New Kirby – Adventures of the Fly

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Apparently Archie has just released a collection of the four issues of ADVENTURES OF THE FLY. Quite a bit on Kirby work in those, most of it either never reprinted before or only in a few extremely hard to find books. Reportedly the reproduction is quite good.

THE ADVENTURES OF THE FLY VOLUME 1 TP
by Various
The latest entry in the Red Circle reprint series! This historic edition highlights one of the pioneering superhero titles of the Silver Age: The Fly! Tommy Troy is a young boy whose world is turned upside down when he meets an emissary of the Fly World and is given a special ring that magically transforms him into the superhuman Fly! Considered an early prototype for Spider-Man, The Fly’s earliest adventures were charted by some of the most legendary creative talent in comics: Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Jack Davis, and Al Williamson! All of these artists and more are featured in this special edition that collects titanic tales from 1959 and 1960! Features a cover by fan-favorite, Joe Staton, painstaking restorations of all stories, faithful re-coloring and a foreword by Joe Simon!
SC, 7×10, 96pg, FC $12.95

Tales to Astonish #52 [1964] – Cover

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TALES TO ASTONISH #52, 1964. After returning to Hank Pym’s adventures for a few issues to oversee his change from Ant-Man to Giant-Man (by changing his powers, although you could just as easily have had him join the army to become G.I.Ant-Man). Sol Brodsky, Marvel production manager extrordinaire, inked this one, and we get a nice Kirby winged horse.

TalestoAstonish52_83.jpg

Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers #1 [1981]

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Okay, it’s not Kirby’s best series (although later issues did have moments of at least near-greatness), but CAPTAIN VICTORY has a bit of a soft spot in my heart as, I believe, the first non-reprint Kirby comic I bought (and among the first half-dozen Kirby books I bought, period). When it came out in late 1981 it had been three years since Kirby had left Marvel to work primarily in animation.

The history of the series is a bit convoluted, and best told in the CAPTAIN VICTORY GRAPHITE EDITION published by TwoMorrows. Short version, Kirby first did a 17-page first issue for a proposed Kirby Comics line in the late 1970s (and took the name of the lead from an even earlier unused concept, who eventually saw print as Captain Glory). When that fell through he modified it to a 50 page graphic novel, the first of a planned trilogy, partly by adding most of this first issue in front of the original story and continuing on from there. Eventually he was approached by Pacific Comics to launch their line, and split that graphic novel to make the first two issues of the series. Along the way there was also a film treatment written with Steve Sherman.

So, with a history like that, you can imagine why this reads a bit weird. The core of the story is that Victory leads a group of inter-stellar police who are battling against a insect-like race which conquers and invests inhabited planets. They get to one such planet too late, have to destroy it, but the leader of the Insectons, the Lightning Lady, escapes to Earth, where the Rangers follow.

As I said, far from great, but it’s not too bad. Mostly a bit rough in not explaining things. For example, Victory goes up on the bridge during the battle, despite his crew asking him not to, and it seems to be clear that because he’s wearing a “portable command post” on his head (a delightfully ridiculous mass of Kirby-tech) that he doesn’t need to be there. And then he dies three pages later (for the tenth time, apparently, as they have clone replacements), and his troops seem to defeat the enemy fine without him. I’m sure Kirby had a reason that he insisted on staying on the bridge, but he didn’t convey it in the script.

Unlike some, I’m usually a big fan of Kirby’s scripting, but this particular example has most of his weaknesses and few of his strengths. On the other hand, Lightning Lady, Egg Head, insanely huge spaceships and guns, Royer inks, there’s a lot to like, especially when I first read it as a kid (though, unfortunately, it would be years before I read the rest of it, as there weren’t any comic shops nearby. I’m still not certain how I got #1, if it had newsstand distribution or what).

Also in this issue, a brief biography of Kirby, with a photo, two pages of character, equipment and military insignia design, and a backcover of Lightning Lady and her Insectons.

Marvel Mystery Comics #12 [1940] – Cover

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MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #12, 1940. One of Kirby’s early covers for Timely/Marvel, with Joe Simon, featuring the Angel. Very striking cover, with a great figure of the hero rushing into action and a classic “damsel in distress” type situation.

MarvelMysteryComics12_81.jpg

No Kirby interior work in this issue, although with the next issue S&K would start doing stories about The Vision.

The Mighty Marvel Western #44 [1976]

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Marvel’s western comics lasted well into the 1970s, primarily as reprint vehicles, so a fair percentage of Kirby’s work on them from the early Silver Age got reprinted. This issue reprints one of the Kirby/Ayers stories from RAWHIDE KID #28, “Doom in the Desert”.

The Mighty Marvel Western #44 [1976]

Here we see the Kid’s typical gallantry bordering on stupidity, as he finds himself trapped in the desert and gives the last of his water to his faithful steed Nightwind. Following this he finds himself robbed and left to die by a thief, rescued by said thief’s sister and conflicted about his desire for revenge and his reluctance to cause pain to the gal who saved his life.

This issue also has reprints of Werner Roth and Joe Maneely western stories, and a great cover by Gil Kane loosely inspired by a scene in the Kirby story, reportedly one of Kane’s favourites among his covers.

Published 1976

Millennium Edition – Young Romance No. 1 [2000]

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The logic of DC including YOUNG ROMANCE #1 among the books they reprinted in 2000 as part of their “Millennium Edition” line is suspect, but it was definitely the highlight of the line (only a handful of the other books were even in this league in quality, and most of them had seen several superior reprints over the years).

The original comic was published in 1947, launching a hughly successful line that Kirby would work on for a dozen years, with several spin-off titles (YOUNG LOVE, YOUNG BRIDES).

This issue had a Simon&Kirby cover, unrelated to any of the interior stories and telling a little mini-story all its own about an artist being seduced by his fiancée’s older sister, and three S&K stories, and two more by Bill Draut.

“I was a Pick Up” opens the book, with the story of Toni Benson, a high-school senior who is kept tightly in check by her grandmother, who fears Toni will wind up with a bad reputation like her mother. Of course, Toni rebels, and walks out in one of her mother’s old dresses. Having been so secluded, she falls for the pick-up line in the page below: “Pardon the greeting, lady, but it’s not often I see a dream — floating by –“.

Millennium Edition - Young Romance No. 1 [2000]

Naturally complications ensue (including a narrow escape from the police that involves overturning tables and jumping out of windows. S&K weren’t about to let the romance genre quell their trademark taste for action), and she finds that the guy who picked her up, unfortunately named Bob, had no respect for her since she was obviously so easy. Yet more complications ensue as she starts to date Stanley Budko, a local hoodlum, and finds herself with a reputation just like her mother. Quite a few twists in this 13-page story, but it ends happily at last, as they usually do in these books.

“Misguided Heart” features the working class love story of June Collins and Sherman Sherman (aka Ditto) and how it’s complicated by Karl Barton, the son of the boss. It’s a bit of an abrupt story at only 7 pages, but it’s a very attractive story, with the best art of these, and it a good look at the whole class struggle theme that is so often a part of these stories.

“Young Hearts Sing A Summer Song” is another class based conflict story, with a local girl in a resort town trying to win the attention of one of the wealthy vacationing boys. It doesn’t take much familiarity with the genre to know that doesn’t work out for her, and she ends up with one of her fellow “peasant” types. Not too bad, although the art seems a bit flatter than the other stories. Not sure if it’s just that the reproduction seems rougher or what.

There have been far too few reprints of Kirby’s romance comics work, and even most of those are hard to find (Eclipse’s REAL LOVE and some of Greg Theakston’s books). It was nice to see at least one example of it get somewhat wider distribution and still available at a very nice price.

Published 2000

Hi-School Romance #54 [1956] – Cover

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HI-SCHOOL ROMANCE #54, 1956. A number of Kirby covers appeared on Harvey romance titles around this time. This one seems to be showing an awful lot of leg for the era, but no complaints from me.

HiSchoolRomance54_78.jpg

–Link– Oddball Comics by Shaw!

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Scott Shaw! has written about hundreds of strange comics over the years, so you know that Jack Kirby would be well represented among his archives. Here are just a handful of the Kirby books he’s reviewed, many of which I won’t get around to here for a while, if ever:

Headline Comics
Kamandi
Omac
Devil Dinosaur
Dingbats
Jimmy Olsen
Blazing Six Guns
Boy Explorers Comics
Justice Traps The Guilty
Black Magic
Foxhole
Punch And Judy Comics
Race For The Moon

Thor #159 [1968]

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The lead story here is “The Answer at Last”. At last indeed. After six years, they finally decided to address the weird aspects of the Thor / Don Blake relationship. It was never quite clear early on if Thor was just Don Blake with powers or a true immortal Asgardian, and varied with the story. After a few issues of build-up, this issue finally explains that the Don Blake persona was all part of one of those Odinian schemes, this one to teach his son humility. Oddly enough, he says that “none can be truly strong unless they be truly humble”, given that he’s all-powerful and rarely shows even a trace of humility.

Thor #159 [1968]

As part of this story, there are flashbacks to the youth of Thor, showing the need for this lesson. First off there’s his accidental breaking of a treaty with the Storm Giants, which is also shown brilliantly on the cover. Another scene shows one of those classic Asgardian barroom brawls, including Volstagg, a wonderful slapstick comedy device.

Published 1968

–Link– Fred Hembeck

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Fred Hembeck has a number of interesting things on his site. Most relevent to this weblog, he has many of his interpretations of classic comic book covers, along with long reviews of those issues and his memories of them, including of course a fair amount of Kirby books, such as FF ANNUAL #2.

http://www.hembeck.com/index2.htm