Monthly Archives: September 2005

Captain America #201 [1976] – The Night People

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Following the Madbomb crisis during the Bicentennial, Cap and the Falcon plan some much needed rest (which includes a comfortable bubble bath for Cap). Unfortunately, over in New York there’s been a plague of attacks from “The Night People”, mysterious underground vagrants who are stealing odd things, everything except money. They overhear Falcon on the phone with his girlfriend Leila, and needing a super-hero for their purposes they kidnap her as bait for the Falcon, who quickly flies in to the rescue.

The Falcon is captured, and back in Washington Cap gets reports that he was seen vanishing in mid-air.

Kirby didn’t stop for a minute on the wild ride that was his last run on Cap, and there are a lot of things to like about this issue. The odd layout on one early page, showing the various thefts the Night People were up to, was really nice, and throwing in a dramatic mid-air rescue was a good way to keep the action flowing.

Frank Giacoia inks the cover and 17-page story.

Published 1976

This whole story, and much more, was recently reprinted in Captain America: Bicentennial Battles.

Our Fighting Forces #152 [1975]

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Kirby’s chronicles of the Losers brings them to France this issue, in a story reportedly very close to a few of the real war stories that Kirby would tell, “A Small Place in Hell”.

Our Fighting Forces #152 [1975]

The Losers have a rare three-day pass, and go to a town that they think should have been taken by the allies weeks ago. Unfortunately, they took a wrong turn somewhere, and the town is full of Germans, leading to a lot of firefights and general destruction before the American forces roll-in. That includes a cameo from General Patton, who thanks them for keeping the Germans occupied and declares the Losers “Fine boys, but ‘foul-ups'”.

Also in this issue, two pages of various machine guns used in WWII, and on the letter page Steve Sherman mentions that Kirby used an extensive picture file of WWII material for the book, and they’d recently gone out to get more reference material.

D. Bruce Berry inks the cover, 18-page story and 2-page backup.

Kid Colt Outlaw #88 [1960] – Cover

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A Kirby/Rule (*) cover for this western cover. I really like that foreground indian with the bow-and-arrow, and I like the way the block-out colouring works with this design, and how all those design elements (arrow, gun, hand) lead the eye to KC.

(*)possibly George Klein, see comments

KidColtOutlaw88_472.jpg

Published 1960