(for those who didn’t notice, on the previous post you can click on the picture to get a properly sorted image)
Meanwhile…
Over at the Comic Treadmill, some words about a 1977 convention in Philadelphia, featuring a page by Jack Kirby from the convention program.
http://www.comictreadmill.com/CTMBlogarchives/2004/2004_Individual/2004_12/000618.php
This issue has a reprint of the 1960 Kirby story from MY OWN ROMANCE #74, a quick 5 pager. The story starts off nicely, with a good splash page featuring the female lead and the usual teaser lead-off, and the first page shown here works nicely to quickly get the story started. After that it’s a bit bland, with only three more pages the story is a bit straight-forward and a bit preachy, compared to the more complex, often byzantine plotting of the longer S&K romance stories.
Worth taking a look at, as one of the handful of romance stories that Kirby did at Marvel to be reprinted.
Inks are by Colletta.
Published 1971
This issue reprints the revamped origin of Green Arrow that Kirby did in ADVENTURE COMICS #256 (1959), during his brief 11-story run on the character. It’s a good functional origin about a man who gets washed up on an island, learns archery to survive, finds his rescue ship being hijacked and using his arrows to fight the hijackers. All of this in a framing sequence where he has to return to the island to protect his secret identity.
I have to say, GA did become delightfully compulsive when it came to arrows on his stay on the island. “I quickly realized ingenious arrows could be used for almost any purpose”, he thinks, as he decides that would be the best way to get coconuts off a tree would be to use an arrow. Goes a long way to explaining why he’d eventually put a boxing glove on the end of an arrow. I was disappointed he didn’t come up with some sort of arrow-centric way to chisel his journal into the cave wall.
Kirby’s GA stories are pretty fun, although they leave you wondering what he would have done if he had a freer hand with them than DC was willing to allow.
This story was apparently inked by Kirby, with the help of his wife Roz, one of the last times he would do a substantial amount of inking of his own work.
Published 1969
This issue reprints the story from TALES TO ASTONISH #31 (1962), another Kirby/Ayers story. Surprisingly bland splash page, where the giant mummy looks nice, but the background is just blank. The rest of the story fares better, with some backgrounds of the museum curator’s office with various artifacts, and the inside of the tomb.
![Journey Into Mystery #19 [1975]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2004/12/Journey-Into-Mystery-19-1975.jpg)
The story is about a curator who theorizes that the pyramids are all copies of an original one, built as a prison rather than a tomb. He manages to find it (after a great looking dust storm), and in a scene I’m sure archaeologists would hate he actually blasts and opening in the pyramid with dynamite. Of course they find a giant mummy, who turns out to be an alien invader with a secret.
The particular twist ending for this one isn’t as satisfying as some, but there’s some good art along the way.
Published 1975
I’m back. Now on to SATAN’S SIX #1.
This is the only one of the Topps “Kirbyverse” books to actually feature more than just a cover by Jack Kirby (not counting the cards they were inevitably packaged with. I’ll have to dig those out and do an entry on the cards). There’s an 8 page Kirby story not-quite-seamlessly mixed in among the other pages. Single pages were inked by Steve Ditko, Joe Sinnott, Terry Austin and Frank Miller, while Mike Royer inked the remainder. There’s also a centerfold by Kirby of the main characters.
Kirby created the characters in the late 1970s for the unrealized “Jack Kirby Comics” line. The few pages he did set up the premise, a group of lovable losers from throughout history looking to get out of Purgatory and being sent to Earth. It would have been interesting to see exactly where Kirby would have gone with that. The actual series that was published had some fun stuff written by Tony Isabella, but the art was distractingly un-Kirby and just not very good.
For the Kirby pages, Royer and Sinnott are of course just about beyond reproach as Kirby inkers. Austin does a decent job, while Miller’s style was a bit too heavy, which is fine for a single page, I guess, just not something you’d like to see for any more than that. Ditko’s page is my favourite, as I always did like the Kirby/Ditko art of the early 1960s, and that devil character’s poses have some great classic Kirby elements.
The cover is Kirby inked by Todd McFarlane, although there’s a nicer version inked by Royer in one of the fanzines somewhere.
Published 1993
This issue of CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN reprints one of the stories from #2 and one from #1, from back in 1958. They look good, except for the fact that they insisted on re-colouring the Challs outfits from the plain purple to a red and yellow combination, and more distracting they colour them with gloves, which looks odd when you have the drawings clearly being of bare hands.
“The Monster Maker” is from #2, and features the Challs going up against a criminal who has gained mental powers to turn thoughts into reality. This is a good excuse for Kirby to draw a giant gorilla, a dragon, a giant horse-riding knight and more.
“The Human Pets” is from #1, and is a goofy story about the Challs being taken captive by a giant alien child. Silly but fun, with a neat looking alien, and some nice Kirby designs on the alien child’s toys.
Marvin Stein inked both these stories, and does a great job. Very clean and crisp line.
Joe Kubert draws a new cover, based on the gorilla scene in the first story.
Published 1973
A lesser known sidetrack to Kirby’s career is the short period that he did work for Gilberton, publishers of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED and WORLD AROUND US, in the early 1960s, just before the Marvel super-heroes took off. One of the major books he did there was a new edition of CI #35, a 45 page adaptation of “Last Days of Pompeii” by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, replacing the previous edition. Inked by Dick Ayers, who was also doing some fine inking on much of Kirby’s work at Marvel, as well as having inked the Sky Masters comic strip.
![Classics Illustrated #35 [HRN-161] [1961]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2004/11/Classics-Illustrated-35-HRN-161-1961.jpg)
The story is, I’m assuming, pretty faithful to the novel. Lots of intrigue, back-stabbing and romance among the residents of the doomed city, with the noble Athenian Glacius as the hero and evil Egyptian Arbaces as the villain (and a great looking Kirby villain he is, with a long face, a longer goatee and a snake-headband, I could see him fitting in as a minion of Darkseid).
While far from Kirby’s best, the art in here does look very good most of the time, when the Kirby elements are allowed to shine through. You can see a lot of that in the faces of some of the characters, the great clothing designs and some of the backgrounds, and when he got to cut loose with an action sequence, like the fleeing from the volcano at the end, it really shines.
Kirby’s said one of the reasons he didn’t like working at Gilberton was their insistence that certain details be what they considered accurate, and requiring a lot of editorial control and re-drawing. Some of the original art that’s surfaced for the book shows some major changes done in paste-ups which have fallen off.
Despite all that, it’s a book well worth picking up, and usually available fairly inexpensively given that it’s a 45 page Kirby story from 1961 that’s unlikely to ever see a decent reprinting (I believe that the current rights holders of the CI books are doing extensively re-drawn reprints, and concentrating on the CI JUNIOR and religious line).
Published 1961
This is a fun issue from the heart of the long Kirby/Sinnott collaboration on FF. In this issue, the boys of the FF return from their sub-atomic adventure of the previous few issues, while Sue is about to deliver her baby. Reed takes this opportunity to try out his latest cure for Ben, which works, but just in time for the Wizard to attack (which they should have seen coming, since the Daily Bugle headline reads “Wizard Released From Prison – Vows Vengeance on Fantastic 4” in huge letters usually reserved for Presidential assassinations, moon-landings and anti-Spider-Man articles).
This leads to a great long battle, which Ben leaps into despite his lack of powers, and which has some great images.
![Fantastic Four #78 [1968]](http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2004/11/Fantastic-Four-78-1968.jpg)
Of course they win in the end, and Ben’s in a position of wanting his powers back, but this variation of Reed’s cure is a one-way street, so he’d have to become the Thing forever. Boy, I wonder which it’ll be?
Very fun, fast moving, issues, with a good mix of the action and quiet moments and humour that made the FF so effective.
Published 1968
From the lean times of late 1944, when Simon and Kirby were in the army, some months all the poor S&K fans had from the team were a few covers, like these three selections from the three DC/National books that S&K regularly contributed the lead story for.
It looks like, after helping out with the war effort for the past few issues, the Newsboy Legion turned to pressing homeland matters like evil duplicates. Meanwhile, the Boy Commanos and Sandman were still fighting the Japanese army, with some success it seems.
STAR SPANGLED COMICS #39
BOY COMMANDOS #9
ADVENTURE COMICS #95
So, the story goes, Jim Steranko takes over CAPTAIN AMERICA from Kirby with #110. Shortly thereafter, for whatever reason, Kirby’s asked to draw #112 on an extremely tight deadline. He’s told the cliffhanger to #111 had Captain America dying. Did they want him to bring Cap back to life? No, they wanted him to keep Cap dead.
And thus was created the Kirby comic that most closely resembles modern Marvel comics, a full issue where almost nothing happens.
The story is pretty much that Cap’s mask is fished out of the water, and he’s presumed dead, so Iron Man is informed. Iron Man then goes over Cap’s file, so we get short vignettes of Cap’s original WWII adventures and villains, the classic retro-fitted “death of Bucky” bit with Zemo, Cap’s thawing out courtesy of Namor and scenes from his adventures of the previous few years. I have a soft spot for this particular page:
as it features Modok, one of the Kirbyest of the Kirby villains of the 1960s, and those wacky bee-keeper minions of AIM.
So the story is light, it does at least look really good. George Tuska inks, I think the only other work he did with Kirby was finishes on some Cap stories a few years before this, but he does a good job here, presumably on as tight a deadline as Kirby was. Frank Giacoia inks Kirby on the cover, which is unfortunately Modok-free.
Published 1969