Monthly Archives: April 2006

New Kirby – Silver Star Graphite Edition

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Showing up in comic stores today, SILVER STAR GRAPHITE EDITION from TwoMorrows.

silverstar.jpgSILVER STAR – GRAPHITE EDITION
160 page 7×10 Trade Paperback – by Jack Kirby
Legendary artist Jack Kirby first conceptualized Silver Star in the mid-1970s as a movie screenplay, complete with illustrations to sell the idea to Hollywood. Too far ahead of its time for Tinseltown, Jack instead adapted his “Visual Novel” as a six- issue mini-series for Pacific Comics in the early 1980s, making it the last original creation of his career. Now, in SILVER STAR: GRAPHITE EDITION, “King” Kirby’s final, great series is collected at last, this time reproduced from his powerful, uninked pencil art! Read the complete story of Homo-Geneticus, the New Breed of humanity that spawns both hero (Silver Star) and villain (the nefarious Darius Drumm), leading to one of the most action- packed narratives and spellbinding climaxes ever conceived on a comics page! And as a special bonus, read Kirby’s provocative screenplay, reproduced in its entirety, including illustrations and never-published character sketches! Plus there’s pin-ups and other rare Kirby art, and an historical overview to put it all in perspective. A percentage of profits from this book go to the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, so don’t ask, just buy it! $20.00 cover price.

(note that an additional percentage goes to the Kirby Museum through the Amazon.com link)

Black Magic #33[v5n3] [1954] – Lone Shark

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The cover story in this issue is “Lone Shark”, a brilliant 7-page story about a shark who, as a result of undersea atomic explosions, grows a tumor that serves as a second brain, giving it human level intelligence. What really makes the story special is that it’s told from the perspective of the shark.
Lone Shark

I fell in love with this story based on the splash page when it was covered in a “Kirby Obscura” column a few issues back in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR. I couldn’t not buy it when I saw a copy for sale. It doesn’t disappoint. From the punny title on, it’s a masterpiece, with a nice sense of humour in the shark’s “voice”, complaining about the scavenger fish that follow him around, expressing curiousity, complaining about those damn headaches. He becomes almost sympathetic by the end. And the artwork looks great, following his undersea roamings.

The Kirby Checklist also credits him with the one page “The Strangest Facts” feature, a sort of “Ripley’s” collection of stories. It’s printed kind of dark in my copy, but the half-page of a “Juoslavian Amazon” soldier from 1915 is really nice, as is the odd drawing of a swearing parrot.

Kirby also draws the cover to this issue.

This was the final issue of BLACK MAGIC produced by Simon&Kirby, though the book would be revived by Prize a few years later, and then eventually resurrected by Simon as a reprint vehicle for DC in the 1970s.

Welcome (reprise)

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Posted in Admin.

Welcome one and all to the new Jack Kirby Comics Weblog, now hosted by the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center. If you’ve read the BlogSpot hosted version of the site you know what to expect, and all the old posts from there have been imported here as well (check the pages on the sidebar for alphabetical and chronological links to previous posts).

A bit of background, I started the weblog back on September 12, 2004, shortly after I’d been unable to find a good sample on-line of Kirby’s romance or western work (other than covers). I figured I had more than enough Kirby comics to fill several years worth of content on a weblog, and figured it would also be a good excuse to do a random re-reading of all my Kirby comics. In the year and a half since, I posted some brief words and at least one image from 590 different Kirby comics, covering every genre and era of his career. I also started monitoring and reporting on newly announced and released Kirby reprints, which thankfully have gotten quite plentiful since I started the weblog (pure coincidence, I’m sure).

Moving the site here, I plan on continuing more of the same, with at least another two years of daily posting before I exhaust my own collection. Over the next few months I’ll also be revising the earlier posts, mostly to improve the scans (which were somewhat constrained by bandwidth and server space considerations early on) and update a few links. After I get done with that I have a few other plans for some fun stuff I’d like to try.

A few other things. Generally I avoid posting the covers of books, unless that’s the only Kirby art in there. I highly recommend the Grand Comics Database as a source for covers.

I usually defer to the Jack Kirby Checklist, which is also the source of the Kirby Catalogue Raisonné on this site, for inking credits. However, it’s far from definitive, so feel free to comment if you disagree.

I’m leaving commenting open, no registration required, for now. That might change if the usual comment spam gets to be a problem.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Museum site, and consider getting a membership if you want to help with some of their future plans.

And thanks again to James Burns for the Kirby-tech weblog logo.

I think we got all the bugs in the format worked out, but comment if something looks screwy on your browser, or you have any thoughts on the site (I still haven’t decided exactly how to use the categories for regular posts. What would be most useful, company (Marvel, DC, Prize, Other)? Genre (Romance, Super-Hero, Western, Horror)? Note that I can have multiple categories for each post).