TALES TO ASTONISH #52, 1964. After returning to Hank Pym’s adventures for a few issues to oversee his change from Ant-Man to Giant-Man (by changing his powers, although you could just as easily have had him join the army to become G.I.Ant-Man). Sol Brodsky, Marvel production manager extrordinaire, inked this one, and we get a nice Kirby winged horse.

MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #12, 1940. One of Kirby’s early covers for Timely/Marvel, with Joe Simon, featuring the Angel. Very striking cover, with a great figure of the hero rushing into action and a classic “damsel in distress” type situation.

No Kirby interior work in this issue, although with the next issue S&K would start doing stories about The Vision.

The lead story here is “The Answer at Last”. At last indeed. After six years, they finally decided to address the weird aspects of the Thor / Don Blake relationship. It was never quite clear early on if Thor was just Don Blake with powers or a true immortal Asgardian, and varied with the story. After a few issues of build-up, this issue finally explains that the Don Blake persona was all part of one of those Odinian schemes, this one to teach his son humility. Oddly enough, he says that “none can be truly strong unless they be truly humble”, given that he’s all-powerful and rarely shows even a trace of humility.

As part of this story, there are flashbacks to the youth of Thor, showing the need for this lesson. First off there’s his accidental breaking of a treaty with the Storm Giants, which is also shown brilliantly on the cover. Another scene shows one of those classic Asgardian barroom brawls, including Volstagg, a wonderful slapstick comedy device.

Published 1968

Following the one-shot with Joe Simon the previous year, DC continued the new Sandman in an on-going book in 1975. Different creators on the interiors, but Kirby and Royer were there with the cover art.

Very nice Kirby style nightmare monster, and I like the strong, bold inking, which works very well with this unique colouring scheme, which helps the dream portion of the cover pop out.

When DC published its first WHO’S WHO series of character profiles in the mid-1980s, they had Kirby pencil the art for most of the characters he created. That ended up being 43 entries. About two-thirds of them were inked by Greg Theakston, with the remainder inked by various others (including one with some rare DC work by Joe Sinnott). Nothing really great in them, maybe, but some nice looking stuff, and the last published versions of most of these characters that Kirby would draw.

#15 had two Kirby pieces. Metron, inked by Theakston, was a bit flat, with just Metron in his Mobius Chair as the main figure.

The other one was Mister Miracle, inked by Dick Giordano, and it’s pretty good. Solid dynamic main figure, some nice background figures. The shot of Scott Free without the mask is very nice.

Published May 1986

There’s probably the unrealized germ of a good idea in the 1970s revival of Sandman, which re-united Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for a one-shot issue, with Mike Royer along inking. Unfortunately, not a lot of it comes out in the final story, which is a hodge-podge of ideas thrown out without any real logic. Or maybe with a kind of dream logic, which might fit the character but doesn’t always make for good reading. Anyway, it has something to do with a group of left-over Axis soldiers from WWII, one of them a Japanese general named “General Electric” who has had his brain replaced by a computer, planning to blow up Washington with some robot dolls called Werblinks, and then being foiled by a red-and-yellow dressed master of dreams who has a whistle which summons Brute and Glob… Well, you get the idea.

I don’t know if the story originated with Simon, who’s credited with the script, or Kirby, whose credit reads “edited and drawn by”. I’m tending to think it was more Simon, since it seems more like his DC work of the era than Kirby’s other books.

The art did work a lot better than the story. The Sandman design is kind of plain, but workable. The other odd creatures are great, even “General Electric”.

I’m still quite amazed that this one-shot did well enough to spawn an on-going book (with Kirby just on covers for the first few issues, then on pencils for a few after that).

Published Winter 1974

“The Kingdom of the Damned” features the Forever People trapped by Desaad in an amusement park that he runs, where people are tortured behind the scenes, while their suffering is disguised as amusement park features by Desaad’s machines, so they get to see other people apparently observe their suffering while doing nothing. An interesting middle part to a story.

Darkseid has some interesting scenes in FOREVER PEOPLE. The highlight of this issue is his interaction with Desaad and the scene that begins in the scan below, where he walks out among the crowd, scaring children.

This issue was the first where DC increased the price and page count of their books, adding in reprints. The Kirby books all had golden age S&K reprints, with FOREVER PEOPLE getting Sandman reprints from ADVENTURE, starting with the cover and story for ADVENTURE #85 (1943), “The Unholy Dreams of Gentleman Jack”. It’s an amusing story about a felon who re-creates his jail after being released, with guards under his employ and rubber bars, and attempts to imprison the Sandman.

Also in here, three Forever People related pin-ups and a Kirby self-portrait introducing the reprints, which appeared in all the Fourth World books, all inked by Colletta.

Published September 1971

The Kirby Checklist credits this to Kirby/M. Severin/Giacoia, so I’m guessing Marie Severin did some touch-ups to bring it closer to model for the book. Might explain why Skull’s head doesn’t seem to quite fit right on his body. No, I’m not sure why, when given Kirby available to do comic covers, somebody decided that him drawing Skull would be a good idea….

Published 1976