Inked by Joe Sinnott. “Even if thou canst reach me, Thunder God — Thou darest not strike Odin!” I love that. “Canst”. That makes it poetry…

Published 1976

Inked by Al Milgrom. Solid enough job, and some nice stuff in the background space scene, but I have to say, this may be the most boring Kirby cover of all time. There are only a handful of Kirby covers I can think of where the character isn’t doing anything, and this may be the most dull of them. I think it’s the almost symmetrical pose that really does it.

On the other hand, you see covers like this almost every week on books published now.

Published 1975

Inked by Al Milgrom. Milgrom inked over a dozen of these 1970s covers, and did did a nice job on most of them. I kind of wish he’d gotten a chance to do a full story, just to see what it would have looked like. This one is nice, except for Luke Cage’s face, which seems off. Still, lots of crackling energy to make up for any other flaws.

Published February 1977

Inked by Joe Sinnott. Not much to comment on, except that I do love Sinnott’s inking on these 1970s covers. And they sometimes have too many blurbs on the covers…

Published March, 1977

From time to time just to keep up the posting frequency I’ll throw in one of the many books Kirby just did covers for (about 100 at Marvel in the 1970s and maybe twice that in the 1960s, so there’s a lot to choose from). Minimal comments on those, since you can see the Kirby content and the stories they’re wrapped around often aren’t worth re-reading, and aren’t on-topic here anyway. The 70s covers aren’t always Kirby’s strongest art, since he was often clearly working over layouts from New York (and sometimes slightly re-drawn back in New York), but they’re fun, often have the only example of Kirby drawing a particular character, and have some nice inkers (a lot are Sinnott or Giacoia, both great, but there are a few unusual ones).

This one, inked by Joe Sinnott, is kind of fun just because Stilt-Man gives me a bit of a chuckle. As does Black Goliath. I guess this would be the only time Kirby had the dubious honour of drawing either of that pair of winners. And check out that trademark Kirby squiggle on Stilt-Man’s leg. That’s one of the longest of those you’ll see.

Published August 1976

Boy, will you look at that. Beautiful, no? Scans of covers and splash pages are going to be the exception in this weblog (except for books where the only Kirby art is the cover), since I think the heart of Kirby’s work lies in the actual panel-to-panel story-telling, and because you can find scans of covers all over the place. But this cover is a particular favourite.

Figure it’s best to start with one of the best, FANTASTIC FOUR #51. Inked by Joe Sinnott (cover and story), and right in the heart of the classic run of the book where in one year you saw Kirby introduce the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Black Panther, the Negative Zone and more.

This is considered by some to be the best of that run. I’d agree with them.

This is very much the ultimate Ben Grimm story, where we look into his relationship with the team and with Alicia, and his feelings about being the Thing. Ben is always the most fascinating member of the team, as well as the most visually interesting, so any story with a lot of Ben is going to be a good one.

Published June 1966