For about a year in the mid-1970s, Marvel added a bunch of “Giant Size” specials to their schedule, with a mix of new and reprint contents. As the editorial in this one explains, the plans for the line were often in flux in terms of price and page counts, which is how this early one wound up with four reprints, three of them tied together with a new framing story.

Two Kirby stories made it in here. The first is “Banished to Outer Space”, the first half of INCREDIBLE HULK #3 from 1962, inked by Dick Ayers. It’s a fun story if you don’t think about it too much, since that early Marvel stuff is clearly very seat-of-the-pants type plotting, and especially with the Hulk, where they didn’t seem to know where they wanted to go during that short original run. I kind of like how charmingly stupid Rick Jones is as he’s tricked into luring the Hulk into a rocket, and the blank look on the Hulk’s face when he inexplicably falls under the mental control of Rick.

Later in the book, outside the framing story, is “The Peerless Power of the Silver Surfer”, from FF ANNUAL #5 (1967), inked by Frank Giacoia.

In this one, during his wandering days on Earth between major FF stories he comes across the Mad Thinker’s leftover construct from an earlier FF story, Quasimodo (Quasi-Motivational Destruct Organ). The Surfer uses his powers to give Quasimodo a body, not realizing that whole Destruct Organ thing, and eventually has to turn the rampaging Quasimodo into a statue.

A bit of an iffy story, I guess, but great art, with the Surfer looking as elegant as always, and Quasimodo being a great Kirby monster type, with his body or without.

Published 1974

WANTED. THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS VILLAINS was a short-lived reprint anthology from DC with a focus on super-villains. This was the final issue, and featured a reprint of the S&K Sandman story from WORLD’S FINEST #6 (1942).

The villain in this case is the Nightshade, a demonic looking green criminal who has used a variety of technological and biological terrors to take control of his “magic forest” where, for a price, he’ll offer other criminals a place to hide until the heat dies down. Sandman and Sandy get involved when the parents of a boy whose party Sandy is attending go missing in the forest, and battle Nightshade’s deadly plants.

Fun story, but the bit that cracks me up is the last page, when Sandy and Wes Dodds return to the party, where birthday boy Toby says “Hi’ya Sandy! Did ya hear what happened? The Sandman and Sandy saved my mom and dad!”. Yeah, you know Sandy, right Sandy? That crimefighter sidekick, about your height, curly blonde hair, kind of like yours…

Published 1973

This 13 page Simon&Kirby story is reprinted from the 1941 debut issue of ALL-WINNERS COMICS, the only time the story has been reprinted (there’s also an S&K Cap story in #2 that has never been reprinted. It would be great to see a volume of all the Kirby golden age Marvel art not from CAPTAIN AMERICA. It would only be a bit over 200 pages).

In this story, the Lord of Death, on orders from Hitler, changes Bowery bums to Zombies (“Zombies Bucky! They’re Zombies!”) and sets them loose to sabotage ships bound for England on the Lease-Lend programs.

Cap and Bucky go undercover to take care of it, and the story has Bucky giving Hitler a raspberry. No wonder Zemo was so determined to get the kid.

A fun sample of the early S&K work, with really sharp restored art. Great zombies on the rampage on several pages. As Greg Theakston mentions in his introduction, there are various hands involved on various pages, but several of the action oriented pages are pure S&K.

The other interesting piece of Kirby art in here is a re-design of Cap that, according to Theakston’s caption was found in Kirby’s home, with Kirby having no memory of when or why it was done.

Most of this book promotes various then-contemporary Cap related books, but also noteworthy in this issue are the features on Joe Simon, featuring several photos and samples of his paintings (some of which seem to be using Bill Clinton as a model for Cap), as well as the new cover by Simon, and a page by Fred Hembeck.

Published 1995

For reasons that elude me, the Inhumans were given a back-up feature in a handful of issues of THOR in 1967-68, and a few of them were reprinted behind Spider-Man reprints in 1981.

“The Reason Why” was reprinted from THOR #147, featuring part of the origin of the Inhumans. THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #21 featured copies of all the pencils for this story, with Kirby’s margin notes, to demonstrate one of the prime examples where the final product ended up completely divergent from Kirby’s original intent, and explaining a few odd points of the artwork.

As published, the story features a Kree Sentry detecting some activity, finding the city of Attilan, where their leader has just become the first to get powers from the Terrigan Mist. The Sentry explains to the Inhumans the role of the Kree in their creation, and declares the experiment a success.

As Kirby wrote it, the Sentry and Attilan had been in contact all along, and the Sentry was warning them not to experiment with those powers, in defiance of the Kree, and declares the experiment a failure.

So the story we got isn’t the story we should have, and the original does make more sense in the larger context of the Inhumans story. Fortunately, the art wasn’t modified, and was wonderfully inked by Joe Sinnott, so that’s okay. I love that half-page panel of the Sentry among the animals, and the various views of Attilan.

Published 1981

This issue reprints the revamped origin of Green Arrow that Kirby did in ADVENTURE COMICS #256 (1959), during his brief 11-story run on the character. It’s a good functional origin about a man who gets washed up on an island, learns archery to survive, finds his rescue ship being hijacked and using his arrows to fight the hijackers. All of this in a framing sequence where he has to return to the island to protect his secret identity.

I have to say, GA did become delightfully compulsive when it came to arrows on his stay on the island. “I quickly realized ingenious arrows could be used for almost any purpose”, he thinks, as he decides that would be the best way to get coconuts off a tree would be to use an arrow. Goes a long way to explaining why he’d eventually put a boxing glove on the end of an arrow. I was disappointed he didn’t come up with some sort of arrow-centric way to chisel his journal into the cave wall.

Kirby’s GA stories are pretty fun, although they leave you wondering what he would have done if he had a freer hand with them than DC was willing to allow.

This story was apparently inked by Kirby, with the help of his wife Roz, one of the last times he would do a substantial amount of inking of his own work.

Published 1969

I’m back.  Now on to SATAN’S SIX #1.

This is the only one of the Topps “Kirbyverse” books to actually feature more than just a cover by Jack Kirby (not counting the cards they were inevitably packaged with. I’ll have to dig those out and do an entry on the cards). There’s an 8 page Kirby story not-quite-seamlessly mixed in among the other pages. Single pages were inked by Steve Ditko, Joe Sinnott, Terry Austin and Frank Miller, while Mike Royer inked the remainder. There’s also a centerfold by Kirby of the main characters.

Kirby created the characters in the late 1970s for the unrealized “Jack Kirby Comics” line. The few pages he did set up the premise, a group of lovable losers from throughout history looking to get out of Purgatory and being sent to Earth. It would have been interesting to see exactly where Kirby would have gone with that. The actual series that was published had some fun stuff written by Tony Isabella, but the art was distractingly un-Kirby and just not very good.

For the Kirby pages, Royer and Sinnott are of course just about beyond reproach as Kirby inkers. Austin does a decent job, while Miller’s style was a bit too heavy, which is fine for a single page, I guess, just not something you’d like to see for any more than that. Ditko’s page is my favourite, as I always did like the Kirby/Ditko art of the early 1960s, and that devil character’s poses have some great classic Kirby elements.

The cover is Kirby inked by Todd McFarlane, although there’s a nicer version inked by Royer in one of the fanzines somewhere.

Published 1993

This is a fun issue from the heart of the long Kirby/Sinnott collaboration on FF. In this issue, the boys of the FF return from their sub-atomic adventure of the previous few issues, while Sue is about to deliver her baby. Reed takes this opportunity to try out his latest cure for Ben, which works, but just in time for the Wizard to attack (which they should have seen coming, since the Daily Bugle headline reads “Wizard Released From Prison – Vows Vengeance on Fantastic 4” in huge letters usually reserved for Presidential assassinations, moon-landings and anti-Spider-Man articles).

This leads to a great long battle, which Ben leaps into despite his lack of powers, and which has some great images.

Of course they win in the end, and Ben’s in a position of wanting his powers back, but this variation of Reed’s cure is a one-way street, so he’d have to become the Thing forever. Boy, I wonder which it’ll be?

Very fun, fast moving, issues, with a good mix of the action and quiet moments and humour that made the FF so effective.

Published 1968

So, the story goes, Jim Steranko takes over CAPTAIN AMERICA from Kirby with #110. Shortly thereafter, for whatever reason, Kirby’s asked to draw #112 on an extremely tight deadline. He’s told the cliffhanger to #111 had Captain America dying. Did they want him to bring Cap back to life? No, they wanted him to keep Cap dead.

And thus was created the Kirby comic that most closely resembles modern Marvel comics, a full issue where almost nothing happens.

The story is pretty much that Cap’s mask is fished out of the water, and he’s presumed dead, so Iron Man is informed. Iron Man then goes over Cap’s file, so we get short vignettes of Cap’s original WWII adventures and villains, the classic retro-fitted “death of Bucky” bit with Zemo, Cap’s thawing out courtesy of Namor and scenes from his adventures of the previous few years. I have a soft spot for this particular page:

as it features Modok, one of the Kirbyest of the Kirby villains of the 1960s, and those wacky bee-keeper minions of AIM.

So the story is light, it does at least look really good. George Tuska inks, I think the only other work he did with Kirby was finishes on some Cap stories a few years before this, but he does a good job here, presumably on as tight a deadline as Kirby was. Frank Giacoia inks Kirby on the cover, which is unfortunately Modok-free.

Published 1969

The last new project Kirby initiated during his 1970s stay at DC was KOBRA (originally KING KOBRA). Unlike the trio of concepts thrown into FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL, this one was given an on-going book, with the first issue Kirby delivered (with Steve Sherman co-writing and D. Bruce Berry inking) re-scripted, re-arranged and partly re-drawn(the faces of some of the characters). It lasted an impressive six more issues post-Kirby.

Pretty much all set-up this issue. Kobra is the head of a criminal cult, and we find out that he was born with a conjoined twin, kidnapped by the Cobra Cult shortly after being separated and presumed dead, while his brother Jason Burr grew up unaware of his brother’s fate. Now, years later, they find that they have a psychic link to feel the other’s pain. Kobra attacks his brother, who’s also been contacted by the police.

It’s an okay start, nothing special. I’m sure that given a few issues and a free hand, Kirby could have done some interesting stuff with the concept, either as presented here or, ideally, as it was originally written, and Kobra does have a neat design.

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #22 had several pages devoted to KOBRA, with an article by Steve Sherman on the evolution of the character (note that Sherman’s timeline doesn’t quite jibe with the version in the text page of #1), the original splash page and some some other unaltered pages (showing that the brother was originally a much older Philip Snow, Interpol agent, rather than Jason Burr, university student) and Sherman’s first tries at an outline and script for the first issue (not the script for the actual art Kirby drew).

Published 1976