Tag Archives: al williamson

Speaking of Art, Jack Kirby’s “The Face On Mars”

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Posted in 2012/09, Artists, Kirby, Jack, Speaking Of Art and tagged , , ,


Race For The Moon #2 (September 1958) “The Face On Mars”, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson

This is another group of pieces from the late Joe Simon’s collection. Joe was really fond of the inking that was done on these and other Kirby pencils from Race For The Moon and Blast-Off titles. I have discussed this work recently and why I believe it was inked by Al Williamson (Kirby Inkers, Al Williamson). In the interview Williamson gave for the Jack Kirby Collector #15 he says he did about four or five stories, although I think he may have done a little more than that. One of his statements from the interview:

TJKC: I was just reading some of those Race For The Moons. There’s some beautiful stuff there.

AL: Well, he did a beautiful job. Some of it was redrawn by somebody there, I guess because it didn’t pass the Comics Code or something. There’s parts that I didn’t ink, because it’s not my drawing or Jack’s drawing. Somebody went over it and changed some things, like a monster or something to make it more pleasing to the eye, which bothered the hell outta me. I never really thought I did him justice, though. The drawing is there, because it’s Jack Kirby’s drawing, but I just traced what he penciled.

Once again I have to disagree with Williamson. I have examined all the original art in question with the exception of one story (“The Long, Long Years” from RFTM #3) and none of the art has been altered, at least not after inking. And Williamson is wrong about having “just traced what he penciled”. It is true that Williamson followed Kirby’s pencils very accurately and I am sure Jack’s pencils were very tight. But the spotting was all Williamson’s. Not that I believe Al ignored Jack’s directions. It was Kirby’s practice at that time to just provide the outlines indicate everything else with simple lines. The rest was up to the inker to provide and in the case of Williamson’s inking with spectacular results.


Race For The Moon #2 (September 1958) “The Face On Mars”, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson

The inking is detailed but not at all dry. A lot of it was done using a pen, in fact the splash panel was done almost entirely in pen. The low resolution image of the art that I provide just cannot give it justice. So above I also give a close-up to show the care taken in the pen work. Perhaps the reader noticed the small ink dots scattered around the image. It is not unusual to find small ink drops on original comic book art although usually not as densely as here. So the reader could be forgiven if they assumed that was what was happening here. However these dots are all the same size and are not found either in the gutters between the panels or inside areas of crosshatching. The dots are another example of the care Williamson took in inking Kirby’s pencils. This work was done early in Al’s career but by this time he certainly should have been aware of the limitations of the primitive printing that was used in the publication of comic books of his day. Williamson knew, or should have known, that much of his efforts would be lost in the final published results.


Race For The Moon #2 (September 1958) “The Face On Mars” page 3, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson

Pen was used for the inking throughout the story but unlike the splash panel the pen work was augmented with much user of the brush. Clearly Williamson was as proficient with the brush as he was with the pen. The inking is precise and flawless but nonetheless retains a fresh and lively quality. There is no use of white-out or any other corrective measures on any of the pages of this story. That is except for the white-out applied to page identification in the upper left corner on all the pages. Apparently there was second thoughts about what comic book this work would actually appear in. It is possible to read through the white-out and surprisingly the original use was identical to the final use right down to the page number.

An “F5” has been added to the page identification by another hand. This is the flat number that the page belongs to. Comic books were printed on four sheets of paper with four art pages on each side of the sheet. After printing the sheets would be folded and trimmed. Because of this process the sheet was not organized in a simple sequential order and the flat number added was an aid to insure the art was placed on the proper sheet. Another notation from the production process is the pencil number 500 found at the bottom of the page. This was an instruction to reduce the art size to exactly one half. The splash page had the number 496 for a reduction that was close but not exactly one half. It has been years since I last used a stat camera but I believe that this would indicate a slightly greater reduction in size than the other pages.


Race For The Moon #2 (September 1958) “The Face On Mars” panel 6 page 4, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson

Williamson liked to leave out the panel borders for some of the art. Apparently the art was already lettered with panel borders before the art reached him for inking. Not a problem because it was two ply paper, that is there was another usable surface right below the original one. So Williamson was able to use a razor to carefully cut along side the panel borders and then peal them off. Although faint, the reader should be able to see the cut marks on the close up above.


Race For The Moon #2 (September 1958) “The Face On Mars” back of the original art for page 5

The back of much of the art used in Race For The Moon and Blast-Off was used by the inker to prepare his brush. Or at least that is what I interpret the streaky inking such as seen on the back of page 5 shown above. A similar marking, although much less extensive, was found on the back of one of the pages of a Fly story that Williamson drew about a year later (Speaking of Art, Al Williamson’s Fly). With one exception such markings only appear on the back of pages that I believe were inked by Williamson.

The Comic Code Authority approval stamp is dated December 18, 1957. The approval stamp was only applied to finished art ready for publication which means that date was the latest the original art could have been created. Normally the work would be published shortly later. Cover dates are not the date of publication, but rather the date the comic could be removed from the racks. The approval date for Williamson’s work for Adventure of the Fly #2 was a short three months earlier than the cover date. Art for Race For The Moon #1 was approved about four and a half months before the cover date. But for “The Face On Mars” the approval stamp is dated October 24, 1957, over nine months before the cover date. I do not claim that everything by Simon and Kirby could have been a financial success but Harvey’s habit of holding up publication of some of their work did not help.


Race For The Moon #2 (September 1958) “The Face On Mars” close-up of the back of the original art for page 5

The back of page 5 also has a pencil sketch. I provide a close-up above that has been adjusted in Photoshop to provide greater contrast. Cracked was a clone of the popular Mad magazine. Mad had a lot of copy-cats but only two had any real success, Cracked and Sick. The double border in the sketch matches design of the early issues of Cracked. The logo in the sketch matches the one found on issues #1 to #9 (March 1958 to May 1959). I have no idea what the image is supposed to represent but it does not match any found on the nine initial published issues. But an even bigger mystery is why there should be a sketch of a Cracked layout at all. As far as I know none of the parties involved in the creation of this piece (Jack Kirby, Al Williamson and Joe Simon) had any relationship to Cracked magazine.

Speaking of Art, Al Williamson’s Fly

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Posted in 2012/08, Speaking Of Art, Topic, z Archive and tagged ,

This is the start of a new topic for the Simon and Kirby blog where I will write about original comic book art. This will not be a serial post where I would explore a subject over a number of posts. Instead each post will stand by itself with only the common theme of original art connecting them. There will be no order in what I write about and I will pick the particular subject as my mood suits me. Some of the pieces will be from my personal collection but most will be from the much more extensive collection that belonged to Joe Simon. I do that with the permission of the Joe Simon estate.

It is clear that many people, even comic book fans, really do not “get” original comic book art. But there is something very special about the original art as compared to the published comic books. It is not that the printing of the comic books was so bad (although that is certainly true) or that original art is unique while thousands of copies of a comic book may exist (but true again). What is truly special about the art is that it reveals the hand of the creators in ways that are simply not possible from the printed comic. There are nuances in things like inking that completely get lost in the production process. There are changes in the art that many people would consider blemishes but instead provide insight into the creative process. I remember a story about Joe Sinnott erasing margin notes because he thought it distracted from the art. Some original art have subject to extensive cleaning processes to remove all blemishes. I am sure this was done in an attempt to increase the value of the piece but to me it actually has quite the opposite effect. What may seem blemishes to some has an aesthetic quality for me. While aesthetics play an important roll in the value of original art, they have historical value as well.

Before writing about the original art for “One Of Our Skyscrapers Is Missing” by Al Williamson I would like to discuss a story that Joe Simon use to tell. Here it is as presented in his autobiography Joe Simon, My Life In Comics where he is talking about the Harvey Comics title Race For The Moon:

When I proposed the title, Jack welcomed the work. I wrote most of the stories, although Dick Wood, Dave Wood and Eddie Herron contributed some scripts. Because Kirby was penciling some of them, I was able to sign up three of the best inkers in the business. Reed Crandall, Angelo Torres, and Al Williamson, each of them a brilliant artist in his own right, all wanted to work with Jack. In addition to inking Jack’s pencils, they got to illustrate some stories on their own.

Although in his book Joe describes this story as concerning Race For The Moon, I remember Joe telling me that he heard about the story from something Williamson said. Williamson gave an interview for Jack Kirby Collector #15 where he discusses his work on Race For The Moon. I have written about Williamson’s comments in an recent post (Kirby Inkers, Al Williamson) but the what is important here is Williamson does not relate this story when talking about Race For The Moon. But in another part of the interview:

TJKC: You did a solo story for The Fly #2. How’d you get that job?

AL: I was asked by the editor, and he gave me a five-pager to do. I’d never done superhero stuff before, and I sat down and did this Jack Kirby-type character they wanted me to do. I penciled it and took it in, and the editor had a fit. “Aahh, you’re a lousy artist. This is no good.” I had to do the first two pages over again, and he paid me $45 for five pages of work. And when it came out, the only thing he’d changed was the splash, and he’d copied it from Jack. I was really pissed off. So dear old Angelo Torres gets a call from this guy, and he says, “I gave Williamson a job, and he’s a lousy artist, he can’t draw. I want you to do this four-page Fly story for me.” So Angelo went up and said, “Sure, I’ll do it.” Then he came over to the house and said, “Listen, Al. This guy said you can’t draw, you’re a lousy artist, and he wants me to do this four-page superhero thing, so I thought maybe I’d let you pencil it.” (laughter) So I did! I penciled the four pages, and gave it to Angelo, and he took it up. The editor looked at it and said, “See, this is great! You’re better than Williamson!” (laughter) So Angelo inked it, and the guy never knew I penciled it.

Clearly this is the same story but it concerns work for Adventures of the Fly #2. Williamson does not name the editor but it was Simon who put together the first four issues of Adventures of the Fly and he alone chose the artists and assigned the work.


Adventures of the Fly #2 (September 1959) “One Of Our Skyscrapers Is Missing”, pencils by Al Williamson

In Williamson’s version of this tale he drew two stories for the issue. One that Joe was unhappy with and another drawn without Simon’s knowledge of his involvement. Williamson claims that Simon changed the splash of the first story but the rest was printed with no alterations. Williamson’s drawing style is very distinctive and there is no need for the original art to say with certainty that Williamson only drew one story for any issue of Adventures of the Fly. The drawing style alone would suggest that the splash for the story was pure Williamson. But the original art does conclusively shows that no changes were made to any of the art for this story, including the splash shown above. Any such changes would have to use white-out or other editing tools that would be completely obvious in the original art.

I have to say that I am rather dubious about another aspect of Williamson’s story, that Joe did not like his art. Simon used Al for inking Kirby pencils and for doing his own pencils for a number of Harvey comics for which Joe was the editor. While it is possible that Simon’s opinion changed just a couple of years later it would have to change again. When I knew him, Joe was a great admirer of Williamson’s art.

I suspect that the writing at the bottom of the page (present on the other pages as well) is a later addition. Usually the art was identified in ink in the upper left. In this case “FLY #2-P-9”, page 9 of issue 2 of Adventures of the Fly. It would remain on the proofs made when the art was shot for productions but could easily be removed before final printing. Occasionally someone forgot to remove them or did a poor job at it and they can be seen in part or whole in the printed comic books. This notation was done in ink to insure that it was still present when the initial stats were made. Pencils were problematic when photo imaging the original art to stats since they were not dark enough to insure a good image but too dark to be sure that they did not show up at all. Which is why pencils were erased after the inking was completed. While pencils notations like that at the bottom could easily be removed during the production process, they are redundant and do not serve any purpose.


Adventures of the Fly #2 (September 1959) “One Of Our Skyscrapers Is Missing” the back of page 2

Sometimes rather interesting things can be found on the back of comic book art. However in the case of this story the back of the pages are pretty much unadorned. The only exception is page 2 which is shown above. An explanation is in order about the writing in pencil that reads SI-0029. This is the Simon Inventory number, and yes I am to blame. I did the inventory for Joe’s collection and it was a difficult task. Joe had over 1500 pages of original comic book art (not including many production proofs). I needed a way to keep track of it while the inventory was being created. So I assigned inventory numbers that I placed on the back usually near an edge and always in an area without anything significant. I suspect that for page 2 I placed the inventory number further from the edge because of the water stain. Inventory numbers were assigned as I inventoried the piece and have no significance other than order that I encountered them while working. There was one exception in that I generally assigned inventory numbers for original art to numbers less than 1000 and used the higher numbers for things like proofs. I also assigned the same inventory number to all pages belonging to the same story. This helped me in getting the collection better organized as originally pages to a story were often scattered about in different places.

Note the two small black irregular patches. I believe these to be due to the inker preparing his brush. Similar markings, although much more extensive, can be found on the back of other pages that I believed Williamson inked. However these two small marks are the only examples found on the back of this story or any other one that Joe had from the Adventures of the Fly title.


Adventures of the Fly #2 (September 1959) “One Of Our Skyscrapers Is Missing” close-up of the back of page 2

One thing that is common to backs of all the original art for this story, and indeed of most original art from the period, was the Comic Code approval stamp. Today the stamp is of use because it provides a terminal date for the creation of the art. Art could have started earlier, and even inventoried for a period of time, but the stamp was only applied to completed art ready for publication. Thus this art was finished no later than May 29, 1959. The same date appears for the approval stamp for “Marco’s Eyes”, “Tim O’Casey’s Wrecking Crew”, “The Master of Junk-Ri-La” and some of the fillers from the same issue. Comic book cover dates were used by the publisher to indicate when to take the issue off the stands and sent back to the distributor. When converting the cover date to the date the art was created I usually subtract five or six months. Two months for the time on the stands, one month for distribution, one month for printing and one month or more to create the art. From that scheme I would expect the approval stamp to be four months before the cover date. But it is just an estimate as there was much variations in the publication of comic books. For Adventures of the Fly #2 the stamp appears to be closer to three months before the cover date.

Adventures of the Fly #2 (September 1959) “One Of Our Skyscrapers Is Missing” close-up from back of page 2 of a Batman sketch by Al Williamson

The back of page 2 has one other feature that might be a little hard to make out in the full page image but when enlarged and rotated 180 degrees turns out to be a sketch of Batman. Obviously Batman would not appear in a Harvey comic book so it maybe nothing more than a doodle or a drawing done to demonstrate some point.

Kirby Inkers, Al Williamson

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Posted in 2012/07, 7 Freelance, Harvey, Kirby Inkers, Kirby, Jack, Periods, Serial Posts, z Archive and tagged , , ,

I have previously posted on some of the artists that have inked Jack Kirby’s pencils (Mort Meskin, Marvin Stein and Captain 3D). Unfortunately my restoration work for Titan’s Simon and Kirby Library takes up so much of my time that I have been unable to pursue this topic further. However my work for the upcoming Science Fiction volume has allowed me to examine in detail the inking used for Race for the Moon and Blast-Off. It was particularly fortunate that I had available either the original art or flats (production proofs of the line art) of pretty much all the interior art for these two titles*.

Before discussing the evidence from the art, it would be best to start with a presentation of some of what has been said by others. In his book, Joe Simon, My Life in Comics Joe writes about Race For The Moon:

When I proposed the title, Jack welcomed the work. I wrote most of the stories, although Dick Wood, Dave Wood and Eddie Herron contributed some scripts. Because Kirby was penciling some of them, I was able to sign up three of the best inkers in the business. Reed Crandall, Angelo Torres, and Al Williamson, each of them a brilliant artist in his own right, all wanted to work with Jack. In addition to inking Jack’s pencils, they got to illustrate some stories on their own.

In an interview with Al Williamson from the Jack Kirby Collector #15:

TJKC: Did you and Wally ever discuss how to approach inking Kirby?

AL: No, it was a job. I remember going up to Harvey and getting work there. They said, “We haven’t got any work for you, but we have some stories here that Jack penciled. Do you want to ink them?” I’d never really inked anybody else before, but I said, “Sure,” because I looked at the stuff, and thought, “I can follow this.” It’s all there. I inked it, and they liked it, and they gave me three or four stories to do.

TJKC: I was just reading some of those Race For The Moons. There’s some beautiful stuff there.

AL: Well, he did a beautiful job. Some of it was redrawn by somebody there, I guess because it didn’t pass the Comics Code or something. There’s parts that I didn’t ink, because it’s not my drawing or Jack’s drawing. Somebody went over it and changed some things, like a monster or something to make it more pleasing to the eye, which bothered the hell outta me. I never really thought I did him justice, though. The drawing is there, because it’s Jack Kirby’s drawing, but I just traced what he penciled.

TJKC: Did you feel intimidated to add too much of yourself to it?

AL: I don’t do that. If the job is penciled, I would ink it the way the guy penciled it, because it’s his pencils. If I think it needs something, I’ll call the artist up and say, “Listen, I kinda would like to add a black here. Is this all right with you?” And as a rule, they say, “Sure. No problem.” But I don’t do any redrawing on anybody’s work unless I talk to the artist-and I very seldom have to do that.

Also in the interview, Williamson remarked that he did not ink any covers. So we have Simon crediting the inking to three different artists (Crandall, Torres and Williamson) and Williamson saying he inked somewhere between three and five Kirby stories. It is important to remember that such testimonials is evidence but not the proof that all too many comic book historians take it for. I am continually surprised that so many take evidence based on memory as fact. I would have thought that from what has been learned from legal cases over the years would discredited over reliance on memory. People’s memories are not created like a video recorder saving all that a person sees and hears. Rather memories are more like stories that people create and retell over and over. Such stories are biased and often are like a morality tale that tell more about the person telling them than what actually occurred. As years pass, the memories are effectively retold and change even further. Inaccuracies are expected and not a sign that the person is lying, that is trying to deceive. So I prefer to treat such interviews as evidence but I also turn to the work itself to find further evidence to support or refute what has been said.


Alarming Tales #6 (November 1958) “King of the Ants” page 2, pencils and inks by Al Williamson (from bleached page)

Artists have their own inking techniques that they use over and over. One place to start would be to examine how an artist inks his own work. Fortunately Williamson created a story, “King of the Ants”, for Alarming Tales #6 at the same times that Race for the Moon #3 came out. Regrettably Harvey’s had very poor printing so I use a bleached page to use as an example. Page 2 illustrates a number of techniques that Williamson was fond of. One was the use of multiple very broad brush strokes that are somewhat irregular and placed side by side. Examples can be seen in the lower right corners to panels 2 and 4 in both cases right above the figure’s shoulder. As far as I can tell, these irregular inking patches are not meant to depict any realistic feature but rather serve as an abstract pattern. I do not have a good name for another technique but I sometimes describe it as mottled crosshatching. This can be found in the right side of panel 4 just above the other inking technique described above. Sometimes Williamson uses a looping ink line to describe foliage such as found in bottom center of panel 1 right in front of the fallen tree trunk. Another technique is more of an anti-inking process where Williamson removes a panel’s border such as in panel 6. I have not seen the original art for “King of the Ants” but on original art that I have seen Williamson has cut page with a razor and peeled off the panel border. Of course anyone could have done it but such borderless panels are commonly found in work that Williamson inked but not other stories done for Harvey so I attribute the action to him.


Blast-Off #1 (October 1965) “Space Court” page 5, pencils and inks by Al Williamson

It might seem odd to use work published in 1965 to illustrate Williamson’s inking techniques from 1958 but in fact the Comic Code Authority stamp on the original art was dated March 6, 1958. This date was a few weeks earlier that the approval date for the art for Race for the Moon #3 (cover dated November 1958 but Comic Code approval date of March 28, 1958). It may be a minor mystery about what title this story was originally intended or why it was not published until years later, but it is a perfect match for this discussion about inking techniques.

Some of the previously discussed techniques can be found in the “Space Court” story as well. For instance the removal of panel borders, in whole or in part. Also note the background inking for panel 5 appears to be an expansion of the technique described above. What this page shows is another technique that is not technically inking, that is the use of Ben-Day dots. These are found in panels 3 and 4 giving both a grey background. The Ben-Day patterns were applied as transparent overlay sheets that were carefully cut with a razor to cover the desired areas. Williamson used Ben-Day dots with the standard dot patters arrange in the angles used for printing but also irregular dots (mezzotint patterns) and hexagonal arrangements.


Race for the Moon #2 (September 1958) “Lunar Trap” page 2, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson

The inking of the Kirby pencils for Race for the Moon and Blast-Off can be placed in three groups that show related features. The first group consists of “The Thing on Sputnik 4” and “Lunar Trap” both from RFTM #2. These works were inked using both pen and brush. They differ from the next group is the general lack of some of the techniques that I have describe Williamson as using. None of the panel borders have been removed in these two stories and there is no use of Ben-Day dots. There is only one example of the looping ink line but this is not too surprising since Williamson often used this technique in rendering foliage and there are no plants on the moon. Two other Williamson inking techniques only appear in one panel; panel 2 from page 2 of “Lunar Trap” shown above. There we find the mottled crosshatching and that irregular broad brush strokes. Despite the infrequence or absence of some of Williamson’s inking techniques I still credit the inking to Al. As far as I can see only one hand was involved in the inking of these two stories and the pen and brush work looks very much like that found in stories I am convinced were inked by Al Williamson. I suspect these two stories were the first ones by Kirby that Williamson inked and he was just getting comfortable with working on Jack’s pencils.


Race for the Moon #2 (September 1958) “The Face on Mars” panel 2 page 2 and panel 5 page 4, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Al Williamson

The next group of five Kirby stories are the ones that I am pretty confident in crediting the inking to Al Williamsons. These are “Island in the Sky” and “The Face on Mars” from RFTM #2, and “The Long, Long Years”, “Saucer Man”, “Space Garbage”, and “The Garden of Eden” from RFTM #3. These contain all the techniques that I describe above based on Williamson’s inking of his own pencils. I do not want to leave the impression that these techniques are abundantly found in Williamson’s inking but rather the usually can be found when enough pages are examined. I provide scans of panels from two different panels above to show some of the Williamson techniques found in these stories.


Blast-Off #1 (October 1965) “The Great Moon Mystery”, pencils by Jack Kirby and inks by Al Williamson

The third group consists of the Kirby penciled stories that appeared in “Blast-Off #1 (October 1965) which are “Lunar Goliaths” and “The Great Moon Mystery” Although I have examined the original art for these works they still are another of those minor mysteries. Neither story has Comic Code approval stamps. Further neither story has any indication of a previously intended title. Typically the original art would have on the top left just above the art the comic book title and page number it was intended for. Even when the title changed white out would typically be used to remove the outdated information so the new title and page could be added. No white out was used so the Blast-Off #1 information placed on the original art was the first applied. But both stories are Three Rocketeer stories and that feature first appeared in RFTM #3 so these two stories were likely intended for the unpublished RFTM #4. Certainly Kirby’s pencils are in the same style used for the 1958 RFTM and not at all a match for what he was doing in 1965 for Marvel Comics.

The inking of the two Blast-Off Kirby stories is more like the first, presumably earlier, group. Absent are any sign of most of the techniques I have described from Williamson’s inking of his own pencils. The only exception is the relatively frequent use of Ben-Day dots in “The Great Moon Mystery”, but they are not found at all in “Lunar Goliaths”. You can see the Ben-Day dots in the moon-scape background for the splash panel shown above. Although the comic book shows no sign of Ben-Day in the second (left) panel the original art shows that they were there. However Williamson used such a fine dot pattern that they complete got lost in Harvey’s rather crude production. Despite the fact that some of Williamson’s inking techniques, I still feel that the inking is very much the same as Williamson’s other work, just not as much embellished. I admit that this group and the first one require further study of the techniques used to either confirm or refute my attributions but for now I credit all the inking of Kirby’s pencils for RFTM or Blast-Off to Al Williamson.

In the interview Williamson says that he closely followed Jack’s pencils, as he described it “it’s all there”. My studies seem to support that. Unlike some of Kirby’s inkers, Al does not overwhelm Jack’s pencils, there is never any question that whose penciled it. Most of the effects of Williamson’s inking come from the spotting. It would appear that for RFTM Kirby provided tight line art but left the spotting to the inker. That was the typical technique Kirby used during the Simon and Kirby collaboration. Williamson was a talented artist with great control of his pen and brush work. In my opinion the inking Williamson did was some of the finest ever done on Kirby pencils. Unfortunately the printing used for Harvey Comics in the late 50’s was incredibly poor and some of Williamson’s efforts were lost.

Williamson also claims that someone reworked sections of the stories. “There’s parts that I didn’t ink, because it’s not my drawing or Jack’s drawing”. This clearly indicates that the rework would have happened after Williamson did the inking. However Joe Simon’s collection includes all the original art for the Kirby except for “The Long, Long Years” and I studied them all. Any changes that was done after the initial inking would have to have used white-out or other techniques to remove the original art for replacement with newer work. None of the original art shows any sign that this was done. The only use of white-out or paste-ups was on the lettering. I am sure Williamson believed what he recalled for the interview but it is just another example of the failings of evidence based on memory.

footnotes:
* 40 pages of original art and 11 pages of flats leaving only a single introduction page based only on the printed comics.

Adventures of the Fly, the Second Issue

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Posted in 2010/02, 7 Freelance, Archie, Artists, Kirby, Jack, Periods, Simon, Joe, z Archive and tagged , , , ,

Adventures of the Fly #2
Adventures of the Fly #2 (September 1959) “Tim O’Casey’s Wrecking Crew”, pencils by unidentified artist

If a young boy can be transformed into a fully costumed adult superhero with a magic ring, why not have a leprechaun as an opponent? Not strange enough? Well then give the leprechaun some giant robots to play with. The only thing missing in this delightful story is Jack Kirby. Too bad because I am sure Jack would have added his own personal touches and transformed it into a masterpiece.

Adventures of the Fly #2
Adventures of the Fly #2 (September 1959) “One of Our Skyscrapers is Missing” page 3, pencils by Al Williamson

Al Williamson was already a talented comic artist when he did “One of Our Skyscrapers is Missing” for this issue. And I have little doubt that he did this story. The various monsters that inhabit these pages all possess the Williamson touch. If Williamson was working from layouts, he took great liberties with them. His panel layouts are the most interesting ones found in either the Shield or the Fly. Further his artwork is far superior to the other artists working on the Archie superheroes that I have reviewed so far with the sole exception of Jack Kirby. That said the art for this story is really far below his best efforts. The work Al did for Race for the Moon the previous year was much superior.

Adventures of the Fly #2
Adventures of the Fly #2 (September 1959) “Sneak Attack”, pencils by Joe Simon

“Sneak Attack” is another of the pieces that generally get attributed to Jack Kirby but were actually drawn by Joe Simon. The reason for this misattribution is a credit to Joe’s skills at mimicking Jack’s style, often with the help of plenty of swipes. The pilot with the funny head gear was swiped from Kirby’s “Hot Box” (Foxhole #2). However it shows that Joe is not just copying Kirby as the head is in full frontal view instead of the 3/4 profile that Jack drew.

Adventures of the Fly #2
Adventures of the Fly #2 (September 1959) “Marco’s Eyes”, pencils by Jack Kirby
Larger Image

It is an old theme, but Kirby frequently returns to previous themes and improves upon them. In this case it is the idea of a stage performer using his power of hypnosis as a means of conducting crime. The earliest predecessor was probably an untitled story about sometimes called “Sando and Omar” from Captain America #1 (March 1941). “Marco’s Eyes” has some nice art and all in all a good effort, but certainly not among the better Simon and Kirby’s work. The double page splash is perhaps the weakest that S&K ever did. This is unfortunate since it is also the last the two would work on together.

Adventures of the Fly #2
Adventures of the Fly #2 (September 1959) “The Master of Junk-Ri-La”, pencils by Jack Kirby

While I would hardly call “The Master of Junk-Ri-La a masterpiece, it is a much better work than “Marco’s Eyes”. It does however contain some humor that might not be appreciated by many modern superhero fans used to bleaker tales. For instance the villain uses a giant fly swatter against the Fly.

The two stories in Adventures of the Fly #2 would be the last collaboration between Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for many years. The Jack Kirby Checklist includes “Muggy’s Masterpiece” from Adventures of the Fly #4 but that is clearly incorrect. Even the way the Archie superheroes were created made them more of a Simon effort than a Kirby one. Still the two had worked together in one form or another for a period of about 18 years. There may have been other comic book collaborations that were longer but there were none there were better. Or at least that is my opinion. But I may be biased; after all this is the Simon and Kirby Blog.

Since this is Kirby’s last work on the Fly I thought I would briefly touch on the part that it played in the creation of Spider-Man. Others have written in great depths about this issue but here I will only provide a brief outline of the events. Joe Simon, C. C. Beck and Jack Oleck got together in 1953 or 1954 to create a new superhero. Initially the name Spiderman was considered and Joe even created a logo using that name, but in the end the character was called the Silver Spider. Joe took the initial artwork by Beck and pitched the idea to Harvey Comics but they declined to publish it. Years later Archie Comics approached Simon to create some new superheroes and Joe came up with a new Shield and the Fly. Joe retrieved Beck’s Silver Spider art work from Harvey and sent it off to Jack to use as reference when he drew most of the art for the initial issues published in 1959. In 1962 Stan Lee worked initially with Kirby to create Spider-Man but in the end turned to Steve Ditko to provide the art. The work that Kirby did on Spider-Man has never been published but Ditko later described Kirby’s version as looking like the Fly.

The main source of contention about the creation of Spider-Man concerns not so much the history as the interpretation of that history. The most common subject of disagreement is whether Stan Lee and Steve Ditko should be considered the joint creators or if Jack Kirby should be included as well. While I have provided a broad history behind the creation of Spider-Man that I believe most comic scholars would largely accept there are numerous details that scholars seem unable to agree on. Even as simple a concept as the term creator turns out to have very different meanings depending on who is using it. I will not try to advance my own opinion as to who should be credited for creating Spider-Man. I prefer to let each reader come to their own conclusions. But I find it incomprehensible how some insist on crediting Jack Kirby as a Spider-Man creator while excluding Joe Simon.