Eisner Awards nominations are out. Jack Kirby is nominated for the ETERNALS collection in “Best Archival Collection/Project—Comic Books”. Frequent (and favourite of many) Kirby inker (and damn fine penciller in his own right) Dick Ayers is up for the Hall of Fame, so I’ll campaign on his behalf as well.
Apparently the Joe Simon interview did air at least once on CNN this past week. I thought it had been preempted by the unfortunate breaking news (at least fast forwarding through the tape I had made started with flood coverage and then on to the ever escalating situation in Virginia). Anyway, can’t find it on the CNN site, but someone posted it to YouTube. The video runs under two minutes, has a lot of shots of Simon at his art board, and some old photos including one of him with Jack Kirby.
A pair of upcoming Marvel books with Kirby reprints that I missed on the first go-round. Early Avengers are great to see. The INVADERS book, assuming it has all the covers to the reprinted issues, nine of them are by Kirby.
AVENGERS CLASSIC #2
Written by DWAYNE MCDUFFIE
Penciled by MICHAEL OEMING
Cover by ART ADAMS
Stan and Jack bring you AVENGERS #2 in all its Hulk-out glory! Plus a bonus back-up story by Dwayne McDuffie and Mike Oeming featuring the INCREDIBLE HULK in a story of misunderstanding and mayhem! Don’t miss out, it’s only 3 bucks!
And check out that far-out Art Adams cover! It’s a gas!
32 PGS. $2.99
INVADERS CLASSIC VOL. 1 TPB
Written by ROY THOMAS
Penciled by FRANK ROBBINS, RICH BUCKLER, DICK AYERS & DON HECK
Cover by FRANK ROBBINS
The Big Three of Marvel’s Golden Age — Captain America, the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner — entered their first alliance when the U.S. entered World War II! But the Axis had more than bombs to throw at them, as they soon learned in a battle with the Star-Gods! The Red Skull wants the Invaders themselves as Hitler’s top hitmen, and only a second gathering of Golden Age greats can stop him! Featuring the first appearances of Spitfire, Union Jack and more! COLLECTING INVADERS #1-9, GIANT-SIZE INVADERS #1 and MARVEL PREMIERE #29-30.
240 PGS. $24.99
ISBN: 0-7851-2706-2
[Note, DESTROYER DUCK book cancelled, further news pending]
Here are a pair of Kirby reprints that will be listed in the May issue of Diamond Previews for publication this summer. I hadn’t heard anything about them before. The About Comics website just mentions DESTROYER DUCK as an upcoming book. The current publisher of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED, Jack Lake Productions, has it listed on their upcoming books list. It’s 26 pages of Kirby/Ayers if it’s a full reprint of this book. More info if I find out more. Also, Verotik has their old 1998 reprint of the Simon&Kirby BLUE BOLT re-listed.
ABOUT COMICS
DESTROYER DUCK TP
by Steve Gerber, Jack Kirby, & Alfredo Alcala
The mad genius behind Howard the Duck teams up with the artistic visionary who brought us Fantastic Four, X-Men, and the Hulk! Destroyer Duck takes on GodCorp to fight for the Little Guy in this 25th anniversary collection of this historic comic. Includes the complete Gerber/Kirby run, and a new introduction by Gerber.
SC, 7×10, 120pgs, B&W $8.99
CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED/JRS
CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED SPECIAL: THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES SC
Follow the American Civil War from Fort Sumter, Bull Run, Shiloh, Gettysburg, and the Appomattox Court House to the Reconstruction. Fillers include “The Exile’s Dream” and “The Peasant’s Revolt.” Introduction by Bill Jones, author of Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History with Illustrations, with artwork by Geoffrey Biggs, Jack Kirby, Sam Glanzman, Till Goodan, George Peltz, George Evans, Edd Ashe, John Tartaglione & Stan Campbell.
SC, 7×10, 96pgs, FC $14.99
Randolph Hoppe, board of trustee member of some place with the unlikely name of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, is interviewed by Craig Yoe over on the Arf Lovers site.
Some details on the upcoming reprint of SILVER STAR, this time colour and in hardcover. I’m really not sure about that price, unless the book is going to be some sort of over-sized format. And if this comes in at $35, how much is CAPTAIN VICTORY, with three times as many pages, going to be?
Written, art and cover by Jack Kirby.
Jack Kirby’s Silver Star is collected in an oversized full color hardcover at last! Chronicling the rise of Homo-Geneticus, a genetically altered Breed of humanity, designed to survive an impending apocalypse, which spawns both the heroic Silver Star and the sadistic Darius Drumm! Silver Star is a surreal masterpiece! Insightful, thought-provoking, uproarious, frantic and deadly! Silver Star was Kirby’s final creation, originally published by Pacific Comics in the early ’80s. It’s a huge, sweeping epic, filled with classic Kirby trademarks: crackling energy, memorable characters, outrageous dialogue, explosive action and ham-fisted romance! Featuring lush inks by Mike Royer and lovingly reconstructed colors by Erik Larsen, this deluxe hardcover is a must-have for any Kirby fan!
144 pages, $34.99, in stores on July 18.
Trio of Kirby items in the latest solicitations. GALACTIC BOUNTY HUNTERS has a slightly-delayed oversized conclusion. The page count for the latest THOR MASTERWORKS would seem to suggest that they’re including the Inhumans backups (six of the seven fall in the range of issues included), but the backups aren’t mentioned, so maybe not. I think they’d be better off not including the Inhumans stories, finding another home for them (would make a good 10% of a potential third VISIONARIES volume), and running the Thor stories up to #153, a more logical storybreak than #151. It also makes it that much more likely that they can finish the Kirby run in two more books, instead of leaving one or two orphan issues early in a post-Kirby book.
Oh, and an oversized hardcover of DEVIL DINOSAUR. Life is good. Strange, but good…
I just wish they’d been more consistent on Kirby’s 1970s reprints. If DD and ETERNALS get single volume oversized hardcovers, wouldn’t it have made sense to have BLACK PANTHER and CAPTAIN AMERICA in that format, instead of multi-volume paperbacks, which wound up costing as much, maybe more, per page?
JACK KIRBY’S GALACTIC BOUNTY HUNTERS #6
Written by LISA KIRBY
Penciled by MIKE THIBODEAUX
Cover by JACK KIRBY
Special extra-sized finale! Mainframe’s quest to recover his son leads to a blow-out battle in Dangerland!
56 PGS. $3.99
MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE MIGHTY THOR VOL. 6 HC
Written by STAN LEE
Penciled by JACK KIRBY
Cover by JACK KIRBY
Long live Asgard, True Believers! What better way to herald the return of the God of Thunder, than to usher in another Mighty Thor Masterworks!
After years of honing the tragedy and intrigue of the Son of Odin, Stan and Jack hit a stride that would produce the most mythic tales in all of Marveldom. Beginning with a pair of irredeemable uglies, Replicus and the Super-Skrull, the adventure then takes itself up a Norse notch when the evil Loki conspires to have Thor stripped of his power and vanquished to Earth! Stranded there, he must struggle to survive the machinations of his scheming half-brother, while attemping to regain the graces of All-Father Odin.
Last, but not least: Enter one of the most beloved baddies in all of the Asgardian entourage-The Wrecker! The decidedly mortal Thor must battle to his very last breath against this crowbar-wielding wingnut, who himself is powered with Asgardian might! And we’ll warn you now, the last note is a tragic one as Thor faces his ladylove, Sif-in the body of the undefeatable Destroyer!
It’s drama as only the Masters of the Marvel Age can make it! Collecting THOR (Vol. 1) #141-151.
256 PGS. $54.99
ISBN: 0-7851-2690-2
DEVIL DINOSAUR BY JACK KIRBY OMNIBUS HC
Written by JACK KIRBY
Penciled by JACK KIRBY
Cover by JACK KIRBY
No gods from outer space could beat THIS Devil! Jack Kirby crossed into a new cosmos with this crimson carnivore and his faithful sidekick Moonboy! Now, for the first time, Marvel collects the King’s saga of Devil Dinosaur in his prehistoric prime! Collecting DEVIL DINOSAUR #1-9.
176 PGS. $29.99
ISBN: 0-7851-2694-5
Trim size: oversized
I don’t often post about non-Kirby comics here, even (especially?) “Kirbyesque” stuff, but I wanted to quickly note Bryan Talbot’s new book, ALICE IN SUNDERLAND. Partly because of the image above, a panel from a sequence where Talbot’s character has a crisis of confidence about the scope and viability of the book. It was a funny line in a funny scene. But up to that point I’d already been thinking of Kirby a lot during the book.
That’s partly because earlier Talbot had evoked Kirby art in a sequence dealing with the Battle of Hastings. That’s among many references in style to old comics that Talbot uses in the book, including pages evoking EC horror comics, Herge’s TINTIN, British “Boy’s Adventure” comics and many more. But even more, I was struck by how Talbot is able to fully integrate his own art with photography and collage in this book. Kirby, of course, was a pioneer in the use of collage in his comics, going back over 40 years, but for the most part was let down by technical limitations, like the printing which couldn’t handle what he was throwing at it. I imagine he’d be impressed by how far we’ve come, where Talbot can achieve what he aims for here.
I also imagine that he’d be impressed by the fact that the comic book industry has progressed to a point where Talbot can do something like this, an original 300+ page book, in a format that suits it best. It’s not a book which would have worked serialized into regular sized chunks, so thankfully it wasn’t forced to. Something I’m sure Kirby would have appreciated back he was (unsuccessfully) pushing for new formats over 30 years ago.
Anyway, it’s a great book. I’ll write more about it on my other site soon. You can read more about it on Talbot’s site, including details about his signing tour (which brings him to Toronto later today, so I might go) and you can buy the book at various places if it suits your fancy.
Mark Evanier’s hardcover KIRBY – KING OF COMICS has started to show up on the various on-line vendor sites, usually at a very generous discount. Still a lot of time to order it for the October release, of course, and I’m sure we’ll see and hear a lot more about it before then. With that, DC’s FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS books and Marvel’s various books you might also need some of these.
Mark Evanier reports that there will be some sort of segment on CNN during the day on April 16, 2007 spotlighting Kirby’s longtime partner Joe Simon. Try to check it out if you’re interested, and if you spot a video or transcript online before I do feel free to post the link here.
