Crime, Romance and Horror images designed to grab you and get your precious dime.
POLICE TRAP #4, 1955. Boy, that looks dangerous, doesn’t it? One of the S&K Mainline/Prize books.
TRUE BRIDE-TO-BE ROMANCE #17, 1956. A Harvey romance comic. That guy in the backgound looks like he’s going to cause some trouble.
BLACK MAGIC #V2#3, 1952. I don’t trust this guy, either.
DAREDEVIL #5, 1964. Wallace Wood took over (and slightly redesigned, before the big redesign) DD with this issue, and inked Jack Kirby’s cover.
TALES TO ASTONISH #64, 1965. Colletta inks on this one. The Giant-Man half is a nice bit of Kirby foreshortening.
AVENGERS, THE #22, 1965. Wood inks again. Great image of the Enchantress.
THOR #255, 1977. Inked by John Verpoorten, with some re-drawing. Because what, Kirby’s Thor doesn’t look like Thor? Weird. Nice to see the Warriors Three.
MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE #25, 1977. Inked by Joe Sinnott. Great to see a few more Kirby Thing drawings on these TWO-IN-ONE covers. That was always one of his defining characters.
INVADERS, THE #16, 1977. Inked by Joe Sinnott. Hm, Master Man. There’s a Roy Thomas villain for you.
LAST OF THE VIKING HEROES #5, 1988. Mike Thibodeaux’s comic, published by Genesis West, had a few contributions by Kirby. This cover, inked by Dave Stevens, is really sharp, looking like something out of Tales of Asgard.
NIGHTGLIDER #1, 1993. Another of the Topps “Kirbyverse” books. This is the weakest of the covers Kirby did for these books (well, except for the inking on one of them), still attractive but the figure isn’t really doing anything.
SECRET ORIGINS #19, 1987. A bit of a minor one, Kirby did the Guardian figure on here, while Murphy Anderson did the rest and inked the whole thing. It’s nice that Anderson got do to more than just re-draw Superman and Jimmy Olsen heads over Kirby for once.
YELLOW CLAW was one of the books that Kirby did during his short stint at what became Marvel in the mid-1950s, before his longer run there starting in the late 1950s. Kirby did three issues (#2 – #4), each with four short stories with FBI agent Jimmy Woo foiling the plans of the Yellow Claw, often aided by the Claw’s very conflicted niece Suwan.
The stories in #2 were reprinted in two issues of GIANT-SIZE MASTER OF KUNG FU in the mid-1970s, although changing some lettering so that Jimmy is now an agent of SHIELD rather than the FBI.
The third issue reprinted “Concentrate on Chaos”, which has the Claw using a a crew of six mutants with mental powers to create havoc in the US. Kirby gets to do a nice Dali-esque page to show that. The stories all end rather quickly and aren’t that satisfying, but they do often have great visuals.
Also reprinted in this issue is an untitled story where Jimmy is convinced to trail Suwan to the Claw’s HQ, only to be captured. For no good reason, the Claw just lets him go rather than killing him, but it’s kind of interesting that they toss him out of a boat in giant bubble, given Kirby’s later fascination with (and unfinished adaptation of) THE PRISONER.
STRANGE TALES #134, 1965. Frank Giacoia inks again for the final Human Torch solo story. Knights, archers, horses, castles and super-heroes. Just some of the things Kirby drew so well.
GREEN HORNET #7, 1942. An early Harvey cover, signed Jon Henri. There seem to be other hands in here, probably Joe Simon, but there’s a lot of Kirby in that killer clown. I like some of those other features, Blonde Bomber the Newsreel Ace, Mighty Midgets.
ACTION COMICS #638, 1989. A very nice image of Etrigan, very sharply inked by Terry Austin, one of a few chances he had to ink Kirby. This is also Kirby’s last published work for DC.
TWO-GUN KID #72, 1964. Excellent Frank Giacoia inks on a dynamic cover.
MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #54, 1975. One of the covers Kirby did for the 1970s reprint books, although by this time reprinting non-Kirby stories. A nice generic Hulk scene. Colletta inks.
BLACK MAGIC #16, 1952. Love the extra-dark moody inking S&K used for BLACK MAGIC. Plus Kirby being free to use his full skills at the grotesque.
The Hogan’s Alley site at Slate features a few comic creators discussing Kirby and some of their favourite moments, including Steve Gerber, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller and Neal Adams.
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/hogan/features/kirby.asp
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/hogan/features/kirby2.asp
http://cagle.slate.msn.com/hogan/features/kirby3.asp
In addition to Challengers of the Unknown and Green Arrow, Kirby’s stint at DC in the 1950s saw him do 30 short stories and some covers for the various fantasy and science fiction anthologies.
Several of those stories were reprinted in the 1970s, including this one in HOUSE OF MYSTERY #199. Originally printed in MY GREATEST ADVENTURE #17 as “I Doomed the World”, here it’s called “He Doomed The World” to accommodate the introduction by host Cain.
The story is a typical not-entirely-plausible ending story, where a rich inventor is hypnotized by aliens to send four explorers to the extremes of the Earth in a plane to destroy the world. The art is excellent, though, with lots of detailed images. I especially like the panel highlighted in the scan there, where Kirby draws this incredibly good looking and complex statue. There’s really no reason for that to be there, but I kind of like that he goes to that extra effort.
Published February 1972.
NOT BRAND ECHH was of course Marvel’s title for self-parody. Kirby had stories in some of the early issues, doing parodies of the various characters he drew at Marvel (FF, Thor, Surfer), plus a, um, Forbush Man story.
I’m not a huge fan of the book. A lot of the parodies read to me a bit too much like someone read the “how to do a parody” strip in MAD #17 by Kurtzman and Wood, and didn’t quite get that it was a joke. But just by sheer volume there are always some good gags, and some of the art is good.
In #3 it was Thor who was up, under his gag-name of “Mighty Sore, Son of Shmodin”, against his arch-nemesis Hokey. Yeah, I know. Sore is kind of a good design, with a carpenter hammer, long blonde hair in braids, a chicken on his helmet and buttons that keep changing.
Among the better gags in this one, I like the pile of newspapers with stories about Sore, except the Daily Bugle running “Spider-Man is a Fink” as the headline. The page shown above also has the expression “kirbyesque” referring to Hokey’s cannon, which might be the first time that expression was ever published. And for no explained reason, when the Warriors Three are shown, “Bullstag” has a sign on his chest saying “Legalize Potatoes”.
The 8 page story is inked by Frank Giacoia, who does a great job on it, very clear and faithful. The Kirby checklist notes an art assist to Marie Severin, which would seem to be the panel showing a crowd of tourists in Asgard, including caricatures of many celebrities of the day.
Published 1967