a few years ago, including this 10-page S&K reprint from ADVENTURE #82, “Santa Fronts For The Mob”

Some mobsters get the questionably great idea to hire a wrestler to play Santa at a mall in order to rob the place. Fortunately, the wrestler finds the Christmas spirit and helps out Sandman and Sandy in the end. A light but decent holiday story.

Published 2000

This story was originally intended for SANDMAN #7 in 1975, before that series was cancelled. A few years later it was uncomfortably squeezed into an issue of KAMANDI, which was cancelled before that issue, and only “published” in the photocopied CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE #2 in 1978. Finally, in 1982, it was included in this digest of Christmas stories.

Santa is unusually sarcastic on the last panel of this page:

Like all 1970s Sandman stories by Michael Fleisher, it doesn’t make much sense except in a dream-logic kind of way. In this one, Sandman’s young friend Jed gets a rich man to promise to give a million dollars to charity if he can prove Santa Claus exists. Jed enlists Sandman’s help, and it turns out he’s a friend of Santa, so they head off to the North Pole, pursued by the rich man’s nephew, who isn’t about to see his inheritance given away. At the North Pole, they find Santa has been kidnapped by the usually friendly Seal-Men, and go to rescue him, finding out that the Seal-Men were upset at the Christmas gifts they were getting, such as gloves (useless with flippers). They accept an apology for the mix-up, then Santa and Sandman take care of the evil nephew and everyone has a Merry Christmas.

Mike Royer inks the 18 page story.

Published 1982