Jack Kirby Collector #53 Preview

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR FIFTY-THREE

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Contents

THE NEW

The Magic Of LEE & KIRBY, Part ONe! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (Lee & Kirby together again—and again!)

ISSUE #53, SUMMER 2009

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UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . . . . . . . .3 (inking some familiar faces) CRIB NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (a guided tour of Stan and Jack’s New York haunts—be sure to wear your comfortable shoes!)

RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 (when Jacob met Stanley) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . .11 (you’re not getting older, you’re getting better) THE MAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 (Stan Lee speaks!)

GALLERY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 (a look at Kirby’s incredible inkers during the Marvel Age) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 (Mark Evanier’s on hiatus this ish, so we dug up one of his earliest published works to embarrass him) TRIBUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 (the 2008 Kirby Tribute Panel, featuring Jerry Robinson, and Joe Ruby & Ken Spears) ADAM McGOVERN . . . . . . . . . . . .34 (Jack’s rock ’n’ roll influence) GALLERY 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 (lost and found Fantastic Four pages) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 (Barry Forshaw recommends more things to spend your money on in a down economy) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM PAGE . . . .55 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 (a silver bullet for your heart) RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62 (Stan & Jack’s genre comics, plus comments for the whole blamed Marvel Bullpen about Lee & Kirby) QUESTIONABLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 (a game of “What If?”) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . .78 PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 (Stan and Jack and the Surfer) This issue is dedicated to the very dedicated Jerry Boyd, a man whose energy and devotion to comics history and fandom leaves me in awe. - JM Front cover inks: GEORGE PÉREZ Back cover inks/colors: JOE SINNOTT Front cover color: TOM ZIUKO The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 16, No. 53, Summer 2009. Published quarterly by & ©2009 TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $14 postpaid ($16 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $50 US, $60 Canada, $84 elsewhere.

All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is ©2009 Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is ©2009 the respective authors. First printing.

PRINTED IN CANADA. ISSN 1932-6912

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(above) They aren’t Stan and Jack, but these two men are responsible for the great Lee/Kirby creations of the 1960s. Who are they?

Turn to page 2 to find out! (And then thank these guys!)

COPYRIGHTS: Ant-Man, Atlas Monsters, Avengers, Beast, Black Bolt, Black Knight, Black Panther, Black Widow, Bucky, Captain America, Captain Mar-Vell, Cobra, Crystal, Dr. Doom, Fantastic Four, Gabe Jones, Galactus, GiantMan, Goom, Groot, Hate-Monger, Hawkeye, Hercules, Him, Hulk, Human Top, Human Torch, Iron Man, Janus, Ka-Zar, Kid Colt, Loki, Mad Thinker, Magneto, Modok, Mr. Hyde, Nick Fury/Sgt. Fury, Odin, Puppet Master, Rawhide Kid, Red Ghost, Red Skull, Sandman, Scarlet Witch, SHIELD, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Thing, Thor, Trapster, Two-Gun Kid, Wasp, Watcher, Wizard, X-Men, Yellow Claw TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Batman, Boy Commandos, Demon, Forever People, House of Mystery, In The Days Of The Mob, Losers, Orion, Robin TM & ©2009 DC Comics. • Sky Masters TM & ©2009 Jack Kirby Estate. • Black Magic, Fighting American, Win A Prize, Young Romance TM & ©2009 Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estate. • Captain 3-D, Hi-School Romances TM & ©2009 Harvey Comics. • Thundarr the Barbarian, Ookla, Video Rangers TM & ©2009 Ruby-Spears.

Opening Shot

by John Morrow, editor of TJKC

hange of plans! This issue’s theme, “The Magic of Lee & Kirby,” came together nicely with the help of Jerry Boyd, Kirby fan and TwoMorrows Contributor Emeritus. But after assembling all the usual “must-have” pieces for this issue—columns, galleries, Kirby Museum page, and this page, for what it’s worth—the usual problem set in: There just aren’t enough pages to do justice to the theme! So like many of the great Lee & Kirby epics of the 1960s, I’ve decided to make this a two-parter, to be “Continued Next Issue!” (as all those last-page blurbs used to say).

I hope you’ll be back for Part Two next time.

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Stan & Jack, Together Again—Twice!

(above) Stan and Jack share a laugh at a 1966 New York comic convention. (below) Both men in the 1970s, after they went their separate ways.

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Now, where do you begin to discuss a creative team as important to the history of comics as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby? At the beginning, I guess. Their first collaboration (if you’d call it that) was when Stan was the office boy at Timely Comics in the 1940s, and wrote a text filler page for Captain America Comics #3. But Jack was already teamed up with Joe Simon, and they both viewed young Stanley Lieber (Stan’s given name) as more of an annoyance than a fellow creator, since Stanley spent a lot of time sitting on desks, playing his ocarina, and distracting Joe and Jack from their work. (Reader Stan Taylor has noted the memorable splash page in Captain America Comics #7, where the Red Skull is causing chaos by playing a flute—he wonders if this was inspired by Stan’s antics.)

Simon & Kirby went on to produce a string of hits until the anti-comics backlash spearheaded

by Dr. Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent took its toll on the entire industry. Joe and Jack dissolved their partnership in the late 1950s after their company Mainline went under, and Jack was back to freelancing.

But due to a dispute with DC Comics editor Jack Schiff over royalties for Jack’s Sky Masters comic strip, he became persona non grata at DC Comics, which left Marvel Comics (then called Atlas, formerly known as Timely) and editor Stan Lee as one of his few avenues for work.

(So, here’s a tip of the hat to Mssrs. Wertham and Schiff for inadvertently causing the formation of the Lee & Kirby team; without them, who knows if Stan and Jack would’ve ever crossed paths, let alone created so many classic stories and characters. I’m celebrating both men by featuring their mugs on Page One of this issue!)

The Lee & Kirby “team” didn’t really exist the way we as fans were led to believe in the 1960s Marvel Bullpen and letters pages. (For that matter, there wasn’t really a “Bullpen” of Marvel artists and writers, all working together in one big room, the way it was depicted in the comics.) And as the 1960s drug on, the pair had less and less direct involvement, as both men did most of their respective work from their homes. As tends to happen with many creative successful teams, disputes and animosities arose, and we’ve covered some of that in this magazine’s previous issues. But the focus this time out is strictly to celebrate their achievements, rather than expose any hidden underbellies, or get caught up in a “who did what” melee. Without either gent, the end result wouldn’t have been the same, and almost certainly wouldn’t be as successful, or commercially viable some 40+ years later.

So sit back and relive some of the triumphs of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, from their earliest collaborations on Marvel’s monster and western yarns, to the creative tour de force that was (and still is) the Marvel Universe. (And thanks to Jerry Boyd for helping me wrap my head around these two issues, right down to this issue’s cover concept.) ★

by John Morrow his issue’s cover is a bit of a “Brady Bunch” riff, utilizing a wide variety of mug shots of various Stan Lee/Jack Kirby characters, all taken from the Valentine’s Day sketchbook Jack did as a gift for Roz Kirby in the late 1970s. While Stan wasn’t involved in the creation of Captain America or the Red Skull, those characters were major players in their 1960s work together, and Stan’s first professional comics work was a text filler page in Simon & Kirby’s Captain America Comics #3 (May 1941). So it seemed only appropriate that Cap got the center “Alice the maid” spot.

When it came time to choose an inker for this medley of faces, I naturally tried to think of an artist who’s known for working on books that feature large groups of super-characters. It took about two seconds for the name George Pérez to pop in my mind. George is known for his work on the Avengers, Teen Titans, and of course Crisis on Infinite Earths, which featured practically every DC Comics character ever created. So I figured a mere 23-character cover image would be easy for him to ink.

Which reminded me of an e-mail George sent me back in 2008 (presented here to give you an idea of the kind of guy George is): “If there’s ever an opening for someone to ink a really heavily populated Kirby cover, please keep me in mind. It would be a real honor.”

The honor’s all mine, George! When he saw the pencils, he even asked whether I thought he should try to correct any of the mistakes Jack made, as he didn’t want to be disrespectful by “fixing” Kirby’s work. And in typical Pérez fashion, he turned around the inks in just a few days. (Special thanks to Mike Manley for “bluelining” the pencils for George to ink over.)

Then, colorist Tom Ziuko and I felt that this piece was crying out for a more basic, 1960s-style color treatment, so we chose a “big dot” effect, and I worked up a similar look for photos of Stan & Jack to complete the piece.

Our back cover is both inked and colored by Joe Sinnott, who should need no introduction to readers of this publication (but just in case you do, check out our Marvel Inkers Gallery this issue for a brief overview of Joe’s career). In the 1970s, Jack did this “Cisco Thing” drawing for Joe’s son Mark, and Joe added his always-lush inking to it, to produce yet another stellar Kirby/Sinnott collaboration. (As you can see, Joe’s coloring abilities are as amazing as his inking.)

Thanks to Mark Sinnott for sending this beauty in! ★

Under The Covers

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Characters TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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There Goes The Neighborhood

Crib Notes

A tour of Lee & Kirby’s New York, by Martin Bartolomeo

Below: Lower East Side A) 138 Suffolk Street B) 147 Essex Street (Jack’s birthplace) C) 76 Suffolk Street (corner of Delancey Street and Suffolk Street) D) 131 Suffolk Street (at Rivington Street) E) 290 East 3rd Street (Boys’ Brotherhood Republic)

Next Page: Manhattan A) 1600 Broadway (Fleischer studios) B) 202 East 44th Street (Eisner & Iger) C) 480 Lexington Avenue (Victor Fox Studios, where Jack meets Joe Simon; also National Periodical Publications/DC) D) S&K Studio at Tudor City E) Prize Publications (at 1790 Broadway) F) Harvey Comics at 67 West 47th Street G) Timely (later Marvel) at 330 West 42nd Street (the McGraw Hill Building) H) Atlas Comics (Park Avenue and East 47th Street) I) Marvel Comics’ 1960s address (625 Madison Avenue)

(right) Jack at work in the late 1940s at his home studio, 367 Congress Avenue, East Williston, NY. (next page, top) Stan, about age 30, writing at his Long Island terrace home at 226 Richards Lane, Hewlett Harbor, New York.

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ny true fan of Jack Kirby, by now, has seen his 10-page Argosy piece entitled “Street Code,” said to be Jack’s only autobiographical work. The work includes a double-page spread which reflects most street photos taken at the time (circa 1917), that of a busy and noisy street with too many pushcart vendors and crowds of people huddled together. This area is referred to as Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where most immigrants coming to New York found themselves in the early part of the last century. It is roughly bounded by East Broadway to the east and south, East Houston Street to the north, and the Bowery to the west (although historically it included the Bowery, Alphabet City, the East Village, Little Italy, and Chinatown.)

The Kirby family’s 1910 Census address was 138 Suffolk Street, but Jack was born at 147 Essex Street on August 28, 1917 (this is the address on Jack’s father’s World War I draft card circa 1917).

The family eventually moved two blocks over to 76 Suffolk Street (at the corner of Delancey Street and Suffolk Street, now containing a building under renovation, which is most likely not the original building either). Their 1920 Census address was 131 Suffolk Street (at Rivington Street), indicating a lot of moving about, but always within a few blocks of their previous address.

What was life like growing up there? It was rough for Jack and the family. Interviews indicate that Jack lived in the typical apartment house of the time, the notorious “tenement” building.

Tenements were mostly constructed, with few building code rules, in the second half of the 19th century. Three quarters of Manhattan residents lived in them (who were mostly of Jewish or Italian descent). Generally speaking, conditions in the tenements were appalling by the standards of the time, and to modern day New Yorkers, almost unimaginable. Many of the tenements had

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no steam heat, hot running water, nor even a toilet. Since bathtubs were placed in kitchens, the lack of privacy tended to make residents go out to the public baths. Rooftops and fire escapes were the only relief from the summer heat. A typical tenement flat was about 350 square feet (three rooms), which is the size of today’s typical one room studio apartment units.

Jack, a short and stocky scrapper, was a member of the Suffolk Street gang, one of many kid street gangs that fought every other gang that would come their way, and in one interview Jack expresses the fact that he actually enjoyed the almost daily experience of street fighting. This rough-and-tumble mindset greatly influenced his future writing and artwork. It came through in the Simon & Kirby collaborations of the “Newsboy Legion,” the Boy Commandoes and Boy Explorers and all through the Marvel Age and beyond (don’t forget the one-shot Dingbats of Danger Street!). The streets also figured into the pages of the Fantastic Four (Yancy Street) and the Fourth World (Armagetto).

The cinema contributed to this genre, starting in the 1930s with the Dead End Kids, later called the Little Tough Guys, later called the East Side Kids, and finally called the Bowery Boys.

Jack did everything he could in order to get himself and his family out of the Lower East Side. His future was in his art. Early on, Jack became part of the Boys Brotherhood Republic, a local club at 290 East 3rd Street which served as a haven to keep kids out of trouble. (The “BBR” exists to this day.) He later worked freelance, and did a relatively short stint at the Max Fleischer Animation offices at 1600 Broadway, as an in-betweener (Jack would draw the in-between motion of the characters while the head animators would draw the extreme poses). Later he worked for Will Eisner, then located at 202 East 44th Street, and then for Victor Fox at Fox Studios (480 Lexington Avenue, Room 912 in the same building as DC Comics at the time), eventually meeting up with artist Joe Simon.

The Simon & Kirby team were so prolific that during their lunch hours at the Victor Fox company, they rented a studio in one of the buildings in the East 40s known as Tudor City Place and moonlighted (between 1st and 2nd Avenues and between 41st and 43rd Streets). They produced many innovative titles for different publishers, with the following being each firm’s address during the 1940s: Prize Publications (also known as Crestwood) at 1790 Broadway, Harvey Comics at 67 West 47th Street, and most notably Timely (later Marvel) at 330 West 42nd Street (the McGraw Hill Building). In the second half of the 1950s, Jack did work for National Periodical Publication (DC) at 480 Lexington Avenue (currently at 1700 Broadway). Then Stan Lee came into the picture.

Jack first met Stan around 1940, when Martin Goodman, publisher at Timely gave his relative, Stanley Leiber, work as an office “gofer.” Joe Simon was editor at the time, with Jack as art director. Stan started out better—at least in a finer neighborhood—than Jack, having been born on Manhattan’s upper west side. However, the Great Depression forced the family to relocate further north to Washington Heights (upper Manhattan). He attended DeWitt Clinton High School up in the Bronx (at 100 West Mosholu Parkway South and East 205th Street), a school which also graduated Batman co-creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger. Stan wasn’t a scrapper like Jack, and led his young life a bit of a loner, with his head in the books. He was very active in school, typical of an extrovert, and was part of the law society, chess club, and the public speaking club among others (and was nicknamed Gabby). Stan eventually became a writer by just “being there” at the Timely offices, waiting for his opportunity, and it finally came. He wrote the text pages for early issues of Captain America, the pages that nobody ever reads, which in turn

Retrospective

When Jacob Met Stanley

by Ger Apeldoorn Compare the timid romance work Kirby did for this cover to Harvey’s Hi-School Romance #54 (Aug. 1956, below, courtesy of Heritage Auctions) to the action-packed splash page for the story “UFO, the Lightning Man” from Yellow Claw #3 (Feb. 1957, next page).

Hi-School Romance TM & ©2009 Harvey Comics. Yellow Claw TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

ecently, Marvel made headlines with a romantic comic series about a couple of teenagers who meet each other at a holiday camp and get into serious trouble of the relationship kind. The series by Mark Millar and Terry and Rachel Dodson attracted all that attention because it is set ‘some years ago’ and the main characters are called Ben, Richard, Mary and May, leaving open the possibility that this story is about the parents of Peter Parker, how they met and maybe even how the future Spider-Man was conceived.

The story we are about to tell here is just as surprising and fraught with emotion. It is about the parents of the Fantastic Four, how they met and how they conceived an entire universe.

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Looking For Work Most books on Jack Kirby or his contemporaries make it seems as if the period from 1955 till 1959 was one big step. He

set up his own company with Joe Simon and when that failed he went to Stan Lee. Even Jack himself was guilty of that, putting together all memories of those four years in one big lump. This article is an attempt to pull all those memories apart again and see if a detailed look at the work Jack produced in that period can give us a clue as to what was going on behind the scenes. Some of the stuff I came up with is pure conjecture, but all of it is at its very least not contradicted by what we know of the work, the period and the people involved.

We start in 1955, when the collapse of their publishing company Mainline forced Jack Kirby and Joe Simon to break up their 15-year partnership as a creative team. They sold some titles and inventory to Charlton and made a deal to produce at least one issue of From Here To Insanity for them, but that was not enough to live on. Joe Simon found work as an editor for Harvey and Jack Kirby had to find work on his own. He was immediately hired by Joe to produce some covers for the Harvey romance and war lines and some interior work as well as covers for their horror comic Black Cat Mystery. This may have been a part of the deal Harvey made with Joe Simon, or they may have not cared who Simon hired. It is not clear if he did all those covers in one go or if they were ordered a couple each month. True BrideTo-Be Romances #19, published August 1956, has a Kirby cover about a trailer bride which does seem to belong to a story called “Trailer Bride” inside, but it doesn’t fit the story in any way. It could have been drawn before or after the story was written. Same goes for the cover for Warfront #34, published much later in September 1958. It seems to illustrate the story “Tomorrow’s War,” but it has no connection to that story other than the title. So they could have been drawn all at once and assigned to different titles later— which doesn’t answer the question of why a story about a trailer bride would be in a title called True Bride-To-Be Romances, but comics historians can only explain so much.

At the same time Kirby went back to Prize and started doing romance stories for them again. Together with Joe Simon he had launched the whole romance trend, but at this point most of the life was pressed out of it by the Comics Code and repetition. Kirby kept doing these stories until the late Fifties, so they formed a reliable part of his income, but he was never challenged by them as he was earlier on, and as a whole they were not very interesting.

He also stepped up his efforts to get into the newspaper strip business, starting all sorts of strips with different inkers.

None of them were picked up, but it did get him some work, first as a temporary replacement for Johnny Hazard and later on as penciler for Frank Giacoia’s Johnny Reb. Still, that wasn’t enough. Or the Harvey work slowed down. After drawing a full issue of Black Cat Mystery published in September 1956, it took the company a whole year to publish the next issue. Whatever the reason, Jack Kirby decided to go back to Marvel (or Timely, as it was called then).

Inventory Story This can’t have been easy. Joe Simon and he had not left the company in the best of circumstances almost 15 years earlier. After they had found out that they were not getting their full share of the Captain America profits, they secretly made a deal with DC to come and work there.

While they were fulfilling their contract at Marvel/Timely, they were starting up the DC work on their lunch breaks.

Stan Lee, who was at that moment no more than a young 6

guy doing odd jobs around the office and annoying everyone by playing his recorder, followed them to their secret hideaway. Years later, Kirby loved to tell the tale of how Stan found them out, how he promised not to tell his ‘uncles’ and how he snitched on them anyway. A very unpleasant meeting with the Goodman brothers was the result and that led to their departure and years of bad feelings between Martin Goodman and Joe Simon. To go back to Stan Lee and ask for work, must not have been easy for Jack. He may not have had much reason to hate him after 15 years, but he had no reason to respect him either. But while people of his generation may have had feelings like that, they certainly didn’t dwell on them. So Jack went to Stan. And he may even have had a good excuse to make the situation a little bit easier.

This whole article started when someone on the Yahoo Atlas Newsgroup mentioned that the first two stories Kirby did for Atlas (the name given to all Marvel/ Timely titles because that was the name of the distribution company also owned by Goodman) may have been inventory stories from his Harvey run. These stories in Astonishing #56 and Strange Tales Of The Unusual #7 are similar to Jack’s Harvey work in subject and inking style.

If Jack had done all his Harvey work in one go, maybe even including those that weren’t published until a year later, he could have walked into Stan’s office with those pages and said something like: “Hey, Stan. I did these for Harvey, but I don’t think they are going to use them. Is there anything in there for you?” That certainly would have made an awkward situation easier.

JOB # K-282 K-651 K-652

KIRBY MID-1950s ATLAS STORIES courtesy Dr. Michael Vassallo ISSUE DATE TITLE Battleground #14 Nov 1956 “Mine Field!”

Strange Tales of the Unusual #7 Dec 1956 “Poker Face!”

Astonishing #56 Dec 1956 “Afraid to Dream!”

PAGES 5 pages 4 pages 4 pages

K-915 K-663 K-648 K-868

Yellow Claw #2 Yellow Claw #2 Yellow Claw #2 Yellow Claw #2

Dec 1956 Dec 1956 Dec 1956 Dec 1956

“Concentrate on Chaos!”

“Mystery in Cabin 361!”

“The Yellow Claw!”

“Temu-Jal...The Golden Goliath

5 pages 5 pages 4 pages 5 pages

L-67 ?

L-68 L-69 L-70

Yellow Claw #3 Yellow Claw #3 Yellow Claw #3 Yellow Claw #3

Feb 1957 Feb 1957 Feb 1957 Feb 1957

“The Microscopic Army!”

“The Yellow Claw Captured!”

“UFO the Lightning Man!” “Sleeping City!”

5 pages 4 pages 5 pages 5 pages

L-181

Quick-Trigger Western #16

Feb 1957

“The Vengeance of Growling Bear!” 4 pages

L-391 L-392 L-393 L-394

Yellow Claw #4 Yellow Claw #4 Yellow Claw #4 Yellow Claw #4

Apr 1957 Apr 1957 Apr 1957 Apr 1957

“The Living Shadows!”

“Five Million Sleep-Walkers!”

“The Screemies!”

“The Thought Master!”

5 pages 4 pages 5 pages 5 pages

L-907 L-986 M-40

Black Rider Rides Again #1 Black Rider Rides Again #1 Black Rider Rides Again #1

Sept 1957 Sept 1957 Sept 1957

“The Legend of the Black Rider “Duel at Dawn!”

“Treachery at Hangman’s Bridge

7 pages 6 pages 6 pages

M-480T

Gunsmoke Western #12

Sept 1957

“No One Can Outdraw Him!”

5 pages

M-526 M-615 M-556 ?

Gunsmoke Western #47 Gunsmoke Western #51 Kid Colt Outlaw #86

July 1958 Mar 1959 Sept 1959

“Trouble in Leadville!”

“The Raiders Strike!”

“Meeting At Midnight!”

4 pages 5 pages

But is there any hard evidence for this, except for a similarity in style? Well, there always are the job numbers. At Atlas, all stories were given a job title, that can usually be found on the splash page (if the coloring or the printing hasn’t obliterated them). For the first 10,000 or so (actually slightly more) they consisted of four numbers. After that they consist of a letter and three numbers. Not all letters were used and there are some instances known of numbering going over 999, but all in all it is a great way to track the stories for collectors. The numbers were given out by the Atlas staff for keeping track of the payments, of course. They were given out with story assignments to the writers or when they came in, but they give a rough indication in which order certain artists did certain stories as well. So how can we use them to tell us something about the supposedly inventory stories Kirby did for Atlas?

Well, if Kirby brought in the two stories together, completely drawn and written, they would have to have consecutive numbers. When asked in the Atlas Newsgroup, Doc Vassallo provided the numbers for all stories Jack Kirby did in his mid-Fifties run at Atlas (above).

As you can see, Kirby did quite a bit of work for Stan Lee in a short period. If Kirby was expecting trouble at Atlas, he certainly didn’t get it. Stan Lee knew a good thing when he saw it and gave Kirby a couple of plum assignments. We are now familiar with the idea of Kirby and Lee working together, but it wasn’t all that logical at that point. Kirby had just come from a long period of working together with Joe Simon. He hadn’t had any big successes in a while. Stan Lee had more than enough artists. And still he took Yellow Claw away from his favorite artist, Joe Maneely, and gave it to Jack. When that didn’t work out, he put him at work on a couple of western titles of his own. Stan Lee was a smart man.

And he bought two inventory stories and gave them the next two job numbers available: K-651 and K-652.

Not only that, he also gave him a war story to do: K-282. This was one of the scripts that was laying on his desk, so the numbering is lower than that of the horror stories, even though they are all published at about the same time. It can’t have taken Jack more than a week to deliver that war story, so that makes sense too. But the job number list tells us more.

The Yellow Claw Two other story numbers are close to the numbers the old Harvey stories got: K-663 “Mystery in Cabin 361!,” which was the second story in Yellow Claw #2, which was published at the same time as Astonishing #56 and Strange Tales Of The 7

The Man

Team Player

scientists in the sci-fi films of the 1950s. Johnny’s a typical rock-and-roll loving, hot rod obsessed youngster.

Sue’s the domesticated, Code-approved blonde bombshell, and Ben’s an atomic age monster. Were any of these comparisons in your thinking or Jack’s as you began work on the title?

STAN LEE: I can’t speak for Jack, but you hit the nail on the head. Your descriptions are just as I thought of them, and just as I wanted them. On top of Jack’s other incredible talents, I think he was also able to read my mind—and then improve on what little he found there.

TJKC: Did the success of the Fantastic Four surprise you?

STAN: Yes, but not very much. I personally liked the book so much that I’d have been surprised if it hadn’t been well received.

TJKC: I remember you having Reed threaten cornered villains with lines like, “Talk! Or I’ll turn you over to the Thing!!” Sometimes Mr. Fantastic would have to restrain Ben from doing bodily harm (see FF #3 for one example) to a beaten baddie. But by the sixth issue, Ben got a real sense of humor and was becoming more ‘cuddly.’ Did you and Jack feel he had to be toned down a bit?

STAN: Yes. (How’s that for exercising verbal restraint?)

Stan the Man talks about the Lee and Kirby super-teams Interview conducted by Jerry Boyd (above) A rarely-seen 1960s photo of Stan Lee, hard at work in his Marvel office. (below) This Astonishing Ant-Man piece was drawn

by Jack and Dick Ayers for promotional use in the early 1960s. (bottom center) Custom head shots done by Kirby for the 1970 Marvelmania sticker set.

All characters this spread TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

(Stan Lee is considered by many to be comicdom’s greatest editor (and you can add this fanzine contributor to that list of supporters) for not only his sterling work in overseeing the Marvel Age of Comics, but his pure instincts in gathering/nurturing talent as the de facto art director, and his wonderful dialogue and concepts.

A hero was a true hero under Lee. Whether it was Kid Colt or the Rawhide Kid seeking to redeem themselves for their youthful indiscretions by taking down the unredeemable outlaws of the Old West, or Peter Parker fighting off his insecurities to launch himself into a battle only Spider-Man could win, Stan taught his readers responsibility, strength through adversity, and triumph over pain and loss. The work wasn’t just entertaining, but also inspiring.

With “King” Kirby, Mr. Lee co-created three super-teams (five if you count the Howlers and SHIELD—and this time out, we’ll include them). During the 1960s the Lee and Kirby team (a super-team in and of itself!) would not only invigorate the medium but show all the difficulties possible for driven individuals with supernatural assets (super powers and super problems).

Stan’s very busy these days, but he has our thanks for graciously taking time out to do this new questionand-answer session for the Jack Kirby Collector. This interview was conducted by e-mail in March, June, and September of 2008 and transcribed by Irving Forbush.)

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: The Fantastic Four came first. At a casual glance, you have Reed Richards who’s all of the tall, square-jawed, pipe smoking

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TJKC: You came up with exceptional supporting characters. Did you look at DC’s Justice League of America, for example, and take note that their supporting casts weren’t very strong and then made sure your line-up provided alternatives?

STAN: Truth to tell, I don’t remember ever reading any Justice League comics, although I occasionally thumbed through them to see how the artwork looked. I wouldn’t have had any idea who their supporting characters were.

TJKC: The FF truly became a family after Sue and Reed got married, making the Torch and Mr. Fantastic brothers-in-law, and Ben a godfather after little Franklin was born. Before that, there was romantic tension involving Namor—a love triangle. Did you ever consider scrapping the marriage to keep that angle going or marrying Reed and Sue off to other characters?

STAN: No. From the beginning I intended for Reed and Sue to marry. But it was fun letting Namor have a crush on her. I even toyed with the idea of Dr. Doom wanting to take her away from Reed, but somehow I never seemed to get around to that.

Meanwhile, At Avengers Mansion...

TJKC: The Avengers’ success came out of the individual successes of Ant-Man and the Wasp, the Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man. Was this title as much fun for you and Kirby to do as the FF ? Or was it more difficult—due to you having to maintain continuity between the Assemblers as a team and as solo acts in their own series?

STAN: I can’t speak for Jack, who never seemed to have trouble with anything art-wise or plot-wise, but as for me, I preferred

Gallery 1

Marvel Age of InkERS

by John Morrow

Stan Lee paired Jack Kirby with some exceptional inkers during the 1960s at Marvel, each lending a unique style to his pencils. Here are some of the best.

Scans courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

C

harles Eber “Chic” Stone (January 4, 1923 – July 28, 2000)

Chic Stone broke into comics in 1939 at age 16, working for comic-book packager Eisner & Iger. In the 1940s, he worked on the original Captain Marvel for Fawcett Comics, and Boy Comics for Lev Gleason Publications. For Timely Comics, he contributed to Blonde Phantom Comics, Joker Comics, All Select Comics, and Kid Komics.

He left comics during the 1950s to become an art director for magazines, but returned during the 1960s to work for the American Comics Group (ACG) on Adventures into the Unknown. At Marvel Comics in the 1960s, he inked Kirby on Fantastic Four, X-Men, The Mighty Thor, and numerous covers.

Later he freelanced for DC Comics on Batman, occasionally ghosting for artist Bob Kane. He penciled numerous stories for Tower Comics’ T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, worked on Nemesis in ACG’s Forbidden Worlds and Unknown Worlds, plus did work for Dell Comics, Skywald Publications’ blackand-white horror magazines, and in the late 1970s and 1980s, he worked for Archie Comics, including its “Red Circle” and “Archie Adventure Series” superhero lines. Stone was inking for Marvel as late as The Mighty Thor #321 (July 1982). In the early 1990s, he drew commissioned art in Silver Age Kirby-Stone style for sales through dealers. [source: en.wikipedia.org]

(this page) Journey Into Mystery #106 splash page (July 1964).

TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

16

P

aul J. Reinman (September 2, 1910 September 27, 1988)

Paul Reinman entered comics in the 1940s at All-American Comics (which later merged into DC Comics) working on such characters as the Golden Age Green Lantern, Wildcat, The Atom, Starman and Wonder Woman. He also worked for MLJ on the Black Hood, the Hangman and the Wizard. Golden Age work for Timely Comics included Human Torch and Sub-Mariner stories in Captain America Comics and elsewhere. He worked in other genres for Marvel’s 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics.

In the late-1950s, Reinman became a frequent inker of Kirby’s work in Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery, as well as on the espionage series Yellow Claw. He would eventually ink Kirby on numerous landmark Marvel books, including Incredible Hulk #1, X-Men #1-5, and Avengers #2, 3 and 5.

In 1965, Reinman and Jerry Siegel created The Mighty Crusaders for Archie Comics’ short-lived superhero line. He also produced work for the American Comics Group, and remained active through at least the mid1970s, penciling Ka-Zar #1 (Jan. 1974) and assisting John Romita on the pencils of Amazing SpiderMan #132 (May 1974). [source: en.wikipedia.org]

(this page) Journey Into Mystery #102 “Tales of Asgard” splash page (March 1964).

TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

17

Tribute

(below) Left to right, that’s Jerry Robinson, Joe Ruby, and Ken Spears. Photos by the incomparable Chris Ng, who’s always on hand to snap shots for our use; thanks as always, Chris!

2008 Kirby Tribute Panel (Conducted Sunday, July 27, 2008, at 10 a.m. as part of Comic-Con International: San Diego, and featuring comic book legend Jerry Robinson and animation producers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears.

Kirby attorney Paul S. Levine was also present on the panel, but time restrictions limited his input. Moderated by Mark Evanier, and transcribed and edited by John Morrow.)

MARK EVANIER: In honor of Jack Kirby, will you all please set your cell phones on “explode.” (laughter) This is the annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, so inevitably I’m Mark Evanier. (applause) I’d like to apologize for the hour; I do not make the schedule for this convention, I just live in it. We’re gonna divide this into three chapters. The first part is going to be a brief rambling by me, kind of a “state of Kirby” speech. Then I’m going to have announcements, and if you have a Kirby-related announcement you’d like to make, that’d be the time to do it. The third part is we’re going to be talking to these gentlemen about Jack and their relationship to him. Let me introduce them to you.

On my immediate left is one of the great legends of the comic book business. People have been coming up to me for several days at this convention, saying, “I can’t believe I just met the guy who created the Joker, and drew all those neat Batman stories.” When they gave the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award to this man, that’s what it was meant for. When they gave it to me, they made a mockery of it. (laughter) This is Mr. Jerry Robinson, ladies and gentlemen. (applause) As we’ll discuss when we get to Act Three of these proceedings, Jack had a lot of career turmoil in the late 1970s and early

Levine, folks. (applause) I’m going to start this by talking at some length about Jack, and a thought that occurred to me. A lot of people here did not have the opportunity to meet Jack; that’s one of the reasons we do these panels, so those of us who did can pass on that wonderful little glow we got from being near the man. When you met Jack, you might come to him and say, “I want a sketch of the Thing” or “I want an autograph.” What you got that was most valuable—he usually wouldn’t do a sketch for you. He would sometimes autograph, depending on how his drawing hand was at the time. But what you got from Jack, if you were perceptive enough to receive it—which many people were not—was always a philosophical concept. Because the most valuable thing Jack had, even more so than his ability to draw great looking monsters and such, was a perception.

You’ve heard me talk or write in the past about how Jack predicted this and that. People have asked me if he had psychic powers. I don’t believe in psychic powers; if I ever did I would believe that Jack had them. I still don’t believe people have psychic powers, but I do believe that some human beings on this planet are just smarter than other people, and some of them are more perceptive than other people, at least in certain areas.

Those of us who knew Jack can itemize areas where he was not perceptive; this is a man who could not drive a car because he would drive off the road inevitably. But when it came to grand visions of the future—where something was going—he didn’t know where he was always going, but he always knew where the future was going. One of the concepts Jack gave me to think

1980s. He felt very alienated from the comic book business. He was unhappy in it for a number of reasons—not the least of which was that it was still the comic book business after all those years. He found an escape route; Mister Miracle managed to get out of the comic book business and the prison that it was for him, and worked very happily in animation for many years.

He worked very happily for these two gentlemen, who had and still have a very fine animation studio named Ruby-Spears.

These are Mr. Joe Ruby and Mr. Ken Spears. (applause) On the far end is the Kirby family attorney. Jack had two wonderful lawyers working for him during the original art battle which you all know about, and some of the other battles he fought. Now this gentleman represents the Kirby Estate and many other people you know, even me. This is Mr. Paul S.

about a lot—he’d throw out new ways of looking at it over the years—was something that might be called “the passing of the torch.” I met Jack in July of 1969; it is scary to me—and one of those thoughts I can’t quite wrap my brain around—that at that point, Jack was younger than I am today, by a couple of years.

He seemed old to me; not old in a bad way. He seemed like an adult, an experienced guy with years and years on him, and I was this stupid, geeky kid who knew too damn much about comic books, and look where it’s got me. (laughter) And I don’t feel like I’ve changed, but obviously something has changed.

This is my 12th panel of this convention, and I have five in a row today. It dawned on me as I was looking at my schedule— the next panel in this room is a tribute to a man named Dave Stevens. Dave was even younger than I am, and we lost him this 25

Mark Evanier moderated the panel.

year. We also lost a friend of ours—a friend of Jack’s, who we’ll be talking about a little later today, because he worked with Ruby-Spears a lot—named Steve Gerber. It is stunning to me that I am presiding over memorial services for people like this. It’s one thing to post on my weblog that Creig Flessel has left us; Creig Flessel was what, 94? It’s sad when you lose these people, but 94 is not a bad age to go these days. (laughter) In your fifties—Steve Gerber was just barely 60—that’s kind of jarring, especially for those of us who are 56 years old. (laughter) I’m conscious of the fact that Jack was one of the few guys when I got into comics in 1970, who really embraced that idea that it was time for his generation to step aside, and a new generation to take over. There were lots of people in comics who loved the fans, as long as they stayed fans. The unspoken sentiment, or occasionally spoken by a couple of people out loud, was, “You’re not here to replace us, you’re here to appreciate us. You’re here to support us, you’re here to buy our stuff, you’re here to slobber over us. But you’re not going to replace us.” Jack’s attitude to every new kid who came to him was, “Welcome to the business. It’s going to be yours any day now.”

One of the comics Jack did at the time I first knew him was a book called The Forever People. Of all the comics that Jack did during our association, where I feel that I have a certain understanding of what he was going for, the one that I think least came out the way he intended was The Forever People. He was having a lot of trouble with New Gods and Mister Miracle, because he was getting all this strange input from different sources, and he had too damn many ideas to cram into too few issues.

But in Forever People, what he envisioned was not the comic he did. Forever People—you can see some of this between the panels, and it’s in some of the panels—was a book about the passing of the torch.

It was about how the Old Gods had to step aside to make way for the New Gods; not because they wanted to, but because that’s just the way it works. Jack quoted to me one time a line that was, I think, attributed to William F. Buckley, who also just passed away. It said, “The job of a political conservative is to stand astride history and yell ‘Go back in the other direction.’” (laughter) And Jack’s answer was, “What a stupid idea,” (laughter, applause) if for no other reason than that it never works that way. Even 26

if you want it to, it doesn’t work that way. So Jack was very supportive in an amazing way, of the new generation.

I met Dave Stevens at Jack’s house around 1971, and Jack was encouraging him. Now, Jack encouraged everybody. You could come to Jack with the worst artwork in the world, and Jack would say, “You’re great! Keep at it! Keep working hard!” (laughter) Because even though he might not believe in your artwork, he believed in energy, and youthful enthusiasm, and human spirit, and he believed that it should never be squashed or discouraged. So there was no way Jack ever discouraged anyone. But Jack had two kinds of encouragement. He had the encouragement he gave to everybody off the street who came to him with stuff scrawled on the back of loose-leaf notebook paper—these bad tracings of Fin Fang Foom. “You’re great! Keep at it!” And he had the encouragement he gave to people with genuine talent—the encouragement he gave to Dave Stevens, the encouragement he gave to Scott Shaw!,

the encouragement he gave to a girl named Wendy Fletcher, who’s now known as Wendy Pini. And it was a different kind of encouragement, in many cases an encouragement not to get into comic books— not to think that inking Spider-Man was a life goal.

Jack would say to them in various permutations the phrase, “I’ve done about as well as you can do in comics, and it ain’t all that fabulous.” On one of these panels years ago, Wendy Pini said Jack, when he saw her work, said, “If I catch you working for Marvel, I’m gonna spank you.” (laughter) Because he believed that so many other things were possible.

He was very frustrated that, for him, working at DC and Marvel were the only options for so long, until he met people like Joe and Ken here.

I have no real finish for this, other than it seemed like an appropriate thing to mention, because after this is over, we’re going to have to sit here and talk about Dave, and Dave was a guy Jack was very proud of.

We have in the room a person or two who are

actually related to Jack Kirby, but in a certain sense we are all second cousins and nephews of this guy.

You know the reason we do these panels? I like spending an hour with people who are smart enough to appreciate Jack Kirby. (applause) If you want to get applause in a room, you just compliment the audience. (laughter, more applause) Anyway...

To the extent that I can leave you with a philosophical concept the way Jack always did—and I’m nowhere near as good at it as he was; nobody is as good at it as he was—if you stay for the Dave Stevens panel, or you have to leave and you can just think about Dave and Steve Gerber and people like that, remember that the future only works in one direction. One of the geniuses of Jack was that he was always running out to get ahead of everybody. He would take you back to World War II gladly, but he didn’t want to live there.

It was a cautionary note; World War II was a very important metaphor in Jack’s life, so it couldn’t be forgotten, the way you shouldn’t forget the Holocaust, or you shouldn’t forget things that destroy people’s lives, and their world, and make sure you don’t replicate them—because God knows we don’t want to get into an unnecessary war again. (groans from audience, laughter) The thing that you need to remember, if you think about Jack, was there’s always a bigger picture, and the world keeps expanding, and getting bigger. And the only way to aspire to what Jack did is try to keep getting out in front of it, and being ahead of everybody. In Jack’s case, he sometimes got a little too far ahead of everybody, but that was what I thought I should say today at this panel. Thank you. (applause) We are now going to segue to the Kirby Announcements section; I have a couple. One is that Lisa Kirby, who could not be with us today, wanted you to know that there is another volume of Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters in the works, coming soon to a bookstore near you. We are so happy to see the new work being done in the Kirby tradition and the Kirby name, the Kirby milieu.

Last year on this panel I was sitting with Neil Gaiman, and we got to talking about our favorite work, and Neal and I share a mutual love for a book Jack did called “The Losers.”

There was a gust of enthusiasm in this room for “The Losers,” and in the back of the room, a man named Bob Wayne hauled out his Blackberry, texted DC and said, “We’ve gotta reprint ‘The Losers’ next.” (laughter) DC is going to reprint “The Losers” next. (applause) I have a prediction I have made—and please understand this is my prediction; it’s not an official announcement— that everything major Jack ever did will be in print within five years. They’re going to get to it, and we’re going to announce a few more before time is out here. The only exceptions might be things like 2001 or Justice Inc. where there were licensing issues involved. I suspect even those will eventually be surmounted. My prediction does not include those, although it would not surprise me if those were out there. He is as commercial as he’s ever been; the books that Jack did that were considered failures at the time are now hits; this is the most amazing legacy to remember about Jack.

I am now going to play Oprah here, and segue out into the audience. I’d like you to meet Jack’s grandson Jeremy. (applause)

Jack’s grandson, Jeremy Kirby.

JEREMY KIRBY: Hey, how’s everyone doing? (applause) On behalf of the whole family, I’d just like to thank everyone for being here; it’s great to see the panel growing in size every year. So on behalf of the entire family, including my sister who’s about to give birth, we all say “thank you,” and it’s heartfelt. Really, thank you so much. (applause) Of course, Mark Evanier who puts this on every year, this is just amazing. We love him; he’s just as much a family member as I am to my grandfather, so thank you Mark. (applause) And the other panelists up here, thank you, guys. We appreciate it, and I’m excited to hear everyone speak. (applause)

(previous page) Dave Stevens’ gorgeous inks and colors, which we ran as the centerfold of TJKC #19. (above) Splash page pencils from Our Fighting Forces #154 (April 1975), featuring the Losers.

Check out DC’s new Losers hardcover collection for some of Kirby’s best 1970s work.

Captain America and Bucky TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. Losers TM & ©2009 DC Comics.

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Gallery 2

n 2008, Marvel Comics released Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure, wherein editor Tom Brevoort brought to fruition his grand plan of getting Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott together to complete all the Kirby pages we’d assembled from Jack’s rejected story, originally planned for FF #102. Parts of it had been rejiggered and sandwiched together with John Buscema art to make FF #108, after Kirby had already left Marvel for DC in 1970. But Tom had seen the pencil page reassembly we’d attempted here in TJKC, and figured it would be cool to present it in finished form for the world to see.

Only problem was, try as we might (and believe me, I did!), there were still one full page and random panels missing from Jack’s original story. So Marvel had Ron Frenz draw some bridge artwork to fix the gaps where the missing art went, and with Joe Sinnott’s inks, it held together pretty nicely. I highly recommend you pick up a copy if you haven’t already.

But as luck would have it, a short while after Marvel released FF: Lost, the missing pencil page from that story surfaced, and I’m delighted to present it as this issue’s centerfold. And in the spirit of the Thor reassembly we did last issue, I figured it was time to re-present our detective work on this lost issue at larger size than we’ve run it before.

Enjoy!

If you know the whereabouts of the remaining missing panels of Kirby pencil art, please let us know, so we can eventually get the complete story totally reassembled. ★

I

Fantastic Four TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

36

FF Lost & Found

Obscura

Barry Forshaw A regular column focusing on Kirby’s least known work,

by Barry Forshaw

A MUST FOR YOUR KIRBY LIBRARY know times are tough. Most of us live in a heightened nervous state, not sure whether or not we’ll have jobs tomorrow—so we’re perhaps less inclined to splash out on luxury purchases.

But even if you have to go without food, any self-respecting Kirby aficionado will need to buy The Best of Simon and Kirby, which has just appeared in a sumptuous hardback from Titan Books.

(Actually, the book is reasonably priced—and isn’t really a bank-account-busting item.) This is the first volume in The Official Simon and Kirby Library, the only collected editions authorized by Joe Simon and the estate of Jack Kirby, showcasing the work of the most acclaimed creative team in the checkered history of the comics medium.

Painstakingly overseen by Joe Simon himself (and studded with his observations and behind-the-scenes revelations), this bumper-sized, glowingly full-color hardcover boasts some of the most striking stories ever told in the graphic medium, lovingly restored by Simon & Kirby historian Harry Mendryk.

Compiled by editor and friend of Joe Simon, Steve Saffel, the collection showcases the team’s groundbreaking work in every genre of comics, including super-heroes, sciencefiction, war and adventure, romance, crime drama, westerns, horror, and humor, and each section is accompanied by a brand new introduction by Kirby Collector’s Mark Evanier (whose own Kirby: King of Comics is a necessary adjunct to this book). The choice of material reprinted here (while mostly exemplary) is open to argument, but more on that later.

The Best of S&K sports the duo’s most famous characters, notably Fighting American, Stuntman, and The Fly, along with choice selections from such groundbreaking titles as Black Magic, Justice Traps the Guilty, and the industry’s first romance title, Young Romance. There are also pieces from the team’s years at Timely Comics: “Captain America and the Riddle of the Red Skull” (from Captain America Comics #1, March 1941) and “The Vision” (from Marvel Mystery Comics #14, December 1940), along with two stories from their move to DC Comics: Sandman in “The Villain from Valhalla” (from Adventure Comics #75, June 1942) and “Satan Wears a Swastika” (from Boy Commandos #1, Winter 1942).

As you may have noticed from this column, I consider some of Kirby’s finest work to be done for such companies as Harvey in the 1950s, and I’m naturally a little disappointed that the glorious Race for the Moon is represented by only one story—and though “The Thing on Sputnik 4” is excellent, it’s by no means the best work the team did on the title (I’d have sacrificed one or more of the earlier, cruder pieces S&K did in the 1940s—full of energy, but lacking the finesse of their later work). However, the riches here are abundant, and the large format does total justice to the matchless artwork. Even if you

I

Looking for inexpensive reprints of the stories featured this issue? Sorry, Win A Prize #1 and #2 (1955) haven't been reprinted, but House of Mystery #85 (April 1959) was reprinted in DC Special #11 (March 1971).

House of Mystery TM & ©2009 DC Comics.

Fighting America, Young Romance, Win A Prize TM & ©2009 Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estate.

52

Foundations

Black-&-White Magic Art reconstruction, color, and commentary by Chris Fama

n late 1950, Young Romance and Young Love were already very successful monthly titles for Simon & Kirby. But romance comics weren’t the only successful genre on the stands; horror titles like Tales from the Crypt were also making a splash. Simon & Kirby’s Black Magic began publication in late 1950, competing against EC titles later considered some of the best comics ever produced.

If you compare this story to Young Romance #30, both cover dated February 1951, the differences are remarkable.

While the Young Romance story is very formulaic artistically, “A Silver Bullet For Your Heart” is Simon & Kirby firing on all eight cylinders. All you need do is look at this splash to see two men raising their own artistic bar to new staggering heights. This may also be one of the first uses of Kirby Krackle (see page 7 of the story). ★

I

TM & ©2009 Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estate.

If you enjoy these amazing vintage Simon & Kirby stories, look for many more of them—in full-color—in Titan’s Best of Simon & Kirby (out now), and the subsequent follow-up volumes coming soon.

56

Retrospective (below) “Groot,” one of a seemingly endless stream of wouldbe world-conquering monsters from Lee & Kirby. This splash page is from Tales To Astonish #13 (Nov. 1960), with inks by Dick Ayers. Other artists did monster stories, but few did ’em as eye-catching as the King. (next page) Detail of a hard-riding Two-Gun Kid from Kirby’s final issue of the character, #62 (March 1963).

Characters TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

62

Genre Comics

An overview of the Lee and Kirby forays into fantasy

by Jerry Boyd imon and Kirby had made a commendable effort into selfpublishing, but the comic landscape of the mid-’50s was rapidly changing, and their titles, while memorable and often wonderful, didn’t garner the readership of earlier successes at Timely and National.

From Here to Insanity, Fighting American, Black Magic, and others had to fight for exposure on the overcrowded newsstands and spinner racks. Newer readers were taken with EC Comics and the pressure of PTA groups and socio-political watchdogs had been a threat to creativity that made many creative types go into hiding, or advertising… wherever their talents could thrive.

Jack Kirby was still determined to go on to new heights in the comic industry. Like other cartoonists, he had to be shaken by the angry backlash that spawned the Comics Code and its (sometimes ridiculous) restrictions, but he’d weathered worse trials. He’d survived the Great Depression, and the combat zones of Western Europe near the end of WWII. He’d get through this.

S

The King had to contemplate the stability of his reordered field and decide which company or companies could best serve his needs and that of his growing family.

His clients in the latter part of the decade would include Harvey, Atlas, Charlton, and DC, but a conflict with Jack Schiff would eventually exclude the latter.

Charlton paid less than any other publishing house and their distribution was shaky. Harvey was marginalizing the type of heroic adventures Jack was keenly adept at, and would come to be dominated by funny animals and funny kids and funnier devils, ghosts, and witches, etc., as time went on.

Martin Goodman’s Atlas Comics wasn’t a top payer either, but Goodman had weathered the storm also, so Kirby went to their offices and shook hands with Stan Lee, the sole editor-inchief of the comic line in 1955, and began doing stories. By 1961 it would pay off handsomely in terms of stability and creativity and take both men into a universe neither one could’ve seen in the making at the time they began work together.

Monsters, Aliens, and Robots— Fantasy As You Like It! The moviegoers of America were tantalized by monsters throughout the ’50s, but with television sets becoming more prevalent by the end of the decade, something slightly different was in the air.

Television stations were hungry for product to fill the airwaves. Movie studios, finally realizing that TV was here to stay, decided to play ball, and sold their film libraries to these stations and networks. Old movies (and even ones that weren’t that old) got shown on “The Late Show” and “Afternoon Theater.” (In my native North Carolina, a local station from the city of Durham broadcast a “Jungle Theater” in the early ’60s that specialized in any old feature with Tarzan, Jungle Jim, and so on in it.) Others focused on horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films. Their gore-shocks were banned in comics, but welcome to squealing young viewers who’d never seen such cinematic thrills before.

Was Stan influenced by any of this?

“Of course we were,” he told me by e-mail. “We were influenced by everything that went on around us…”

Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, and Tales of Suspense all began as horror and science-fiction anthologies in the 1950s. But if youngsters were running to movie houses to see towering monsters like Godzilla, Konga, and Gorgo (just to name three), then Stan would give ’em towering monsters. Giant creatures were Code-proof. Stan had done them before the comic watchdogs had come around, so it’d be a simple matter to continue them.

This time, Lee had the makings of what would be the “founding fathers of Marvel” with him. Steve Ditko, Don Heck, Joe Sinnott, Paul Reinman, Vince Colletta, Larry Lieber, Dick Ayers, and Jack Kirby became the new regulars on these monster books and others. Taking a cinematic cue from “The Late Show,” Kirby drew an astonishing amount of brutish behemoths that came from within the earth’s innermost recesses, beyond the galaxy’s farthest reaches, and wherever else his collaborations with Lee would place them!

Martin Goodman’s company once (before the infamous Atlas implosion—see Kirby Collector #18) put out plenty of comic magazines. But the Code, lowered sales, and Goodman’s distribution deal with competitor DC left the line-up depleted. Happily for Jack and Stan, the four aforementioned monster books and additions Amazing Adventures (which began in 1961) and World of Fantasy (1958-59) were there to add to their paychecks.

Though letters columns were not de rigeur during the late ’50s at Atlas, Stan noticed that the distinctive styles of Ditko and Kirby were drawing readers in. Kirby got more cover assignments and the two artists often shared space in the same mags. Ditko occasionally inked Kirby’s pencils. This winning combination

was not lost on Stan, who continued this “Marvel team-up” into the ’60s.

The formula of the monster books was fairly simple. A formidable creature would, in the course of 6-8 pages (or a expanded multi-parter, if Jack and Stan really wanted to stretch out!) announce his designs on conquering our hapless world. As the tension and action mounted, a tall, lean, pipe smoking (a pipe smoker was automatically believed to be a ‘wise man’ in the ’50s/early ’60s) scientist/doctor/researcher would discover a way to utterly defeat the diabolical giant and restore order. (David and Goliath were at play here.) The gargantuan hulks usually towered way over the Earth people they encountered and were so sure of their eventual triumphs that they gloated with supreme confidence along the way. And then the Lee and Kirby team defeated their aims through their pipe smoking proxy, and often through simple ruses.

Stan was so obviously taken with the EC Comics-style “twist ending” that had served Al Feldstein, Bill Gaines, and Johnny Craig so well in their wildly successful horror, crime, and sci-fi yarns years earlier, that he made it a point to end many of his stories the same way. Diablo, for example (Tales of Suspense #9), was a gigantic smoke-thing, seemingly impervious to harm. Though he sent thousands into panic-mode by blanketing large areas with his dark vapors, one imaginative human made him go far away just blowing out the smoke from his cigarette lighter and announcing he’d do the same to Diablo, unless….

“Spragg, Conqueror of the Human Race!” (Journey Into Mystery #68) mass-hypnotized his human slaves into building his mountainous frame a huge platform from which he could move beyond Transylvania (that’s right, Transylvania) and subjugate all of mankind. The hero, putting his pipe aside, was able to fight off the hypnotic powers of his enemy and instead set the platform’s controls to jettison Spragg far out of Earth’s atmosphere forever. Other creatures were similarly outwitted by “puny humans.”

Sometimes these yarns became morality plays.

Aliens from beyond weren’t always despotic in nature or would-be rulers of earth dwellers. In “A Martian Walks Among Us” (Strange Tales #78), the sinister Martian invasion scout is thwarted by a benevolent Venusian, who just happens to be our unheralded, unseen aide. Tales to Astonish #30’s “The Thing from The Hidden Swamp” told of a plain but pleasant-tempered spinster who does a good deed for an alien stranded in a bog, spacecraft and all. For helping him, er… it, she’s rewarded with beauty to match her selfless compassion for others. Good things happen to good folks.

Robots could be good and bad in Stan and Jack’s worlds. “Mr. Morgan’s Monster” (Strange Tales #99) was a sophisticated humanoid created to convince a skeptical populace that robots could still be beneficial to society. Morgan kept his intimidating (but inwardly heroic) creation hidden until the time to unveil him was right. Unfortunately, some of those pesky outer space power seekers came to our world and tried to seize Morgan’s invention to learn its secrets. The creature fought back. He held out long enough for the sleeping townspeople to rally and investigate the noises of the strange battle. The aliens, thwarted, scurried to their starships, escaping without the “monster.” Sadly, Morgan’s girlfriend tells him that since his creation was found in the streets outside of its safe haven (where it was ordered to remain), it has proved its “unreliability.” The monster’s energy fading, its last actions reveal… a lone tear. In just a few pages, Jack and Stan could pull on your heartstrings as well as any team in the business.

Other robots, however, were out for themselves. In “Beware! He Isn’t Human!”

(Journey Into Mystery #77), an egotistical movie monster maker creates a robot to destroy a woman who’s jilted him. Twist ending—the woman’s a robot, also, and thanks to the movie man, she’s got her ideal mate. The two humanoids edge toward the special effects man until he falls out of an open window.

Lee had a ball with the names of his co-creations. Zzutak, Gor-Kill, Titan, Rorgg, Lo-Karr, Orrgo, Fin Fang Foom, the Creature from Krogarr, Trull, Moomba, Groot, Monstrom, Sporr, Kraa, Bruttu, Goom, Oog, and Googam, Son of Goom (!) were all monikers to give readers reason to pause! (Ditko, Heck, Ayers, and

others got their fair share, as well.)

Kirby told Comic Scene Spectacular in ’92, “It was the names of the monsters that struck me funny. It would be names like ‘Bazoo.’ It was that kind of time— the 1950s, when the adventure stories weren’t selling. But horror always sells.”

Stan recalled, for Marvel Spotlight: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (2006), “I think with the monster stories that I did with Kirby, those crazy titles, I think there I would just say, ‘Jack, get a guy who crawled out from under a rock and he’s 20 feet tall and we’ll call him Gazoom and we’ll…’ and then he did the rest of it, and I put in the dialogue.”

Time travelers offered all types of possibilities, also. Some journeyed forward into the future for knowledge or power. Others sought to use their knowledge to dominate the past. Lee sent Heck, Ditko, and Kirby out to visually imagine the variations on that H.G. Wells-type theme. Sorcerers and fantasy tales had to border on the fantastic and away from the realm of vampires, werewolves, and zombies that had helped create the Code. Dr. Druid (born “Droom”), in Amazing Adventures, was somewhat of a precursor to the forthcoming Dr. Strange.

With Rod Serling’s exemplary TV hit The Twilight Zone garnering critical and audience applause, Jack and Stan’s variations on the “situations monster-ous” were also worthy of accolades in the early ’60s. The creatures the men conceived of could be formulaic or they could have depth, reason, and angst. The time for one-dimensional ho-hum style storytelling in sequential art could be discarded and improved upon, if only it was executed properly.

But how? And in what genre? The monster titles were solid sellers for Atlas, but the Kirby-Lee team grew a little tired of them as the ’50s gave way to the ’60s. Their monsters, aliens, futuristic spacemen, and robots could be good and they could be evil, but there was only so much the guys could do with this particular genre. Any other creative prospects would have to present themselves elsewhere. Still, for the moment, Jack had to be somewhat pleased. Five full years had passed since the Comics Code had transformed the industry, but Jack had found work within its restrictive perimeters and made a new niche for himself. Atlas had solid winners in their monster/mystery line-up, and he was a large part of its success.

Western Gunsmoke Shortly after the end of the American Civil War, a battleweary nation turned its eyes to its western frontier. Many citizens packed what they had left after living through four years of the national conflict and left their war-ravaged regions for a fresh start. Once again the west seemed the place to go, farm, and find riches, and the promise of excitement and adventure co-mingled nicely into that prospect.

The frontiersman had been a subject of fascination since Daniel Boone and Andrew Jackson captured their young nation’s attention in the early 19th century. Trailblazers like Kit Carson and Davy Crockett followed. But it was Wild Bill Hickok, who was interviewed in Harper’s Magazine a few years after the war, that sealed the deal. Hickok, a former Union scout and Pony Express Rider, came off like a longhaired, buckskin-wearing superman who’d already mastered the sweeping vistas, wild animals, and warrior Indians of the Great Plains and beyond. The fact that Hickok was also a dangerous gunman only added to his reputation.

Wild Bill was the template for the legendary gunfighter where myths, lies, and truth converged in plays, pulps, and Wild West shows eagerly consumed by Americans who wanted to feel good about the promises of their country again.

After Hickok, stylish gunmen/gamblers like Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, and Wyatt Earp would emerge. And then there were the ‘kids.’ There was a real Texas Kid, a real Apache Kid (Atlas had non-Kirby stories about these two), the Sundance Kid, and the biggest of them all—Billy the Kid. Stan edited or wrote as many gunslinging kids into his western books for Atlas as possible. For the aforementioned special ish of Marvel Spotlight, the Man later recalled, “It’s funny, my publisher, Martin, he loved the word ‘Kid.’ I mean 63

Parting Shot

David Folkman submitted this wonderful sketch, about which he said: “Jack gave me the Silver Surfer softcover graphic novel he and Stan did together and drew the pencil sketch on the opening blank endpaper. Stan signed it for me when he attended our National Cartoonist Society Los Angeles chapter holiday brunch at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills, 1997.”

Silver Surfer TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #53

THE MAGIC OF STAN & JACK! New interview with STAN LEE, walking tour of New York where Lee & Kirby lived and worked, re-evaluation of the “Lost” FF #108 story (including a new page that just surfaced), “What If Jack Hadn’t Left Marvel In 1970?”, plus MARK EVANIER’s regular column, a Kirby pencil art gallery, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, and more, behind a color Kirby cover inked by GEORGE PÉREZ! (84-page tabloid magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_57&products_id=787

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