Daredevil #43 [1968] – Cover

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DAREDEVIL #43, 1968, inked by Joe Sinnott. I guess the Captain America guest appearance was the impetus for bringing Kirby back on DD covers for one issue several years in. Whatever the reason, that’s a great action pose for the two characters. You can see why Kirby was so often employed to do covers for books he didn’t draw interiors for.

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Regular DD artist of the time Gene Colan did an unused cover to this issue, with DD more prominent than Cap (and giving Cap a whupping). You can see a version of it here. So presumably the Kirby version was commissioned either to give Cap a larger place or not having him as the underdog.

Spidey Super Stories #20 [1976] – Cover

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SPIDEY SUPER STORIES #20, 1976, inked by John Romita. Kirby got tapped for two issues of this surprisingly long running book that spun off from the Electric Company TV show’s Spidey segments. Both featured FF related characters (the other had the Surfer and Doom). Romita’s inks, as usual, pull the work a bit heavier towards his own style, as does the likely Bullpen-generated layout, but still a pretty attractive cover.

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New Kirby – Marvel Romance TPB

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Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.usThe MARVEL ROMANCE collection is out now. As mentioned before, featuring these Kirby stories:

“The Summer Must End!”
From Teen-Age Romance #84 (November 1961)

“By Love Betrayed!”
“Give Back My Heart!”
From Love Romances #102 (November 1962)

“The Dream World of Doris Wilson!”
“If Your Heart I Break—”
From Love Romances #103 (January 1963)

And other promising non-Kirby stuff.

Where Monsters Dwell #3 [1970]

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Three Kirby reprints in this issue. “Grottu, King Of The Insects” leads off the book, 6-pager by Kirby/Everett reprinted from STRANGE TALES #73 (1960), part of the giant-insect series. This time the beast is an African army ant, exposed to atomic radiation from a Russian test and quickly growing and gaining intelligence.

Where Monsters Dwell #3 [1970]

Rumours of the creature spread to America, where one of those generic Kirby adventurers hears about it and goes to check it out, just in time for Grottu to make his move on a port city where he’ll lead his ant army on a cruise of world conquest. He ends up getting one of the most embarrassing deaths of his species, as he’s buried in sugar and crushed by his own army.

I think this is the only giant monster story Everett inked over Kirby, although he also did a few westerns and later worked over some Kirby layouts for the Hulk and had a very impressive run as inker on Thor. Looks really good on this short story.

STRANGE TALES #72 (1959) is the source for the 5-page “I Fought The Colossus” by Kirby/Ditko. Posted about it from another reprint here, I’ll just add that I really like the futuristic architecture.

Finally from STRANGE TALES #78 (1960) is “A Martian Walks Among Us”, a Kirby/Ayers 7-page story. Great splash page (and remember you can always find out more about these stories, including the splash pages, over at the MonsterBlog), one of the creepiest of Kirby’s splash pages for the monster stories. The story is about a man who is attacked by a Martian invader who steals his form, and then pursues the alien for the rest of the story, somehow knowing how to make an infra-red detector to see through the disguise abilities. He’s able to stop the impending invasion, and it turns out the “human” was actually a Venusian, sworn to protect the Earth from invasion.

The cover can just barely be called a reprint of the ST #73 cover, with the original Kirby/Everett Grottu figure preserved but the entire background redrawn by Marie Severin and Bill Everett.

Published 1970

Ghost Rider #22 [1977] – Cover

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GHOST RIDER #22 – February 1977, inked by Al Milgrom. Another one of those odd choices of cover assignments for Kirby, he did three covers for GHOST RIDER in around this time. Looking at the series as a whole it looks like the intent was to give the book more of a super-hero flavour, playing down the super-natural stuff from earlier, so I guess having Kirby on the covers was a part of that.

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Marvel Tales #145 [1982] – Spider-Man Tackles the Torch

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This issue of reprints the contents of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #8 (1964), including the 6-page Kirby/Ditko backup story. Oddly, Spidey knows that Doris Evans is the Torch’s girlfriend in this issue, but doesn’t recognize her when he meets her a year later in ASM #21. Anyway, a great example of an early Marvel crossover story, with Spidey deciding to tease the Torch, quickly finding himself in way over his head before the rest of the FF intervene, finally being pacified by Sue. Nice artwork, too, except the reprint loses some of the finer linework, which especially makes the webbing and the Thing look splotchy.

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Published 1982

Our Fighting Forces #153 [1975] – Devastator vs. Big Max

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This is probably the silliest of Kirby’s dozen Losers stories. In this European based story we begin with Hitler, Himmler and Rommel examining the new German super-weapon, a hundred-foot long gun with a 38-mile range called “Unser Max” (Our Max). An allied agent is detected among the German soldiers and killed, but mentions the allied weapon “The Devastator” before he dies.

Our Fighting Forces #153 [1975]

The Devastator turns out to be the idea of Private Rodney Rumpkin, aka Rocketship Rumpkin, a fan of sci-fi pulps and comics and the fanciful weapons in those stories. The allies build a hollow model of such a super-weapon in order to make the Germans use Big Max in daylight, revealing its location for a waiting airstrike.

As I said, a bit silly, but with a lot of charm, and some great art, from the scenes of the Max-induced destruction to the fanciful pulp covers.

Mike Royer inks the 18-page story, as well as the 2-page feature on WWII uniforms and insignias. D. Bruce Berry inks the cover, and Kirby also writes a text page, “Before the letters begin…” talking about how the stories will reflect his own experiences and welcoming feedback.

Published 1975

Marvel Premiere #35 [1977] – Cover

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MARVEL PREMIERE #35 – April 1977, inked by John Verpoorten (with background panels from the interior art by Jim Craig and Dave Hunt). Not a bad character to go with Kirby’s style, though a bit bland, and the back-story and premise presented in this issue is truly mind-numbing stuff. And I’m not sure why you’d do a 3-D Man comic that, y’know, isn’t in 3-D.

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Fantastic Four #200 [1978] – Cover

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FANTASTIC FOUR #200 – November 1978, inked by Joe Sinnott. The last time Kirby would draw the FF for Marvel (although he would draw story-boards for a cartoon after this, and some of those boards would be taken and turned into a comic a few years later). A simple enough cover, but effective. Shame it only has one of the four team members, though. Nice that we got one final Doom cover by Kirby, though.

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Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #138 [1971]

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“The Big Boom” concludes the big battle with the Four-Armed Terror, unleashed on The Project by the Evil Factory. The Terror is a great villainous monster, which is probably why Kirby did a bunch of sketches with various characters (including the Hulk) battling him.

Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #138 [1971]

This story has a 15-minute countdown to the blow-up at the Project’s atomic power plant as the Terror closes in, and Superman has to race through to stop it, while the Guardian and adult version of the Newsboy Legion are in pursuit. The funniest part of the issue is probably the scene with Morgan Edge, being told to flee the city by his Intergang contacts, not caring at all about anyone on his staff.

It’s exciting stuff, but a bit off. Kirby originally had some other plans for this storyline, which apparently didn’t match what DC had planned in their other books. Mark Evanier eventually used some of those plans as the basis for his LEGENDS OF THE DC UNIVERSE #14 story with Steve Rude a few years back.

Vince Colletta inks the 23-page story, with the Superman characters adjusted by Murphy Anderson. Neal Adams inks the cover, which features one of Kirby’s collages, looking much better on cover stock than they usually did on newsprint (including the two-page spread with a collage in this issue).

Published 1971

This story is available in JIMMY OLSEN ADVENTURES BY JACK KIRBY v1.