This is the last of the four half-issues of AMAZING ADVENTURES that Jack Kirby wrote and drew featuring the Inhumans, and was also the last (in publishing order, he probably drew it earlier) original material by him from Marvel for five years (not counting the cobbled-together story published in FF #108). Of course they’d be hitting the reprints pretty hard for their Kirby fix in those years, with an average of over five books a month with Kirby reprints. I think Marvel actually printed more pages of Kirby while he was over at DC than DC did.

Anyway, back to the Inhumans. This is still a lot weaker than the writing he would be doing in just a few months, and Chic Stone’s inks seem especially rough compared to his usual work. A shame, as I’m sure he did have some good ideas for the oft-delayed Inhumans series that these four half-issues don’t really show.

Picking up from last time, the Inhumans uncover the Eye of Yin as the Mandarin had planned, and he’s able to take the eye from them and absorb its power into his rings. Of course one of the first things he does is turn on his loyal underling, which is a scene I like in a low-rent Doom/Darkseid kind of way.

After an all-too-brief battle Black Bolt is able to defeat the Mandarin kind of easily, and then, well, I guess the Inhumans return to the Great Refuge and lived happily ever after, never bothered by humanity again.

Published 1971

When I talk about Jack Kirby artwork on WWII flag-draped super-heroes of military rank, you know I’m talking about…

Captain Freedom?

Yep. Kirby did a bunch of covers in 1942 for this Harvey Comics character who appeared in SPEED COMICS. Don’t know too much about the character, he was apparently a newspaper publisher named Don Hudson who sometimes had a kid gang group the Young Defenders helping him. The handful of covers Kirby did were certainly good (though there’s some disagreement over which are S&K and which are Simon solo).

The original art for this cover was up for auction a while ago. Check out the scan here.

Published 1942

John Romita stepped in to draw the Cap story in this issue, so the only Kirby art is the cover, also inked by Romita.

Yes, Cap at the mercy of the evil frenchman Batroc zee Leaper. I always liked Batroc, such an absurd character, and charmingly over-written with random french expressions and accents.

Published 1966

This Kirby/Everett credited cover always looked a little odd to me for some reason. The Captain America figure almost looks like it’s pasted on from some other source, and the inks seem oddly heavy in places, maybe not over Kirby at all. Still not bad looking.

I do wonder how this cover came about, over a year after Kirby had last drawn the book. [See the comments for some additional speculation on the origin and composition]

Published 1970

For a Fourth of July special, I’m going to be posting a number of Kirby covers with star-spangled, patriotic or US armed forces themes (couldn’t find anything for Canada Day…). Quite a bit of Captain America, as you can imagine. Stay tuned later in the day for more.

Let’s start with an INVADERS cover, inked by Frank Giacoia, which features the sentinel of Liberty up against the nazi vampire.

Published 1976

Big issue this time, even the cover says it’s a “King-Size Kirby Blockbuster” (although not one they wanted to put a Kirby cover on…). The whole cloning thing kicks off into high-gear this issue, with a look at villains Mokkari and Simyan and their theft of genetic technology from the Project, twisting it to their own ends. Of course, you have to wonder about the Project in general and their cloning of Jimmy Olsen, without informing him, into an army of Olsen clones.

In the Project we meet the original Newsboy Legion, as well as the Olsen clones, finding out some of them have been stolen. Mokkari and Simyan report to Darkseid, with one of those great brief Darkseid moments. “Death can eclipse life! A great lie can smash truth!”

Their most powerful clone, laced with kryptonite, breaks out and attacks the Project, where Superman finds out that it’s a giant Jimmy Olsen clone. The elder Newsboys unleash their own secret weapon in response, a clone of the recently deceased in the line of duty Jim Harper, their old Guardian.

Kirby throws a bunch of ideas out in this issue, some of which were probably considered even stranger 35 years ago. It’s nice stuff, very bold and in-your-face, although I thought some of his expository dialogue fell flat (the elder Newsboys introducing themselves (“I, Scrapper, became a social worker — but I’m needed here, too”).

Inking on this 22-page story is officially Vince Colletta, but as usual that’s only part of the story. Mark Evanier’s introduction to the tradepaperback reprint of these stories says that this issue was a bit different from the others, as the Superman and Jimmy Olsen figures were adjusted in the pencils by Al Plastino, Murphy Anderson and others, then inked by Colletta (and with Colletta’s frequent background assistant Art Cappello doing more than usual on this story). It does look a little more cohesive than some of the others (which involved paste-ups over the finished art or Anderson penciling and inking the adjusted art), although of course far less than it should have been with a single decent inker following Kirby’s pencils.

Kirby also wrote one of his odd essays in this issue, “The Hairies – Super-Race or Man’s Second Chance”, about his odd little DNAlien biker/hippie community. That’s one of those things I just assume he had bigger plans for that he never got around to.

Published 1971