Time to pull out a particular favourite. “Himon” is the companion piece to “The Pact” (NEW GODS #7) and is probably what I’d most often cite as my favourite single Kirby comic. Certainly always in the top five. Thankfully at this point DC briefly gave Kirby a full 26 pages an issue and Mike Royer was the inker, so the story had room to breathe and looks as close to how Kirby imagined it as it could.

The background to the story was laid out in the previous issues, in particular three short “Young Scott Free” stories in MM #5 – #7. It opens with three big pages showing the heart of Apokolips, Armagetto, by the fire-pits. There the local “protector”, Wonderful Willik hopes to trap the rebel Himon, killing the other “lowlies” to flush him out. Himon is able to use his devices to escape, and meets up with Scott Free. We find out that Scott has been meeting Himon in secret, along with other students, working on making their own versions of Mother Box. Among them are Kreetin, who can’t get his to work, and Auralie, another charge of Granny Goodness’ “orphanage”.

Barda and her Furies break in and take Auralie, and we witness the first meeting of Scott and Barda. After she leaves, the crowd of “lowlies” break in, and most of the students escape, except for Kreetin, who still can’t use his Mother Box. Himon offers himself for Kreetin’s freedom, an offer Kreetin leaps at, after which Metron appears to try to understand him, and realizes what it is about his nature that prevents his Mother Box from ever working.

Meanwhile, Himon manages to repeatedly escape from a variety of traps and tortures. And we see one of his meetings with Metron as they discuss how and why they conspire to Willik finally captures and kills most of his students. He brings in Scott and Barda to witness what he’s done, but they’re led away by Himon as he delivers a finishing bomb to Willik. We then find out about Himon pioneering the research into the Boom-Tube, which is why he feels guilty for enabling Darkseid’s rise, plus his work in developing the Mother Box and its link to the Source. Finally Scott mentions his memory of his mother in a reference to “The Pact”

Finally, the great escape, Scott Free pursued by Para-Demons on his Aero-Discs, rescued by Barda and her Furies and in the end one of the best scenes Kirby ever wrote.

Himon and Metron present a Boom-Tube to Earth on one side, while Darkseid finally makes his presence felt on the other. Promises of power versus freedom. Risk and reward. And above all identity. “Let me be Scott Free — and find myself” and a final leap into the future, followed by a prophecy of the end, Darkseid’s final confrontation with Orion in Armagetto. Man, I love this comic more every time I read it.

(interestingly, the photocopies of the pencilled pages have slightly different dialogue for the last page. You can see a copy of the original in JACK KIRBY QUARTERLY #9, but it’s much more powerful in the published version)

Published 1972

Five 10-page reprints from TALES TO ASTONISH #70 – #74 (1965) in this issue. The first is Kirby pencils inked by Mike Esposito (as Mickey Demeo).

“To Live Again” opens with the army raiding the Leader’s lair, where they had found Bruce Banner with a bullet in the head. Rick Jones manages to get Banner’s body out to his secret lab, and gives him a dose of gamma rays to change him to the Hulk.

This time he retains Banner’s intellect as the Hulk, and realizes that the bullet will kill him if he changes back. Meanwhile, the Leader unleashes a 500-foot tall “humanoid” on the army, and the Hulk goes to get a final look at Betty (and I have to say, security at that army base sucked, as no one sees a big green man hanging around). The Hulk and the army both attack the humanoid, which repels them, and the army pull out the “Sunday Punch Missile”, a wonderful Kirby designed weapon.

The rest are Kirby layouts, with some combination of Esposito and/or Bob Powell doing finishing. They look pretty nice, both men are long established professionals probably just working on Kirby’s layouts to get a feel for how Marvel liked their comics done, and to get some extra plotting out of Kirby.

“Like a Beast at Bay”, Esposito finishes, features the defeat of the humanoid, the Hulk giving Rick artificial respiration and the army’s siege of Banner’s hidden lab. I like how the Hulk side of his personality comes and goes depending on the circumstances in this run.

“Within the Monster Dwells a Man”, Esposito again. The Hulk gets taken to the Leader’s headquarters in Italy, where the Leader tries to recruit him with arguements of gamma solidarity. The Hulk doesn’t go for it and battles more humanoids, and feels himself reverting to Banner, which would kill him.

“Another World, Another Foe”, Bob Powell finishes the pencils on this one, with Esposito doing the inking (uncredited), which has the Leader remove the bullet from the Hulk’s brain and gives him another gamma dose, possibly leaving him in Hulk form forever (and if you believe that…). The Hulk agrees to work for him in gratitude, and the Leader reveals that he has been observing the Watcher on the moon and on his homeworld, and sends the Hulk to get a particular device from the Watcher. The Hulk is sent off, where he encounters no resistance from the Watcher, who doesn’t interfere, but is confronted by an alien lizard after the same device. Some nice imaginative alien creatures and devices in the Watcher’s world.

“The Wisdom of the Watcher”, Powell/Esposito over Kirby layouts again, with Esposito credited this time (well, credited as Demeo). The big battle issue, with the Hulk against the alien on a barren world where the Watcher sends them to battle. Good fight, very action filled. The Hulk wins, of course, and the Watcher lets him take the Ultimate Machine, a repository of all knowledge. The Leader puts it on and it appears to kill him (and if you believe that… In fact, the reprint editor even adds a note that the Leader is still around).

There are two pin-up pages between stories. One has the Hulk and Thing battling, taking the Kirby/Roussos figure from the first page of FF #26, the other showing various panels of the Hulk’s transformations to and from Banner from various issues.

Published 1971

One of Marvel’s reprint initiatives in the first half of the 1990s was the occasional “Milestone Edition”, complete cover-to-cover (except for the CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 edition) reprints of various key books. Naturally FF #1 (1961) was among them.

First of all, none of the ads are very interesting. All the usual comic ads of the period, no house ads. Just so you know.

The cover is the usual altered version that appears in most reprints, with only three by-standers on the streets instead of five. It remains a great cover.

Presumably everyone is familiar with the story, which as always has a few problems as it would be a few issues before Kirby really figured out the characters and where he wanted to go with this. Among the odd things that I always forget until I re-read it is that the FF were in “Central City” for the first issue, not New York. I also always get surprised at how destructive they are in this first issue, with Sue pushing people out of the way and scaring a cab driver, Ben destroying a store’s doorway, two streets and a car and Johnny burning his way out of his car and destroying a plane when they respond to Reed’s signal.

That introduction is followed by the origin flashback, of course, which is my favourite part of the issue. While it doesn’t make much sense when you think about it too much, Kirby’s art is excellent in this sequence, full of panels that have become classics.

Their first adventure, against the Mole Man, follows in the second half of the issue. It’s a satisfactory enough story, mostly highlighted by the creatures of Monster Isle. Overall this is what you’d expect from a first issue of the era of a company with an uncertain future, a bit rough around the edges compared to the later work but with a lot of energy and hints of what would soon make it such a revolutionary book.

The inker is, of course, one of the mysteries of the ages. George Klein seems to be the top contender among people who are familiar with other inking of the period, but that’s far from certain.

Published 1991

This is from a bit of an odd point in Thor history. The previous storyline, featuring Galactus, had wound up heavily modified (with several unused pages later showing up in portfolios and fanzines), and the original intention was for Thor to team-up with Galactus to fight the Thermal Man, who had been terrorizing New York while Thor’s fellow Asgardians tried to hold him back. This change in the status quo for Galactus was apparently not what Marvel wanted, so the story was changed.

This goes a long way to explaining why Kirby’s last year on the book was a bit bland compared to the earlier work. Still a lot of great artwork, but the storytelling was much less ambitious. I’d guess that the behind-the-scenes stuff regarding this storyline was part of the reason he took the DC contract a year later.

Anyway, as published, in “The Thunder God and the Thermal Man” Thor returns to New York to find it deserted, and finds Balder and the Warriors Three still reeling from their battle with the Thermal Man, who is then making short work of the US Army.

Thor briefly switches to Dr. Blake to help an injured soldier, and when they’re in danger Karnilla rescues the other Asgardians due to her love of Balder, earning Loki’s scorn. Thor finally unleashes the full power of the storm to sweep the Thermal Man out to sea and up to the frozen north, where I guess he still is to this day.

While the story is a bit weak, the art is pretty powerful. This is Bill Everett’s first issue of this run (he’d inked a single issue a few years earlier, and the Kirby Checklist has him with an uncredited assist to Klein in the previous issue), and it looks very nice for the most part. A few rough spots, but he’d quickly be up to speed and doing some great inking.

Kirby’s original cover for this was rejected (see TJKC #14 / COLLECTED JKC #3 for it), and replaced with a Romita/Verpoorten job.

Published 1969