Jack Kirby Collector #73 Preview

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All characters TM & © DC Comics.

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR SEVENTY-THREE

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Contents

THE

One-Shots!

OPENING ONE-SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 (a once in a lifetime summer) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 (murder makes bad medicine) GAME ON! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 ( the King Kirby 100 Crossword)

C o l l e c t o r

ISSUE #73, WINTER 2018

INFLUENCEES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 (Mike Royer, one-on-one) GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 (one-hit oneders) ZAP-OUT! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 (Kirby and Zappa revisited) BOYDISMS 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 (a three-pack of one-shots at Marvel) INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 (the Old Master, interviewed) BOYDISMS 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 ( the gods themselves!)

JACK KIRBY MUSEUM . . . . . . . . . 54 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) BOYDISMS 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 ( Simon, Kirby, and some magic lightning) STILL BORNE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 (the Fighting Fetus was an only child) KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 (one shot could start a universe) ANIMATTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 (hi-rez Skanner) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . . 66 (Manhunter from the ’40s to now) JK IN THE UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 (the crown jewel of Kirby artwork) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 (never seen by American eyes) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 ( Mark Evanier moderates the 2017 Kirby Family & Friends Panel) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . 92 PARTING ONE-SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Co ver art: FRANK FOSCO & MIKE ROYER (FROM A KIRBY SKETCH) Cover color: TOM ZIUKO

Numerous images in this issue are courtesy of the Jack Kirby Museum and whatifkirby.com, which have our Eternal(s) thanks!

COPYRIGHTS: Atlas, Auralie, Beautiful Dreamer, Big Barda, Big Bear, Billy Batson, Black Racer, Boy Commandos, Brola, Brute, Challengers of the Unknown, Darkseid, Demon, Desaad, Devilance, Fastbak, Female Furies, Flash, Forever People, Fourth World characters, Glob, Guardian, Himon, In The Days of the Mob, Infinity Man, Izaya/Highfather, Jimmy Olsen, Lightray, Magnar, Manhunter, Mark Moonrider, Mister Miracle, Newsboy Legion, OMAC, Orion, Sandman, Scott Free, Seagrin, Serifan, Shazam, Steppenwolf, Superboy, Superman, Vykin, Wonderful Willik TM & © DC Comics • Adaptoid, Ant-Man, Avengers, Black Bolt, Bucky, Captain America, Captain Britain, Colossus, Crystal, Daredevil, Dr. Doom, Dragon Man, Fantastic Four, Frightful Four, Hawkeye, Henry Pym, Him, Hulk, Human Torch, Inhumans, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, Kang, Karnak, Klaw, Liberty Legion, ManBeast, Medusa, Millie the Model, Mr. Fantastic, Nick Fury, Paste Pot Pete, Quicksilver, Rawhide Kid, Red Raven, Red Skull, Scarlet Witch, Sif, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Super-Adaptoid, Super-Beast, Thing, Thor, Tumbler TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Blackmass, Bombast, Captain Glory, Captain Victory, Fighting Fetus, Nightglider, Old Times artwork, Satan’s Six, Tiger 21, Valley Girl, Wonder Warriors TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • Roxie’s Raiders, Skanner, Wheel Barons TM & © RubySpears Productions • Bullseye, Stuntman, The Fly TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates • Avenger, Black Cat Mystic, Great Stone Face TM & © the respective owners.

This issue’s cover started from Jack’s rough sketch for a proposed Big Barda comic, circa 1971 (top). Frank Fosco finished Jack’s sketch in pencil (above), and Mike Royer worked from that and Jack’s sketch to channel Kirby in the finished art in 2011.

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 25, No. 73, Winter 2018. Published quarterly by and © TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $12 postpaid US ($18 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $46 Economy US, $69 International, $20 Digital. Editorial package © TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All Kirby artwork is © Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. Views expressed here are those of the respective authors, and not necessarily those of TwoMorrows Publishing or the Jack Kirby Estate. First printing. PRINTED IN CHINA. ISSN 1932-6912

1

Opening One-Shot

Once In A Lifetime by editor John Morrow

S

ummer 2017 will go down as one of the most unforgettable and satisfying times of my life. And like so many other moments in my 55 years on Earth, it all centers on Jack Kirby.

For starters, on July 14, I was honored to be invited by the Kirby family to be their guest at the Disney Legends Awards ceremony at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California.

Among the recipients this year were both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. If by some chance you haven’t heard about this event, I urge you to go online now and see both Disney’s presentation about Jack, and his son Neal’s acceptance speech:

Kirby family paved the way for this to occur, in a way many—including me—thought would never happen. Here’s just a few lines from the awards’ video presentation, which began by talking about Jack and Stan: “Together, they created the Fantastic Four...

Kirby’s imaginative mind and skilled pen gave life to hundreds of major and minor characters for Marvel Comics. His broad interests added a new dimension to comics: Cosmic spacescapes, mythological characters sparring across bizarre, mind-twisting panoramas. The visionary creations of Jack Kirby forever transformed the art of comics, and gave birth to an entire universe of epic, cinematic storytelling.”

https://goo.gl/kC1Mm8 as well as Stan’s own appearance there, which was all the more poignant in light of his wife Joan’s passing just a week prior: https://goo.gl/znAj9F It takes a lot to move me to tears, but I will admit that emotions were running pretty high for me that day.

Stan’s heartfelt comments about Jack, coupled with imagining how tough it must’ve been to soldier on after losing his partner of 70 years of marriage, really got to me. Kudos to “The Man” for a classy, totally appropriate appearance that, for those out there still holding a grudge for some of his past comments, I hope will finally give some fans peace about him.

But while Stan’s speech choked me up, the Disney presentation about Jack buoyed me with a feeling of excitement and satisfaction I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced. When I started this publication back in 1994, it was for one reason only: To honor and pay tribute to a creator who I’ve always felt was undercredited and underappreciated. For almost 25 years now, I’ve toiled to the best of my ability to remedy those concerns in my little arena of influence, but wondered if the world at large would ever understand what Jack meant—and means—not just to comics, but pop culture the world over.

Wonder no more.

When a company as large and influential as Disney unequivocally states that Kirby is the co-creator of the Marvel Universe, it’s a done deal. The 2014 settlement between Disney and the

Disney CEO Bob Iger [below] followed with this: “Jack Kirby was an industry icon, who redefined comics not only with his eye-popping artwork, but with his bold point of view of what comics could be.

He was the creative genius behind a legion of compelling and enduring characters as you just saw, and still beloved around the world. It’s really impossible to convey his impact on the industry, because his work is still inspiring and influencing artists today, and it will be for generations to come.”

Now, if that doesn’t set the record straight, once and for all, nothing will. Jack’s creator credit is appearing on comics, TV shows, and movies that feature his creations, and will indefinitely. It’s in many ways, the culmination of what I’ve been trying to make happen with this mag for the better part of my adult life.

I’m over the moon to be able to see it during my lifetime.

And leave it to Jack: Afterward, I got to hobnob at a private luncheon with the honorees, including Mark Hamill, Whoopie Goldberg, and Oprah Winfrey. Just like in his comics, Kirby was responsible for taking me to a place I’d never have an opportunity to travel to on my own, and one that I never imagined. (Thanks also to buddy Steve Sherman [right] for urging starstruck me to go over and actually talk to these celebrities, instead of just standing off to the side with my jaw dropped; they, and Disney CEO Bob Iger, were all imminently approachable and down-to-earth people to chat with.) Just as memorable was finally getting to meet, face-to-face, 2

Foundations

It’s a CRIME this story from Headline Comics #28 (Feb. 1948) has never been reprinted, not even in Titan’s great S&K Crime volume. So here you go! Restoration and color by Chris Fama.

4

Influencees

Mike Royer One-On-One

Edited by John Morrow • Original panel moderated by Mark Evanier, and transcribed by Steven Tice

(below) Mike Royer at the 2017 San Diego Comic Fest, signing copies. Photo by Kevin Shaw. (next page, top right) The first thing Mike drew for Western Publishing was the pencils for this Superboy puzzle. (throughout) Several commissioned ink pieces Mike has produced, working from photocopies of Jack’s pencils.

(below) Utilitas zothecas fermentet bellus saburre. Perspicax syrtes spinosus circumgrediet ut

Grantray-Lawrence

[At the San Diego Comic Fest on Saturday, February 18, 2017, Kirby inker Mike Royer was interviewed by Mark Evanier. Mike’s career goes far beyond just inking Jack Kirby: He assisted famed artist Russ Manning, worked at Gold Key Comics for several years, drew stories for Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella for Warren, and even worked on the Marvel Super Heroes cartoons for Grantray-Lawrence. To cut down repetition from numerous interviews and panels we’ve run in past issues, I’ve compiled comments by Mike from his Spotlight Panel into this first-person narrative of his career. Our thanks to Tom Kraft for providing the audio of this panel, and to Mark Evanier who did the actual moderating that evokes these responses from Mike.]

Grantray-Lawrence Animation was very interesting. I met Mike Arens through Russ Manning, and Mike Arens became my real mentor. I worked with Mike at his home. He produced a Batman comic strip based on the TV series at the time, which appeared in shopping newspapers in the South. And he’s the one that taught me how to letter, and I inked a lot of his stuff for Petersen’s CARtoon Magazines. He hired me because he knew from Russ that I had an ability to ink.

They took the stats from the old comics, pasted them down, and drew extensions to finish stuff off, and I was hired to ink those. I wound up doing some original drawings of Tony Stark in the cockpit of his jet plane and things like that, because there wasn’t comic book art to fill it out. And on the Sub-Mariner stories, not enough Sub-Mariners had been published at that time, and so we did a whole bunch of original stories.

When I met Stan Lee, he came up to visit us at Grantray-Lawrence Animation when we were doing the Marvel Super Heroes show, and he was there for an afternoon. We’re talking about artists, and Stan Lee says, “You know, the Marvel artist is a particular kind of artist.

If Alex Raymond walked into the office looking for work, I wouldn’t hire him.” And I thought, “Okay...”.

[In] this one room, there was a card with WinsorNewton Series 7 #2 brushes, and the way we always tested a brush is you pulled it off the card and you licked it. If you liked the point, that’s the one you took.

And I’ve never forgotten. Doug Wildey pulls out this brush and he goes, “This stuff is sh*t!” Now, that’s 1967 or ’68. I would kill for some of that 1960s crap.

And it cost an amazing two dollars and fifty cents.

So I got to learn different inking techniques by inking Doug Wildey, Herb Hazelton, and Mel Keefer, and a lot of these people. Mike would occasionally let me pencil stuff for the cartoons. And then it was all done.

Alex Toth

When I moved to Southern California in April of 1965 from our home in Oregon, I looked in the telephone book the first week I was there and found Alex Toth. I wanted to meet Alex, whose work I liked.

I knew that he was a Noel Sickles freak, and I had this stack of Noel Sickles’ Scorchy Smith daily comic strips that I’d collected. I called him up, and I introduced myself, and I said, “I’ve got these Scorchy Smith dailies

by Noel Sickles. Would you like to have them?” And he said, “Yeah, come on out to the house.” So I show up at Alex Toth’s house. I stayed for eight hours! And, to the chagrin of his wife, I was invited to stay for dinner. And then, after dinner, we watched a Jonny Quest and he talked about working on that. Then a few months later, I’m a member of the Cartoonists Union and working on the Marvel Super Heroes. At a union meeting he walks by and says, “Hey, kiddo, what are you doing here?” And I say, “I’m paying my bills.”

Western Publishing

Through Russ Manning, I met guys like Sparky Moore and Mike Arens—names that are probably unknown to you, but they were the backbone of the production art done at Western Publishing for first Dell and then Gold Key comic books. Sparky Moore told me something that stuck with me my entire career. He said, “Mike, you get your first job on your ability, and every job after that on your dependability.” And on the basis of a letter from Chase Craig at Western Publishing, I got a mortgage as a freelancer to buy a house based on the fact that he said, “We set our clocks by Mike Royer.”

I called up Russ and asked him if he needed more assisting, and he said, “Well, coincidentally, Western Publishing has asked me to produce more comics, and I told them the only way I could do it is if Mike assists me. But assisting is not enough money to support 14

Gallery Being a gallery of Kirby one-shots—sometimes two—by Shane Foley (*with thanks to Tom Hanks for making “That Thing You Do”)

(pages 18-19) Stuntmen Stuntman isn’t a oneshot—but he comes close.

The evolution of Kirby’s art style is hardly more prominently displayed than in these two versions of him.

In the unfinished “Jungle Lord” page from 1946, we see lithe, supple figurework, no penciled blacks, and decorative, slightly irregular panel shapes. The stylized anatomy, energy and action, wonderful choreography, and ease of flow for the reader are already a Kirby staple.

In the 1979 pin-up, all suppleness has been replaced by steel-like mass and strength, and his blacks are an integral part of the composition.

It’s owned by the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of NebraskaLincoln, as part of the Dan Howard collection, donated by the painter and lifelong comics enthusiast. It measures 22 1/8 × 15 inches (56.2 × 38.1 cm). (pages 20-21) Manhunters Similar observations are seen in the Manhunter pieces.

In 1942, Adventure Comics #73 (a tie for the first ever Simon-Kirby cover for DC with Star-Spangled Comics #7) shows brushed inking (whether by Simon or Kirby) that is already as much to emphasize tension and energy as it is dynamic lighting and muscle.

By 1975, in this one-shot Manhunter feature (First Issue Special #5, page 16), his bulked-up figures now use those blacks to punch forward the action and strengthen clarity, with little conservative regard for light source. If only Jack had continued this feature!

18

(pages 22-23) Fantastic Foursomes

The second page features storyboards from “A Monster Among Us”, the first 1978 animated FF story. The story was a reworking of “The Infant Terrible”, a one-shot protagonist from FF #24 (March 1964).

The FF—a one-shot? Nah! But the first piece is a kind of ‘one-off’. It looks to be part of a story (otherwise, why the suited stranger?)—but which one? Sue has a nice graceful turn that is often absent from Jack’s later work. And what a beautifully designed chair! This art was purchased at a Los Angeles convention in 1981, and later authenticated and signed by Jack. Unfortunately, neither Jack nor Roz Kirby could recall the underlying story or why it was drawn.

Both pieces are beautiful examples of Kirby pencils that are not total roughs, but not quite finished either, being incomplete and unpolished—perfect for any art student to pore over!

22

Zap-Out!

World’s Finest

Relive that magical day when Frank Zappa met Jack Kirby, by Jeff Newelt (a.k.a. Jahfurry) (throughout) Examples of a proposed early 1980s Valley Girl newspaper strip that Jack prepared, at the urging of Frank Zappa. (below) Photo of Zappa and Kirby by Michael James Zuccaro. (next page, bottom) Illustration of a very Kirbyesque Super-Zappa

by Rick Veitch, originally done for this article in Royal Flush magazine.

[For a living, Jeff Newelt (a.k.a.

Jahfurry) does social media and PR for some pretty cool clients, and is minister of hype for webcomics collective ACT-IVATE. Look for @ jahfurry on twitter.]

[This article was originally published in Royal Flush Magazine #6 (October 13, 2009); graphic design by Josh Bernstein. Thanks to Randy Klauzer for turning us on to this article! See the original at http://royalflushmagazine.com/ news-events/news/zappa_meets_kirby/#.WfDujY5ryV5]

neurs, and one lady says, “Yer not one of those comics people, are you? My husband’s one, Steve Sherman.”

D’OH! Steve Sherman was one of Kirby’s fabled assistants! I reached out to Steve and turns out Jack and Frank Zappa were not only pals, but also essentially neighbors. How was this friendship kept secret so long?

A mere week later, I wind up having drinks with fellow Flusher Paul Pope and none other than Frank’s youngest son, Ahmet Zappa! We learned all about Kingdom Comics, the new graphic novel line Ahmet was helming for Disney.

Contextual rewind: Not just a comics impresario, Ahmet’s been rocking in different media since he was a wee young lad. He was lead singer/songwriter in Z, a band he formed with his brother Dweezil in the early ’90s, an actor on Roseanne and Growing Pains and in films such as Pump up the Volume and Jack Frost, and most recently hosted VH1’s But Can They Sing?.

So I had to show Ahmet my Blackberry screensaver, the image I had found of his dad and Jack together, and Ahmet goes, “Whoa, I never saw that! That’s in my living room… Jack would come over and smoke cigars and Frank would smoke cigarettes, and they’d talk and talk.”

One of the things Frank and Jack had in common: The prodigious amount of cosmic goodness that extruded from their respective noggins was not the result of drugs; they both enjoyed tobaccy but only the unwacky.

We had other stuff to discuss that evening, so I made Ahmet promise to reconnect asap to spill the magic beans on this egregiously undocumented duo. And he kept his promise.

I’

ve always been a sucker for the big team-up: Superman/Shazam. Hulk/Thing. Chocolate and peanut butter. So when I came across a photo of Jack Kirby and Frank Zappa embracing, my synapses started firing like the FBI at Waco.

Were they friends? Did they hang? Play action figures together? WTF! I had to know.

For those not so in-the-know as us ubergeekanoids, Jack Kirby was the visionary artist who created The Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk, Thor, Silver Surfer, Captain America… the Marvel universe sprang forth from his (and writer Stan Lee’s) head. In the ’70s, Jack went solo, rocking out idiosyncratic cosmic characters—the New Gods, OMAC, Forever People, Eternals, Devil Dinosaur, Kamandi, Demon, all nutty, jazzy, psychedelically mythic stuff.

Frank Zappa was a musical iconoclast and genius composer/producer/guitar player. He wove together humor, avant-garde classical guitar-rock, doo-wop, dada, jazz-fusion, and political satire, hired the badassest musicians, and rolled with world leaders like Czech playwright/philosopher Vaclav Havel. His songs are like audio comic books, hypervisual with colorful characters and scenarios like “Camarillo Brillo,” which includes the lines “She had a snake for a pet / and an amulet / and she was breeding a dwarf / But she wasn’t done yet / She had gray-green skin / A doll with a pin / I told her she was awright / But I couldn’t come in.”

Sounds just like a character out of Kirby’s Demon.

Jack and Frank, both universe builders, one music, the other, comics. But what was the connection?

Fast-forward to present day. I’m at a conference in New Mexico teaching social media to female entrepre-

Ahmet, one of four Zappa kids, the other three being Moon Unit (the oldest), Dweezil (second oldest), and Diva (youngest), was always into super-heroes his entire life.

“I loved Spider-Man; it’s the jam,” gushed Ahmet.

“My dad loved comics and was the first to advertise rock n’ roll in comics, for We’re Only In It For The Money [in Fantastic Four #72, 1968, Natch!]. My mother made Dweezil and I costumes of Spider-Man and The Mighty Thor.”

The son of a gregarious rock star, Ahmet grew up meeting every celebrity musician under the 34

Boydisms 1

A Mighty Marvel Three-Pac

by Jerry Boyd

(next page, top) Bashful Benjamin gets stymied

by Klaw in FF #56 (Nov. 1966). (next page, bottom left) The Inhumans were given a lot of page space from 1965-’69. The occupants of the Great Refuge had their problems, and the Master of Sound was about to be a problem anew for the world’s most fabulous foursome. (next page, bottom right) The human Klaw comes to an end at the conclusion of FF #53 (Aug. 1966).

1966

was a magical year for this Kirby fan.

That Spring and Summer, the first Marvel Super Heroes Bubble Gum Card set showed up for me at a Mom-&-Pop store in my native North Carolina. I was floored! My mother bought me a few of the 5-cent packs, and I wanted that great cards box also, but the counterman gently smiled and told me that, “Most every child in the neighborhood has asked me about that box, son. But, if you’re here when all the card packs have been sold, it’s yours. First come, first serve.” Some kid beat me to it. I didn’t get the box until eBay had one in my price range 51 years later, (sheesh!) but that was okay.

Then the mini-books froze me in my tracks once my family had left N.C. for D.C. at the end of that Summer. My mother was buying groceries at this odd place called Safeway, which had a conveyor belt for speeding bought-and-bagged groceries outside to the customers. At the counters were bubble gum machines with Marvel mini-books.

Thor, Captain America, Spider-Man, even Millie

the Model was inside the little plastic bubbles! What was going on? Well, Mighty Marvel was on the march again! And the other gem of that year was the Marvel Super Heroes cartoons on afternoon television! My after-school sojourn went on too long for me to get home and catch them (except for school-free holidays, naturally), but these three one-shots were… Marvel-ous! But the most wonderful magic of them all, of course, was buying Jack Kirby comics in the drugstore. And those events came with a great regularity.

“The Routine”

For those who weren’t buying Stan and Jack’s Marvels in the 1960s, “the routine” went something like this—at least for this enthusiastic fan. I’d check and double-check my allowance in my pants pocket (not wanting to be “financially embarrassed” when it was purchase time) as I walked into the drugstore.

My kid brother was just behind me and my mom was headed in the opposite direction to get groceries—not at Safeway, but a store farther away in Maryland, so my brother and I could have a place to get our comics.

Inside the pull-back double-doors, it was a short, straight walk to the magazine section, a section my sibling and I rarely really noticed, fixated as we were on the two spinner racks that stood just before it. Marvel Comics, DC’s offerings, Harvey Comics’ efforts, Tower Comics’ lineup, Archie’s gang, and Classics Illustrated material (good stuff, but only for book report aids, I thought then) were spread top to bottom in neat stacks against the spinner rack guards.

While my brother sought out Harveys, I looked for Marvels.

Only Millie the Model and Patsy Walker were beneath me, however, Millie would grow on me in just three years. Jack and Stan’s efforts were the prizes, with Lee and Colan’s Daredevil, Thomas and Buscema’s The Avengers, and Lee and Romita’s SpiderMan closely behind. The Fantastic Four was always at

(above) While Kirby characters reigned on TV, gum cards and mini-books, Jack snuck in some one-shot stories for Classics Illustrated, including this one for #161 (1961), inked by Dick Ayers.

Classics Illustrated © Jack Lake Productions, Inc. or respective owner.

36

ck Of One-Shots the top of my wants, Thor next, and Captain America in Tales of Suspense—all were guaranteed to elicit a boyish gasp of excitement, no matter how cool I’d tried to act.

When I came across the latest Kirby-Lee titles, I almost had to fight the temptation to jump ahead to the stories’ ends. Those cliffhangers were special, a wonderment in their own right which I’d come to treasure, though I knew I might miss the following chapters. Jack and Stan gave us some terrific villains, but the three one-shots I’ll go into now stand out strongly in memories today. Maybe they’re some of your favorites, also.

Fantastic Four #56

(Nov. 1966)

“Klaw, The Murderous Master Of Sound!”

Yes, yes, I know. Klaw made his debut on the side of

malevolent Marveldom in FF #53, but that was the human side of him. The King would spotlight his new, inhuman incarnation in this one-time only edition. (Roy Thomas and assorted Avengers artists would keep Klaw busy after this.) Years ago, Klaw shot and killed the future Black Panther’s father, the Chieftain T’Chaka, in the back in “The Way It Began!” in #53’s flashback sequence, and attacking the Wakanda again, he was defeated by the Panther. But he wasn’t done. Leaping into his sound transformer, he promised to exact his vengeance on the Black Panther “…and

after him—anyone else I so choose!”.

The lucky readers who didn’t require a parental car ride to their nearest comic outlet may have gotten confused by the contents of FF #54.

No Klaw, after #53?!

“So, what happened to him?” they may have asked. Lee and Kirby had an abundance of supporting stars to include, so much that some readers complained that the four main stars were being crowded out of their own mag. Jack and Stan did a superb job juggling new developments with old and keeping most of the fans satisfied. Still, Klaw’s metamorphosis wouldn’t be made known until most of our fabulous foursome was back in NYC (with Johnny and Wyatt Wingfoot still abroad). Jack gave Klaw a distinctive look—a black rectangle for a “nose”, bright red “skin”, and zigzag lines “hair” with the requisite Kirby briefs. Only the King could make this look work!

37

INNERVIEW

The Old Master The “Kirbyverse”: Last hurrah for Jack, by Mark Voger

(right) Kirby originally created Satan’s Six in the late 1970s, and drew eight pages, that remained in pencil form until Topps came calling in the early 1990s. They had a slew of top artists each ink a page.

Here’s Joe Sinnott’s prime work on it. (below) Mike Royerinked presentation piece for Satan’s Six.

[Author’s Note: Here is an interview I did with Jack Kirby in 1993, at the time of Topps’ Comics “Kirbyverse” line.

Much of it ran in Comics Scene Spectacular magazine at the time, and some of it in my alma mater, The Asbury Park Press.]

“K

IRBY IS BACK!” screamed advertisements for Topps’ line of Jack Kirby-created titles, which began to appear in comic shops in 1993.

Like so many pop-culture events of the ’90s, the “Kirbyverse” line was kind of exciting, but ultimately fell short of classic status.

Kind of exciting because it was “new” stuff from the old master—in fact, several old masters.

Initially announced were four new titles (that number would be doubled), with contributions from some of Kirby’s old Marvel Comics contemporaries such as Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers and Don Heck, as well as younger artists like Frank Miller and Todd McFarlane.

The announced talent included Gary Friedrich, John Severin and Ayers on Bombast; Roy Thomas and Ditko on Captain Glory; and Gerry Conway and Heck on NightGlider. Satan’s Six promised eight pages of Kirby pencils with inks by Miller, Joe Sinnott, Terry Austin, Mike Royer and Ditko, plus a cover by Kirby and McFarlane. (Nowhere in the preview material did it mention that the eight Kirby pages were not exactly new—something Kirby freely admitted when we spoke in a February 1993 interview.)

During a call from his Thousand Oaks, California home, Kirby was friendly and funny, though his replies seemed more casual and pragmatic than substantive or revelatory. Try as I might, I couldn’t

get him to talk about the old days. This felt like a case of talking to a guy who had nothing to prove.

Kirby’s wife, Roz, was also on the line—not to talk, but to gently jog her husband’s memory every now and then. Kirby spoke about the Topps deal, his opinion of modern comics, his TV cameo alongside Bob Newhart, and his long love affair with Roz.

MARK VOGER: What do you think of comics today?

JACK KIRBY: Comics today, I think, are wonderful.

They get better paper. [laughs]They have a wide variety of stories. They’re great to look at, but I haven’t got the time to read too many of them. But they’re extremely well done. And extremely well-produced. The young people that are engaged in putting them out, I think, have good concepts. It’s a larger world with a larger series of happenings and prospects, and that’s reflected in the books.

VOGER: What do you think of the world today?

KIRBY: I think that the world can be very, very

41

Boydisms 2

(this page & next) Orion fights for Earth, but Brola’s battling for his sinister master in New Gods #2 (April 1971).

Brola made his first and last cover appearance on that issue. (next page, bottom) Detective O’Ryan discovers the slain Seagrin in New Gods #4 (Aug. 1971).

The Gods Themselves!

by Jerry Boyd

A

war was brewing… in Jack Kirby’s mind. He had the beginnings of an interstellar conflict; one which would be described (in blurbs to come) as, “Intrigue! Vengeance! Blazing confrontations that dwarf the infinite!”

This war would be fought on a grand scale—there’d be skirmishes among the stars and the noble, upstanding immortals would see their world invaded by the evil aggressors of their sister planet, and that aggression would bring about counter-attacks… as large and technologically advanced as Jack could imagine and pencil them. But by and large, the main theater of war would

be the planet Earth… so that Earthlings reading these comics could have characters with whom to identify.

And weren’t Earthlings… mere mortals, always caught between ultimate beings of astounding powers?

Adam and Eve were caught between their loving creator/God and the lies of the fallen angel, Satan.

Jack had to figure it out. His ‘new gods’ needed to be fresh and exciting, yet archetypes—familiar to students of mythology, as if they’d existed for eons.

And wars meant gatherings of armies, also, like the Third U.S. Army which included a young Jacob Kurtzberg, PFC First Class, assigned to disembark on the Normandy beachhead in 1944. “Armies mean lots of soldier boys and lots of drawing,” the King may have chuckled silently as his family slept. “I’ll need individuals who are like Divisions… all by themselves. Each man and woman—a virtual one-man army corp!” (This idea would get added mileage later.)

Jack sat back down. Over time, he would brilliantly conceive of and develop those “armies”, large and small. They’d come in small groups like the Forever People, the Deep Six, and the Female Furies. They’d come as one-person doomsday machines—Orion, Kalibak, Mantis, and Big Barda.

“And some of these soldiers are going to be killed in action,” Jack may have mused. “After all, this is war.”

The Ultimate One-Shots!

King Kirby lived through small battles and large ones in 1944 (see TJKC #49 for a few of his recollections). There were GIs he knew briefly, wiped out by shelling in an instant. He tramped past the bodies of Allied and Axis infantrymen alike. He had friends who survived and went home to productive, happy lives.

Navy sailor Joe Simon, off in the Pacific, returned.

And because no one was guaranteed a trip home, Jack would craft his ultimate war comic with fallen ‘ultimates’. Some of them the readers would know very briefly, and some not at all. This was the way it was in war.

Here are a few of those ‘one-shot warriors’ who made strong impressions on this mere mortal in their brief time on the Kirby battlefield.

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Those OTHER Jimmy Olsens

To reiterate, ‘King’ Kirby’s god-war is a multi-layered masterpiece. And its collective secrets sometimes reveal themselves in reading after reading… if you’re looking. (I didn’t catch the following until 2016.)

For years, the Daily Planet’s bestknown cub reporter was one of DC’s most versatile heroes. Baby Boomers, like this contributor, were weaned on the many incarnations of young Olsen, such as his masked/costumed identity as ‘Flamebird’ to Superman’s ‘Nightwing’, or Jimmy as ‘Elastic Lad’, ‘the Wolf Man of Metropolis, ‘the Giant Turtle Olsen’, and so on.

the facility [left]. Then a quick look into a microscope showed a lot more little Jimmys just ready to grow and grow [bottom]. Bad scientists Mokkari and Simyan have stolen a sample, however, and we find the third Jimmy (who gets a brief intro in #135) has been modified for growth and tremendous strength over at the rival camp. He’s even given a Kryptonite coating in his hide in case you-know-who shows up. In JO #136, he gets his biggest moments (pun intended) when he goes on a Hulk-like rampage—he’s green, y’know—and gives Superman and the new Golden Guardian one heckuva fight! [below] Called the D.N.Alien on a cover blurb, the winners of the

It didn’t seem likely that Jack was going to continue the long-standing tradition of Jimmy getting super-powers/becoming monsters/getting temporarily mutated, etc. after the Hairies, the Mountain of Judgment, the Wild Area, Morgan Edge, Intergang, and the Evil Factory had quickly reshaped all things Olsen.

But Jack added his new takes on our hero anyway… and they were great!

To begin with: In JO #135, Kal-El got his friend “hip” (it was the ’70s, right?) to “The Project” and showed him how productive their new clones could be.

One of those DNA samples taken from Jimmy revealed a full-grown Olsen soldier who maintained security at

battle turn out to be other clones, Scrapper Troopers, spawned by the D.N.A. of you-know-you. I caught JO #136 shortly after it came out, and it blew my mind. Years later, circa 2000, I’d talk to Steve ‘The Dude’ Rude at a convention and found out that that issue was one of his early Fourth World favorites, as well. Naturally, we came to a quick conclusion that a commission had to be done of that fantastic scenario. Recently, I asked Steve about it and he said, “The first thing that comes to mind is when a company, any company, has just solicited Jack Kirby to do a line of books for them is—get out of his way. Step back, turn off your business mind for a moment, and realize you’re seeing a one-time historical moment with a man whose 48

Boydisms 3

Simon, Kirby, & Some Mag

by Jerry Boyd

(right) In March 1941, Captain Marvel Adventures #1’s readers were thrilled by this C.C. Beck cover which introduced four Simon and Kirby stories in a true Golden Age milestone. (below) It was okay for costumed crime-busters to kill monsters during the Golden Age. Marvel dispatches the vampire Thirla at the end of their conflicts in CMA #1.

F

irst off, this may sound like heresy, especially in these pages, and to many of you—but I must admit this: Everything that Simon and Kirby produced doesn’t grab me. I don’t reach for my wallet when I see a collection of their material, either.

To be fair, no creator’s or creative team’s work pulls on me at every turn unless I really can’t do without it and/or there’s not a lot of it to begin with.

So, when I learned (at some time in the 1980s) that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were in as a one-shot team on Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (March, 1941), I wasn’t impressed. DC had gotten me used to the styles of C.C. Beck, Mac Raboy, Kurt Schaffenberger, and others on the titles spotlighting the Big Red Cheese and Family in those wonderful 100-pagers in the 1970s. I found those comics enjoyable until…. I didn’t. High school, disco dancing, albums, and college came along. Captain

Marvel, the old wizard Shazam, and company were great products of their day, but the latter part of the 1970s and ’80s were chock-full of new days and I went with newer material. ‘King’ Kirby was still a very strong presence in comics, but I had no strong compulsion to see what he’d done with Billy Batson’s magic lightning-brought big buddy.

& Lightning Will Strike….!

If you’re open-minded and willing to try new

things, you’ve certainly said to yourself, “Let me see what all the fuss is about…” as you’ve put on an older person’s album, or listened to an acclaimed old radio show, rented a ‘classic film’, or just opened a recommended novel, book, short story, etc. In my case, I took out a hardcover edition (my brother’s) of the earliest Captain Marvel stories— The Shazam Archives!, Vol. 2, 1999.

“Hmmm... Kirby and Simon did some stories in this one. I’ll read those first…” I murmured to myself. The one with the vampire (always had a soft spot for Golden Age vampire and werewolf stories) grabbed me first. (In 1938, Universal Pictures re-released Dracula and Frankenstein to old and new audiences. The response was tremendous, leading to the revitalization of the creatures, and newer ones, for 1939 and on. The Mad Monk, a vampire menace, may have been inspired by Dracula. He got his sinister start in one of Detective Comics’ early Batman adventures. I wanted to see what this ‘Baron Thirla’ could do against the World’s Mightiest Mortal.)

Jack’s artwork was still in its formative stages, I felt, but very dynamic as he explored an economy-of-line approach. The atmospheric inking that I felt was needed wasn’t there, but its absence didn’t really hurt the story. It only made it seem more surreal. Thirla is resurrected by a scientist, and the undead monster promptly shows his “gratitude” by draining the poor man’s blood on the spot.

Turning to a horrified Billy Batson, the Baron is ready to add to his strength with the blood of this youngster. Saying the magic word saves Billy’s life and the first battle between the supernatural pair begins. Marvel’s superhuman strength is largely wasted on Baron Thirla, who can de-materialize at will. Kirby pulled out all the stops in this one.

At one point, the Baron sends a small pack of wolves at our hero, but Marvel is up to the challenge, even when they merge into one slavering behemoth and gobbles up the champion. Realizing

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Still Borne

(right) Jack’s original Wonder Warriors in pencil were a bit different [see TJKC #27] from this illo from Captain Victory #6 (Sept. 1982), leading us to think the concept was originally meant as a solo series or animation idea.

I

The Only Child

love Captain Victory. It’s raw, unedited Kirby ideas flowing freely in an unrestrained way. The scripting is often almost unintelligible as Kirby puts his ideas down— but at times it’s as if he’s forgotten that those ideas are familiar in his head but foreign to the readers, and he gives no basis from which to interpret much of what he writes. The same problem arises in Hunger Dogs and other works of the ’80s.

With Captain Victory #7, the first story arc has passed and Kirby is onto a new one.

It seems he has a new idea about CV too—that he wants to suggest that CV is Orion’s son and that Darkseid is now an incorporate evil force in his background. All this is fine by me, but my confusion comes when Kirby seems to suggest that one baddie—Paranex, the Fighting Foetus (spelled ‘fetus’ throughout)—is somehow part

59

by Shane Foley

of it. But, as far as I can see, it is never explained.

So what do we know about Paranex?

In CV #7, the four Wonder Warriors are revealed to us and to CV. He knows some of them but not Paranex.

It is Mr. Mind who knows his name and that what matters is, “not what it is, but what it will be when it is born!” It was Klavus who said Paranex had “found Quadrant X—and I’d just as soon leave him there!” He ‘found’ it? Or did Kirby mean to say he was found in it?

Later that issue, the four baddies appear and ravage a starship, stealing its star drive.

Amongst the talk, there is mention of Paranex being “a horror”, that he never responds in any way to speech, and that it’s “not time for you to make your move!” One reiterates that he isn’t born yet and that “I wouldn’t like to be around when he is.”

In Captain Victory #8, there is a similar attack by the warriors, now on a Ranger outpost. This time Paranex acts by using his own power to draw out the star drive. Again, fear of it is verbalized amongst the Warriors about who/ what Paranex is: “There’s no name for that thing in the cosmos…” to which one replies “I’ll bet the Voice knows it!”, the Voice being the disembodied words of the evil mastermind who controls and empowers the Warriors.

In CV #9 (after a wonderful journey through hyper-space and a distortion zone that was a big enlargement on concepts intro-

An ongoing examination of Kirby’s art and compositional skills

H (below) Tales to Astonish #27 (Jan. 1962) cover. (right) Fantastic Four #4 page 10 detail (May 1962).

One Shot Could Start A Universe

owever rewarding the search for Kirby one-shots might be, I find it equally fascinating to dwell on the avalanche of individual stories Kirby composed, either standalone or parts of a series. Each of these stories could have been a narrative dead end, but think of how so many of them spawned multitudes of characters and concepts.

Think about it. In the course of his career, Jack Kirby created so many vivid viable characters that he could have peopled a near infinite number of universes with them. When I make this statement, I am not merely referring to the myriad super-hero series that he initiated. For fifty years Kirby had spun yarns of all varieties, from action/adventure to romance, horror, crime and comedy. Even many of the peripheral characters that peopled his tales were well enough rendered so that they could in turn be the main protagonists of other stories. They could even morph into super-stars of their own comics.

If we choose to pick up a thread in the beginning of the Marvel Age of Kirby, we can quickly think of “The Man in the Ant Hill,” a fairly standard early Marvel story featuring a generic Kirby scientist protagonist. Kirby would crank out several stories like this per month, featuring ordinary men put in situations involving some sort of monster or bizarre science-fiction-based situation in which the hero must somehow prevail.

In this particular story [left], chemist Henry Pym shrinks himself and enters an ant hill. It just seemed at the time like another in a series of Monster/Sci-fi premise of the month, but when the rush came for Marvel to capitalize on the success of super-heroes, this premise quickly became the basis of the continuing adventures of Ant Man. Or think of how Johnny Storm, The Human Torch was always inadvertently stumbling on a member of an ancient super-powered race. This happened first in Fantastic Four #4, when the teenager wandered downtown to get away from his dysfunctional surrogate family, and then found the incoherent Sub-Mariner living in a Bowery flophouse. On this extremely powerful and atmospheric page of the story, the enraged vagrants menace the bearded prince Namor. Johnny Storm stops them dead in their tracks with a great action-to-action panel display of the precision use of his flame, as he shaves the SubMariner.

This sequence of course led to the rediscovery of an entire undersea kingdom that Kirby and then Marvel would exploit for decades, introducing myriad subplots of romance, intrigue, and rivalry. Kirby did not invent Namor’s undersea kingdom, but he was perfectly capable of generating scores of such worlds, fully realized as cultures and societies.

In Fantastic Four #45, Johnny Storm is at it again. This time he is wandering in another desolate neighborhood, when he spies a captivating young girl. She is Crystal, youngest and most bewitching member of The Inhumans, who live amongst us hidden in an enclave known as the Great Refuge. When she runs from him, Johnny reveals to Crystal that he also has super-powers, and he then pretends to be one of her kind so he can find out who they are. The story, other than 61

Animatters

The only published work fans have seen of Skanner was the small repro at right from the 1990s trading card set Jack Kirby: The Unpublished Archives

by Comic Images. But Kirby did plenty of work on this 1980s concept, as you’ll see here and on the next two pages.

A

High-Rez Skanner

lthough there was no sign of Brother Eye, Kirby’s presentation art for the Ruby-Spears project Skanner shares a lot in common with OMAC. Set in the future, it features a “Magnum P.I.”-type lead character who’s the Last Private Eye on Earth, and includes the idea of teenagers being kidnapped to harvest their youthful bodies for brain transplantation for the old and rich, and the phrase “The World That’s Coming”. So for anyone bemoaning the fact that Jack never got to continue his one shot at the One Man Army Corp, rest assured that the King found in animation, an outlet for many of the ideas he never got to utilize in comics. H

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by John Morrow

JK In The UK

Crown Jewel

The Greatest Prize in British Comics History, by Robert Menzies

(right) How would you score on the 1976 Marvel Mastermind Quiz? (below) Super SpiderMan and the Titans #217 (April 6, 1977) back page pin-up of Captain Britain and Captain America by Jack Kirby. Jack photocopied the pencil version before sending it in to Marvel Comics, and this image (next page) comes courtesy of the Jack Kirby Museum (www.kirbymuseum.org).

W

hen the Jack Kirby illustration of Captain Britain and Captain America was printed in FOOM #19 (Fall 1977), there was no explanation of the background to this art, no information on why it was created or when it first appeared.

This, then, is the origin of that art and the story behind the greatest prize ever given by British Marvel.

Marvel Mastermind

British comics have a tradition of competitions and British Marvel was no different. The most interesting by far was the Marvel Mastermind competitions which ran at the end of 1975, 1976 and 1978. The name was obviously inspired by the Mastermind TV quiz show, which was, and still is, a British institution. Mastermind, which over the years has had many formats including an adult and junior version, asked a range of specialist and general knowledge questions.

The comic version asked introductory and advanced questions like “Who was the first Inhuman to fight the Fantastic Four?” and “What do Thanos, the Sub-Mariner, the Red Skull, and M.O.D.O.K. have in common?”

Nowadays, with the advent of the Internet, it would of course be impossible to run such a competition like this in a print form and ensure that there was no cheating.

In 1975 the first ever Marvel Mastermind winner, Peter Judge, won copies of Origins of Marvel Comics and Sons of Origins signed by Stan Lee, as well as two head sketches from Herb Trimpe, who was then living in England. In 1978 the announced prize was original art: One of the Spider-Man newspaper strips drawn by John Romita and signed by both the artist and the writer, Stan Lee. Of interest to us is the 1976 winning prize. The first part of the competition—with an unflattering stereotype of a likely entrant—appeared in comics dated week ending November 24, 1976.

Prizes? Well, the Marvel Mastermind of 1976 will receive two prizes. Firstly a copy of Bring On The Bad Guys, signed by Stan “The Man” Lee, il-meme. And secondly, an exclusive framed Mastermind certificate featuring a drawing by one of Marvel’s most legendary artists. Who? Wait until next week, Frantic Ones, and we’ll tell ya!

The qualification “one of” rather than “the” most legendary artist may have been an effort to make the answer less obvious and more of a tease, although it is impossible to know after so many decades. Whatever the truth, they did reveal the artist’s identity the following week, even if they failed to give Joe Simon credit for co-creating Captain America.

Remember we told you last week that we’d reveal the name of the legendary artist whose original sketch will be gracing the Marvel Mastermind Certificate? Who is it? Only Comicdom’s most creative genius, the man who invented Captain America, Jack “King” Kirby!”

The British office was always inundated with correspondence, especially during competitions, so it took some months for the winners to be announced, and many fans must have been biting their nails to nothing in the hope of winning the prized Kirby art. The following two quotations come from comics dated March 16 and 23, 1977.

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Obscura

Barry Forshaw Barry Forshaw is the author of American Noir, British Gothic Cinema, and The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (available from Amazon) and the editor of Crime Time (www. crimetime.co.uk); he lives in London.

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

by Barry Forshaw

the Colossus!” in the black-&-white issue #6 of a shilling British magazine called Spellbound, which, of course, borrowed its title (and much of its contents) from the American Atlas book of that name. The UK Spellbound #6 appeared in 1961 (according to my friends, the British comic experts Frank Motler and ‘Doc’ Garriock, whose expertise in this area far exceeds mine). But there’s something curious about this reprint, as you can see.

The three main UK companies reprinting American comics over the years were L. Miller and Co (whose offices used to be relatively near to where I live in London), Thorpe & Porter, and Alan Class. The latter individual—an amiable, still sharp gentlemen who now deals in fine art, told me that he received the original US art plates of Kirby, Ditko and Co., which he would put (fairly randomly) into his own titles. For the latter, he came up with intriguing names such as Secrets of the Unknown and Sinister Tales. The UK issue of Spellbound reproduced at left is from the earliest of these distributors, L. Miller, and with nobody now around to confirm what I’m about to suggest, you’ll have to take the following on trust. It seems to me that Miller received the plate for the Strange Tales cover, but not a color version, so the only option was to re-color it in the UK—a situation often observed in these reprints.

Personally, I prefer the British recoloring which shows more of the detail of the giant Kirby robot; what do you think?

NEVER SEEN BY AMERICAN EYES

Editor John Morrow will correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I’m the only Brit regularly writing for The Jack Kirby Collector, and if you’ve bothered to read this column in the past (before moving onto coverage of the later Marvel and DC periods which are most readers’ favourite work by The King), you’ll have noticed that I’ve mentioned first encountering Kirby’s work (as a bookish 1960s schoolboy) in the chunky 68-page black-&-white UK reprints that sported a random selection of DC, ACG and Atlas material.

But I don’t think I’ve ever given you the chance to compare the US and UK

THE GENESIS OF THE BIG MONSTERS

But back to Strange Tales #72 itself, the original book. This is a fascinating early example of the Kirby/Lee monster books which were to completely take over the Marvel Comics line shortly after this issue. Topped and tailed by big hitters Kirby and Ditko (Stan Lee knew what would sell a comic book), the gigantic robot on the cover is a typically imaginative Kirby creation—and one that (of course) is not seen in the story itself; as usual, the impatient Kirby has come up with a completely different design for the figure in the tale. The piece itself is full of the kind of creativity that Jack showered about like sparks from a Catherine wheel, but the story is a prime example of the kind of cliché that would hang over so many of these tales—possibly, I’d suggest the most egregious cliché of all in the Kirby/Lee giant monster canon (so I hardly need to say ‘spoiler alert’, do I?): The initially threatening menace turns out to be benign, with the final panel showing a chastened humanity regretting it acted so precipitately in getting rid of what was perceived as a threat. The story is, of course, worth having for the artwork, and the rest of the issue has its (slender) charms. The Don Heck, Paul

books before—an omission I now remedy, as you’ll see from the illustrations accompanying this piece. I didn’t see Strange Tales #72 (December 1959) in its original full colour form for many years—I first encountered Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s “I Fought 76

Mark Evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

(above) Jack at work in his home studio, mid-1970s.

Photo courtesy of Jeremy Kirby. (below) The panelists, left to right: Mark Evanier, Jillian Kirby, Lisa Kirby, Jeremy Kirby, Tracy Kirby, and Mike Thibodeaux.

Photos by John Morrow.

2017 Kirby Family & Friends Panel Held July 21st, 2017 at Comic-Con International San Diego. Featuring Jack’s daughter Lisa Kirby, granddaughter Tracy Kirby, grandson Jeremy Kirby, granddaughter Jillian Kirby, close friend and inker Mike Thibodeaux, and moderated by Mark Evanier.

Transcribed by Steven Tice, with edits by Eric Nolen-Weathington.

Copyedited by John Morrow and Mark Evanier.

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MARK EVANIER: Good afternoon, everyone.

While I’m getting my mic on here, I would like to audition for Sean Spicer’s job. [laughter] I’m Mark Evanier. Welcome to a panel we’ve been looking forward to for some time. You know, at this convention, we used to run around and applaud Jack Kirby like crazy. We don’t have Jack here, but we’ve got a lot of his friends and family. I’d like you to meet Kirby’s friends and family, folks. [applause] Except for me and Mike, the rest are all related. This is Jillian Kirby, that’s Lisa Kirby, that’s Mike Thibodeaux, that’s Tracy Kirby, and that’s Jeremy Kirby. [applause] We’re going to talk about the man we were all privileged to know or to have in our world. A lot of you feel close to the Kirby family, I know. If Mike Royer were here, he could talk about the feeling of an extended family. You know, when I went to work for Jack in 1969—I met him in ’69, and went to work for him in 1970 with a fellow named Steve Sherman, who couldn’t be here—Roz was making us sandwiches, we would jump in the pool.

At one point Lisa had a horse at the back of the house, and Jack would—every so often at two o’clock, he’d say, “Hm, time to go shovel out the stables, Mark.”

And he’d get up to go out to shovel out the stables. Do you remember this, Lisa, at all?

(above) Pencil storyboard from the “Frightful Four” episode of the 1978 Fantastic Four animated series. (below) Photo of Jack holding court with the kids of Atherwood Elementary School in Simi Valley, California.

Photo by George Reynolds from the March 24, 1983 edition of the Simi Valley Daily News. (next page, bottom) This sketch of Captain America was recently auctioned on the French eBay site, and looks authentic to us.

However, there has been a rash of forgeries sold online lately, and it’s often hard to know if something is legit. The very loose Mister Miracle marker sketch at top right is a great example; while it might be authentic Kirby, it’s just not very good, and it’s not hard to fake Jack’s signature. So buyer beware!

LISA KIRBY: Oh, yeah! I was happy about it. I didn’t have to do it!

achievements, as well.

MARK: Was there one story you heard so many times MARK: And I would say, “Why don’t you let me do that, you could hear it in your sleep? Was there one anecdote Jack?” Because I figured the one thing I could do better he would tell you over, and over, and over again? than Jack was to shovel a lot of horsesh*t. [laughter] LISA: Gosh, you know, I can’t think of something [off the And he’d go, “No, Mark, this is honest work.” Jack was top of my head?]. much stronger than I was—a very strong man. And he would start shoveling horsesh*t and throwing it into MARK: Was there a World War II story? the canyon down where hopefully it would hit one of LISA: A World War II story? Um… I can’t think of any. the motorcyclists who would ride there. [laughter] I like Does anybody here? to think that with every one of those shovelfuls that he was thinking of someone he hated, and then flinging the TRACY KIRBY: I always remember the story he would sh*t. Anyway, he was an amazing man, and I wanted tell about finding the dog.

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, to ask everybody a little bit about the effect that—I LISA: Oh, that’s the one. Yeah.

THEyou LINK TO ORDER THIS want to ask Lisa first. Lisa, how old wereCLICK you when ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT! figured out what your father did for a living?

TRACY: The one where they found a lone dog after they went into a town that was pretty much broken down LISA: About 35. [laughter] You know, to me, I get this and destroyed, and they found this lone dog walking question a lot: He was my dad. I mean, that’s what he around, and that to him was a very vivid memory that did for a living. For most people, your parents, you he carried with him for a long time, that he’d always talk know what they do for a living, and that’s what he did about. And then the Nazis usually multiplied over the for a living. I really didn’t realize until I was older how years. [laughter] From five Nazis, to ten Nazis, to twenty much he did and the effect it had on the public, and Nazis that he’d be fighting, which I always thought was entertaining people. I think he was just always my pretty funny. father, so especially as a teenager, I don’t think you really even appreciate—you roll your eyes at your parents.

MARK: Lisa, did you ever get any reaction from kids at “Oh, no, he’s telling me that story again.” And as you get school who knew what your father did? older, you’re like, “Wow. I should have listened more,” LISA: Yeah. I mean, definitely. Growing up, I was just a or, “I should have paid attention more.” So it took really shy kid. I was quiet. I was one of those people that awhile, but now, like I said, I am overwhelmedKIRBY sitting COLLECTOR #73 just sat and didn’t talk very much. It was hard for me Kirby’sof best (and worst) short spurts on his here, so it’s a pretty amazing thing. I’mONE-SHOTS! very proud to makeJUSfriends. But he would come to my classroom, wildest concepts: ANIMATION IDEAS, DINGBATS, him, and I think everybody else is veryTICE INC., proudMANHUNTER, of his ATLAS, PRISONER, and more! Plus and he’d draw for the kids. He’d ask, “What letter does MARK EVANIER and our other regular panelists, rare Kirby interview, panels from the 2017 Kirby Centennial your name start with?”, and he’d put a big celebration, pencil art galleries, and some one-shot surprises!

“A” on the drawing pad and make a superBIG BARDA #1 cover finishes by MIKE ROYER! hero out of it. So somewhere, hopefully (100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 those people still have their drawings. But http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_57&products_id=1345 it really broke the ice for me, and then I had birthday parties and a lot of these people would come because—yeah, I owe it to him.

He got me in the group. And then, as I grew older, I was a preschool teacher for quite a long time, and he would come to my class and do the same thing. It was really neat to see it all go full circle. So, yeah, he was pretty fun.

MARK: Jillian, what’s the reaction you get when people find out you’re related to Jack Kirby?

JILLIAN KIRBY: Almost the same. I guess a lot of kids, especially with the conversation of his characters in the movies 80