future Topps Editor-in-Chief Jim Salicrup said. “But Roy didn’t want to come back to New York City so he gave a list to Len of people to contact. I was on that list along with Tony Isabella (who didn’t want to move back to New York either). So I got a call almost out of nowhere.” by Jon B. Cooke While still on staff at Marvel, Jim said, “I was off the Spider-Man n the final years of his life, the most significant event of Jack Kirby’s titles [after successfully helming Spider-Man to phenomenal sales of career was the advent of Topps’ “Kirbyverse.” A series of three one3,000,000 for the first issue]. I don’t think they knew what to do with me shot comic books, Captain Glory, Night Glider, and Bombast were all anymore. I was doing the custom comics line with books featuring released in April 1993, and were quickly followed up with the 4-issue pro-social issues and advertising comics. I wrote the Kool-Aid Man mini-series, Jack Kirby’s Secret City Saga (plus the oh-so-collectible precomics and the Spider-Man/Hulk toilet-paper comic (and if people mium, Secret City #0, available only through a coupon rebate). Sold in didn’t like that story, they knew what they could do with it).” sealed plastic bags (emblazoned with enough hyperbole to make Jack “The atmosphere at Marvel wasn’t the best for me, Todd proud) with “Kirbychrome” cards, the comics were actually promoted [McFarlane], or a lot of other people,” Jim continued. “But outside as Kirby comics—all part of the “Kirbyverse”—but though based on there were plenty of companies who would like to have editors who Jack’s concepts and drawings (sometimes thinly) from various stages of could put together books that sell that well. That’s around the time his career, they were Kirby comics in name, lacking the main ingredient: that Todd and others went on to form Image Comics, and I got an The art of Kirby himself. The mini-series was quickly followed up by offer from Topps to help them start up a line of comic books.” another, the strange and satirical Satan’s Six, and then Jack Kirby’s Jim explained the appeal of the comic book market to the trading Teen Agents, each running a mere four issues. But the industry was in card company: “In regards flux, and by 1994, although two mini-series were released—Victory to the entertainment cards, and a revival of Silver Star—both were cancelled after only one Topps would get the card license issue. Jack Kirby passed away in February and thus never saw and somebody else would get his Kirbyverse end. This is the story of that brief period, but the comic book license. They our tale begins in the early 1940s, with the origin of Topps. asked themselves, “Why don’t Topps began producing chewing gum during we do the comic books as well?” World War II. “We made a Chicklets-type bubble What a great market it was—it was gum,” Topps Creative Director Len Brown explains, nonreturnable! Unlike when Marvel “and our first foray into comics was in the wanted to get into the card business and early ’50s with the Bazooka Joe and newspaper invested hundreds of millions buying existing strip reprints we would include with the card companies, Topps didn’t have to do much gum.” But it was the release of a set of boxing more than hire me and a couple of other guys.” trading cards (called Ringside) in 1949 which Jim was unsure whether Topps should follow the Image set the company’s direction as the premiere lead. “I felt that we probably shouldn’t do super-heroes because bubble gum card company. The heart of the it was a genre [where] all the other big companies already had company was the new product developincredibly famous characters; how could we compete with that? So ment department, headed for a time by our first title was an adaptation of a Dracula movie. If I had to compare humorist Stan Hart and, by the late ’50s, us to any company at that point, I think we were going in the Woody Gelman. In 1959, Woody hired the direction of being almost another Dark Horse.We did books that 18-year-old Len Brown as his assistant. were very classy projects, like the Ray Bradbury story anthologies “Len helped produce Mars Attacks, Wacky Packs, and movie adaptations. The Kirby thing was just irresistible to me.” Garbage Pail Kids,” lifelong friend and sometime Jim explained his thinking on not jumping on the genre associate Roy Thomas explains. “Woody retired wagon. “When everything that is popular goes in one direction, by the early ’70s and Len was left in charge and sometimes you can go in the complete opposite direction and he has been for a couple of decades now.” either become a huge success or a tremendous flop. Image was “Len was always trying to get Topps into the becoming so hot, and everyIn Captain Victory Special #1, thing was so dark in tone; as comics business,” Roy continued. “Wally Wood, the editorial (dated August 1983) Bob Powell, Jack Davis, Art Spiegelman, Gil hinted at a new Pacific Comics series much as I liked the original Kane, and a lot of other comic book people called The Midnight Men based on material that inspired the were in and out of there doing work in Jack’s concepts, which had been in trends, I don’t like hopping the ’60s and before. Jack Davis always said development for several months. on them. So Kirby to me was that Topps practically kept him alive during Jack’s synopsis for The Secret never anything like that—it the bad period after he left Mad and before he City was written in February was all very heroic, very noble, hit it big with the TV Guide covers.” 1983, and a 1983 Pacific press with a lot of solid underlying release featured Bombast, Glida, moral values. Even when we “In the early ’60s, Woody and I would and Captain Glory, so we assume they are one and the same. made the deal, there was a talk about wanting to get into comics but it Pacific folded soon after, and in October 1983, Jack did this concern on Jack and Roz’s part just never materialized,” Len said (though drawing of Bombast, changing his name to “Clayton March” Len had a foothold in the business as a for another proposed project called “Eyes of March!” that they were letting us use sometime comics writer, most significantly for his name and they didn’t want Tower Comics and Creepy magazine). “Ira Friedman joined the company us to be doing books that would reflect something that he wouldn’t in the mid-’80s and he had a big publishing background. A consulting want to be associated with. I took that seriously and wouldn’t have group we hired suggested looking for something synergistic for Topps wanted to do that anyway.” to do, and with the customers buying trading cards being young kids, By all accounts, the Kirby “thing” proved to be initially a lucrative comics seemed a natural.” deal for all involved, but the origins of the arrangement were, in Jim’s A comics line was given the go-ahead and “Len Brown was words, “A little complicated. We were approach by a couple of guys who assigned the job to find an editor-in-chief. His first choice was Roy said they had all these rights to various Kirby material, calling themselves Thomas, the guy who hired me at Marvel in 1972 in the first place,” “The Kirby Company.” They had a whole separate scheme worked out 59
Twilight At Topps
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