again, we find ourselves shaking our heads, and going, “We should’ve listened more to the guy.” Is Tracy Kirby here? Tracy is supposed to be on her way here. Who else should I introduce in the audience? Is Rand here? What is your title in the Museum?
job description in his head, and he did it very well. Jack’s job description when he was doing Fantastic Four was, “How do I turn this into a new dynasty? How do I reinvent comics? How do I take Marvel Comics to a new era?” And he approached it that way. He didn’t think of himself as competitive with the Don Hecks, the Gene Colans and so on. He loved those people. He never spoke ill of any of them. Steve, did you ever hear Jack speak ill of another artist?
RANDOLPH HOPPE: I am the director/curator of the Jack Kirby Museum. MARK: This is Rand Hoppe. (applause) Two must-stops in the convention hall are the TwoMorrows table and the Jack Kirby Museum table, which are right near each other. What’s your booth number?
STEVE SHERMAN: Uh... as long as they weren’t a Nazi, no. (laughter) MARK: Okay, that lets out five. (laughter) Let’s take our cue from that. Don’t get angry when someone says that they didn’t like Jack Kirby’s work. Nobody’s work is loved by everyone. Don’t get incensed... yes, there are some very, grandiose, fact-free claims made by some people. There are stupid stories that come to me. Sometimes they’re attributed to me. I’ve Googled myself as we all secretly do on the Internet, and I find someone saying, “Mark Evanier said that Jack Kirby would only eat radishes on a Tuesday,” or something like that. Where did that come from? But there are these twisted, unpleasant stories, people trying to make their case against Jack. Take a look at how other people approach politics on the Internet, how they will make up just about anything to support their cause. Well, people who want to support
JOHN MORROW: 1301. MARK: 1301, and from there, they can direct you to Rand. If you have any Jack Kirby original art in your possession, even if you don’t IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, have it here, talk to Rand it’s never been scanned CLICK THE ifLINK TO ORDER THIS for posterity. He’s doingISSUE a wonderful job of it. He’s so good at this. He puts on IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT! gloves like he’s doing surgery. He’s got this scanner and he takes such good care of the artwork. He takes better care of the art than anybody at Marvel Comics ever did. (laughter) The thing I want to talk about, just very briefly this year, is this. There’s a lot of arguing going on over the Internet; there’s a lot of people furious, there’s a lot of flame wars going on. There’s a certain amount of people who start belittling Jack, I think partly because it’s an attention-getting device, and partly because they don’t like being told what’s wonderful, and you know, “You have to love this man,” and it’s true. And I want to just impart to you all one thing that I learned from Jack. He was a very selfless man in that regard. If you came up to Jack, as I once saw someone do, and say, “Mr. Kirby, I think you’re the second-best artist in the business. My favorite KIRBY COLLECTOR #62 is Gil Kane,” Jack was not bothered byinterview, that at all.EVANIER He’d go, “Yeah, KIRBY AT DC! Kirby MARK and our other Gil is regular columnists, updated “X-Numbers” list of Kirby’s DC asgreat.” He did not feel he was competitive with other artists, signments (revealing some surprises), JERRY BOYD’s insights on Kirby’s DCOne work,is, a look at KEYartists 1970s EVENTS IN JACK’Sdidn’t LIFE for two reasons. other in comics do CAREER, Challengers vs. the FF, pencil art galleries from exactly theAND same thing Kirby NotKirby to cover belittle them, FOREVER PEOPLE,Jack OMAC, and THEdid. DEMON, inked by MIKE ROYER, anddown more! to draw his issues of but when John Buscema sat (100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 a good issue Fantastic Four, he was concerned with drawing (Digital Edition) $4.95 of Fantastic Four, so Stan Lee would say, “Fine, here’s the http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1129 next one.” John had great pride in his work, he was a lovely man, he was a brilliant and fantastic artist, but that was his
(left to right) Paul Levine, Mark Evanier, Tony Isabella, and Neil Gaiman at Comic-Con.
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