Giant-Size Chillers #3 [1975] – The Monster

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Posted in Genre, Horror/Fantasy.

Interesting the stuff you get when you pull out a random Kirby book.

GIANT-SIZE CHILLERS #3 (August 1975) reprints “The Monster”, a 7 page story from CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #4 (April 1970). The credits have it as written and pencilled by Jack Kirby and inked by John Verpoorten, but that’s really only part of the story.

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Part of the background is told in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #13 (reprinted in the third COLLECTED JKC, with a teaser here), in an article that promises more details would probably be in Mark Evanier’s still-upcoming biography of Kirby. In a nutshell, Kirby submitted the original story, was quite proud of it, then someone at Marvel insisted on wholesale changes, which Kirby made, and then Kirby scripted it, and Marvel made yet more changes after that. From the pencil and margin notes photocopies in the article, it was a much better story before the changes. With editorial help like that from Marvel, it’s not surprising that Kirby took the contract DC offered not too long after.

The actual published story is okay, but nothing special. I don’t know if my opinion is weighed down by knowing the background, or by comparing it to the original (which has some much nicer action scenes that are omitted in the final version), but overall it just seems to drift a bit and then just sort of end with a pat moral.

The art is still mostly good, and Verpoorten was a pretty good inker for him (Verpoorten only inked a handful of Kirby covers in that era, he would do some full issues of CAPTAIN AMERICA and ETERNALS when Kirby returned to Marvel). A few of the panels shown in the page above are close to how they looked in the original, and I just love the old-world castle architecture that Kirby does so well so often in his work (stories with Dr. Doom and the Demon being notable examples).

Black Goliath #4 [1976] – Cover

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Posted in Genre, Superhero.

From time to time just to keep up the posting frequency I’ll throw in one of the many books Kirby just did covers for (about 100 at Marvel in the 1970s and maybe twice that in the 1960s, so there’s a lot to choose from). Minimal comments on those, since you can see the Kirby content and the stories they’re wrapped around often aren’t worth re-reading, and aren’t on-topic here anyway. The 70s covers aren’t always Kirby’s strongest art, since he was often clearly working over layouts from New York (and sometimes slightly re-drawn back in New York), but they’re fun, often have the only example of Kirby drawing a particular character, and have some nice inkers (a lot are Sinnott or Giacoia, both great, but there are a few unusual ones).

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This one, inked by Joe Sinnott, is kind of fun just because Stilt-Man gives me a bit of a chuckle. As does Black Goliath. I guess this would be the only time Kirby had the dubious honour of drawing either of that pair of winners. And check out that trademark Kirby squiggle on Stilt-Man’s leg. That’s one of the longest of those you’ll see.

Published August 1976

–Link– Kirby in the Marvel Universe

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Posted in Links.

This is a nice write-up about Kirby in the format of entries about the many characters he created, and looking at the numerous times he’s appeared in Marvel comics, starting in FANTASTIC FOUR #10.

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/kirbyjack.htm

Destroyer Duck #1 [1982] – It’s Got the Whole World…in Its Hand!

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Posted in Genre, Humour, Science Fiction.

DESTROYER DUCK #1 is a bit of an angry comic. With good reason, given that writer Steve Gerber was engaged in a lawsuit with Marvel regarding another Duck (for which profits from this book were earmarked to support), and Kirby was had his own issues with the company.

But clearly anger works as a motivating force, since this is a really good story. The analogy is obvious enough, with Duke “Destroyer” Duck going on a mission of vengeance on behalf of “The Little Guy”, a talking duck who was exploited, cheated and ultimately killed by the monolithic GodCorp. Kirby’s got an interesting funny animal style that he only had a few chances to use in his career, and this is a nice mix of that and his traditional action art. That works well with the slightly off-kilter, cynical satire of Gerber, who’s rarely been better than he is here.

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DESTROYER DUCK is one of the most wholly successful of Kirby’s 1980s books, and well worth picking up. It would be nice to some day see a reprint of the whole series.

The inking on the story is by Alfredo Alcala, and it’s really good. I wouldn’t have thought the combination would work, since Alcala can be a bit of an overpowering inker sometimes, but the end result is very nice, with a bit of an echo of the linework style from the S&K work circa 1950. The cover is inked by Neal Adams.

Published 1982

–Link– Evanier’s Kirby stuff

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Posted in Links.

This is a link to the Kirby related stuff on Mark Evanier’s website. Evanier was, of course, Kirby’s long-time assistant, friend and (eventual) biographer. A decent Kirby FAQ and an essay about the Kirby Memorial from a year after his death are great reading.

Check out the rest of his site and other sites for great articles about comics, TV, movies and just about everything else.

http://povonline.com/Jack%20Kirby.htm

Kamandi, The Last Boy On Earth #32 [1975] – Me

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Posted in Genre, Science Fiction.

kam32

From KAMANDI #32 (inked by D. Bruce Berry), a nice page that reminds us that despite all he’s gone through, Kamandi is still a kid, as is Tuftan, prince of the Tigers. An exciting issue overall, with all out war between the Tigers and the Gorillas while Dr. Canus gets to know a strange alien being. Because this was a “Giant” issue, Kirby got a few extra pages (23 as opposed to the standard 18 of the time), which really helps the pacing of this. It’s a damn shame that comics of the era got so stingy with the story page counts (going all the way to 17 pages an issue soon after, before that was reversed).

I really like Berry’s inking from this period as well. He started off, a year before this, a bit rough, especially compared to Mike Royer who had the art of inking Kirby perfected, but he had a pretty decent learning curve and managed to maintain the power of Kirby’s pencils.

kammap

This is the map that appeared in this issue (click on it for a larger scan), in the middle of the reprint of the first issue. It’s an expanded version of the map from #1, which only had North America and part of South America. Unfortunately, Kirby only got to less than half the world sketched out here. It’s clear that, if circumstances allowed him to stay, he could have done years more on the book. Ah, to see what Kirby would have done with the Orangutan Surfing Civilization…

Also in this issue is a four page profile of Jack Kirby by assistant Steve Sherman, with several photographs.

Published 1975

–Link– Kirby Collector

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Posted in Links.

In addition to the look at Kirby books, I’ll try to post quick links to various places on the web where you’ll find Kirby stuff. First off, the web site of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, a great magazine published by TwoMorrows. Check out the art and articles they have on the web, and pick up all the back issues.

http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/

Fantastic Four #51 [1966] – This Man, This Monster

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Posted in Genre, Superhero.


Boy, will you look at that. Beautiful, no? Scans of covers and splash pages are going to be the exception in this weblog (except for books where the only Kirby art is the cover), since I think the heart of Kirby’s work lies in the actual panel-to-panel story-telling, and because you can find scans of covers all over the place. But this cover is a particular favourite.

Figure it’s best to start with one of the best, FANTASTIC FOUR #51. Inked by Joe Sinnott (cover and story), and right in the heart of the classic run of the book where in one year you saw Kirby introduce the Inhumans, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Black Panther, the Negative Zone and more.

This is considered by some to be the best of that run. I’d agree with them.

 

This is very much the ultimate Ben Grimm story, where we look into his relationship with the team and with Alicia, and his feelings about being the Thing. Ben is always the most fascinating member of the team, as well as the most visually interesting, so any story with a lot of Ben is going to be a good one.

Published June 1966

Welcome

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Posted in Admin.

The purpose of this weblog is going to be a bit specialized. I hope to eventually write a little something about every Jack Kirby comic, magazine or book in my collection. That currently numbers about 900 items and steadily growing (out of 3000+ items that it could include, but most of those I don’t have are outside my price range, stuff I have reprints of or trivial things like books with just Kirby covers), so that’s probably 3 years if I manage to do one a day, realistically much longer.

No particular reason for this. Just a reason to read a bit of Kirby every day, a reason to do a little bit of fun writing and hopefully get some awareness out there of the length and depth of Kirby’s career.

And if you’ve wandered here and don’t know who Jack Kirby is, stick around and see.

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That’s one of Kirby’s self-portraits, naturally, announcing the golden age reprints that backed up his Fourth World books. Inked by Vincent Colletta, so, you know, but still good looking.

Hope you enjoy.

Bob