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ISSUE NO. 79 FALL 2020
KIRBY COLLECTOR
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Characters TM & © DC Comics.
A STARTLING LOOK INTO...
THE
Contents The Big Picture! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 (Brother Eye beams in) KIRBY EPIPHANY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 (Kaluta on Kirby) INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 (a Scarce interview)
C o l l e c t o r
ISSUE #79, FALL 2020
BOYDISMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 (some big costume ideas) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 (more early Link Thorne work) GENERATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 (fighting illiteracy with Kirby comics) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . . 24 (who watches the Watcher?) KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 (Jack’s two-page spreads analyzed) GALLERY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 (One Man’s Amazing Concepts) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 (monsters and outer space!) CHANGE-UPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 (some Marvel mysteries) GALLERY 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 (before & after: the Eternals) RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 (Jack’s legacy characters) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM . . . . . . . . . 59 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 ( Mark Evanier moderates the 2019 Kirby Tribute Panel, featuring Buzz Dixon, Tracy Kirby, Jeremy Kirby, Paul S. Levine, Kurt Busiek, and Mike Royer) A SPECIAL APPEAL . . . . . . . . . . . 75 COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . 78 Co ver inks: MIKE ROYER Co ver color: TOM ZIUKO COPYRIGHTS: Big Barda, Brother Eye, Demon, Flash, Global Peace Agency, Guardian, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Mister Miracle, Newsboy Legion, Oberon, OMAC, Sandman, Superman, Tales of the Unexpected, Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics • Absorbing Man, Ant-Man, Avengers, Batroc, Bucky, Captain America, Daredevil, Dr. Doom, Eternals, Fantastic Four, Frightful Four, Galactus, Hulk, Inhumans, Invisible Girl, Loki, Magneto, Maximus, Odin, Pluto, Sandman, Sentry, Sgt. Fury, Silver Surfer, Skrulls, Strange Tales, Thing, Thor, Trapster, Two-Gun Kid, Vision, Warriors Three, Wasp, Watcher, Wyatt Earp, X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Boys’ Ranch, Bullseye, Fighting American, Hot Box, Link Thorne, Night Fighter TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates • Captain Victory, Darius Drumm, Silver Star, Sky Masters TM & © Jack Kirby Estates • The Fly TM & © Joe Simon Estate • Destroyer Duck TM & © Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby Estates • A if for Alien, Power Planet, Raven, Roxie’s Raiders, Thundarr the Barbarian, Turbo Teen TM & © Ruby-Spears Productions
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(above) Kirby’s original art for the cover of OMAC #1 was flopped and altered for publication. Courtesy of the Jack Kirby Museum.
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The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 27, No. 79, Fall 2020. Published quarterly (barring worldwide pandemics) 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: $48 Economy US, $70 International, $18 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
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Innerview
A SCARCE KIRBY IN Interviewed by Nikola Atchine, translated by Jean Depelley
[A NOTE FROM JEAN DEPELLEY: In 1992, Nikola Atchine interviewed Jack Kirby at his booth at the San Diego Comic-Con. Instead of the resentful and embittered man he expected to meet, Kirby was a sympathetic and funny grandpa. His booth was loaded with superb original art pages for sale. His charming wife Roz was filtering the people around Jack and making sure he was comfortable. When she gave Nikola her approval, he interviewed the Master. A most incredible aspect of Jack Kirby was his New York City slum accent, an accent you can find in the old crime films starring Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Spencer Tracy. Kirby’s sentences were filled with “You know” and “So I says,” making him even more sympathetic. The man was colorful. Sometimes he could be a bit absent-minded when he discussed with fans or answered the occasional question in an interview, but his mind was sharp, as if he were only twenty years old. Kirby was extremely warm. If he liked evoking the past, he still lived in the present, with his eyes turned on what was coming. This interview was originally published in the French comics-related magazine Scarce #31 (Spring 1992). Journalist Nikola Atchine died in 2008 and the transcript was lost. Publisher Xavier Lancel kindly gave his permission to have the interview translated and reprinted in The Jack Kirby Collector. Our thanks to him and to Scarce, the longest-running magazine in its category in France.] NIKOLA ATCHINE: How did you start in comics? JACK KIRBY: My mom pushed me to it! That’s true! I was from a very poor part of New York and, in the ’30s, when you were poor, you were really poor. So I was trying to make a little money one way or another, especially by selling newspapers at the corner.
(above) Examples of Kirby’s early strip work, clipped from newspapers and saved by Jack’s mother! (right) Jack’s own Judo and boxing experience may’ve inspired this 1986 animation idea, Night-Fighter—a name first used in this late 1950s unused concept (below).
ATCHINE: Did you practice any sports? KIRBY: No, not really. I was interested in boxing and judo, but nothing else, even if I played lots of sports, as all kids do. ATCHINE: Did your interest in combat sports help you in your career as an artist? KIRBY: Oh yes, absolutely! But, at the beginning, I first used these sports to fight for real! Sometimes I lost, sometimes I won. But one thing was sure: When I was after guys, they all came back home with bruises and bumps. That was my life back then. ATCHINE: So, drawing comics was considered a decent way to make a living, if your mother 4
NTERVIEW pushed you to do it then… KIRBY: There was nothing wrong with doing comic books. They were new and they were emerging. You could find them everywhere, but people didn’t realize it was a burgeoning industry. And the more comics became interesting, the more numerous they were, up until they finally covered a large variety of genres for readers. ATCHINE: Did you start drawing as a kid? KIRBY: Yes, with the feeling I could draw everything. ATCHINE: Were you, at one point, tempted to try painting or illustration? KIRBY: No. I went to a drawing school, but it didn’t work that well. As a matter of fact, they put me in front of a model; it took me two days to make a portrait, but the other guys there spent something like 30 to 40 days to draw it! Once my drawing was finished, I gave it to the teacher, telling him it was done. And this guy shouted at me: “You’re fired!” He had the feeling that I didn’t respect the anatomy, that my drawing was too “free.” As far as I was concerned, I thought it was okay and that it was functioning as it was. I was already doing comics! ATCHINE: And you kept on doing it! Let’s discuss your style. When one of your characters has, for example, a very big fist, it gives an incredible effect.
KIRBY: Yes, I had to find a way to render this effect. That’s what you call a shortcut. ATCHINE: Did you analyze your work? Did you know, for example, that this shadow at this place on the panel would give that effect? Or were you more intuitive? KIRBY: I analyzed it, in the way I was drawing the best I could. I was writing and drawing my stories, adding my own vision to them, producing them the best way I could, mostly in the fight scenes. I loved action scenes, violent fights, their sequences of movements with power and continuity. When Captain America had to fight five or six guys on his own, it was a real treat! I was wondering what the other guys would do when Captain America was knocking out two of them. So I showed one of them going through a window, one landing on a table, and the whole scene looked like a ballet and I was its choreographer. The fight scenes had to be very efficient. ATCHINE: You had to work very fast. Did it affect the way you drew? KIRBY: You know, I was not drawing that fast! It was very difficult, so I had to take two or three 20-page stories back home and work them at my own pace. I didn’t like drawing in a studio. I was lucky enough to work at home, so I could draw when I wanted. ATCHINE: But you worked for the Eisner & Iger Studio. KIRBY: That’s true and, before, I also worked for the Max and Dave Fleischer Studio, in animation. It was honest-to-God factory work. Their cartoons were absolutely beautiful, but when a character was taking a step forward, you had to draw twelve pictures! My father (above) Kirby’s design for a Medieval soldier in an episode of the Super Friends animated series. (left) Paste-up art for the cover of Captain America #109.
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(below) Pencils from Demon #2, page 19.
repeated these stories. They were telling how Count Draha abducted peasants and their daughters, driving them to his castle which they never escaped from. Perhaps the Count had only had them wash his stables or clean the parquet floor, but the people around the fire kept telling he forced them to do very strange things. That may be the origin of the Dracula myth. Characters, more or less historical, are turned into legends, even if they probably were people like you and I! ATCHINE: So you dug into these classic legends and
transformed them, mixing them with today’s concepts and transposing them into a urban environment. KIRBY: I tried to incorporate what I know. My father came from an aristocratic Austrian family and my mother was a peasant. And they told me popular tales, stories very real for these people. At that time, penicillin didn’t exist and people were dying from diseases easily cured by today’s treatments. There were some religious ceremonies where people danced and sang. I could see them with my own eyes. ATCHINE: In the United States? KIRBY: Absolutely, in the States! And I could see them dancing around the patient’s bed, calling the demon and telling him: “Leave the body of that man, demon! What’s your name, demon?” ATCHINE: Etrigan? KIRBY: [laughs] Etrigan is a name I invented. Then, these religious people told the demon: “Leave! This place is not yours, here! This man is in good health, he is not sick.” ATCHINE: How old were you when you attended these scenes? KIRBY: I was eleven and it impressed me a lot. I was not accustomed to European traditions, outside what my parents could tell me. Every person on the block was migrant and everyone had his customs. If they came from England, they practiced the old English traditions and transmitted their tales. Somehow, they were all alike: they had bad demons, good demons and religious people who succeeded in controlling them... These priests had an important role in these tales, probably because at the time, people were dying young and only religion and faith could help them. ATCHINE: These stories are eternal, out of time. KIRBY: Yes, all of them. The Nordic legends about Asgard will live forever, as will our own legends, transmitted by comics, at least the best ones. We are building our own legends right now. What is modern today will become archaic for people in the future, and, for them, our writers will describe the “primitive life” we are currently experiencing. You know, as intelligent as Shakespeare was, he was still a man of his time, a man from the 16th century. H
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COSTUMING BY KIRBY BIG
BOYDISMS (right) The malevolent Mogul took over grim Hogun’s homeland and got the same kind of dancers and revelry that marked Cecil B. DeMille’s films. (below) The opulence of DeMille’s King of Kings may have inspired the grandeur of Jack’s crowd scenes. Here, the wealthy and decadent courtesan Mary Magdalene moves haughtily through a crowd in her chariot.
(right) Paramount Pictures’ biggest moneymaker of 1949, Samson and Delilah. (bottom) Harokin is made ready for Valhalla in Thor #133.
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PICTURES DESIGNS, INC.
s I asserted in a past issue of TJKC, the boys I grew up with and I saw super-heroes as one heck of a “power trip,” though we were, of course, too unsophisticated to articulate it in that fashion. Jack Kirby’s army of super-doers knew what they were capable of, enjoyed taking to the skies (the Angel, the Human Torch, and the Silver Surfer), praised the achievements of their own tech-weaponry and inventions (Iron Man, the Wingless Wizard, Dr. Doom, Lucifer, Mr. Fantastic), and were quite proud of their own sheer physical strengths (the Hulk, the Thing, SubMariner, Hercules, Giant-Man/Goliath, Thor). And though my buddies and I had problems at the time reciting poetry assigned to us in our classes, Stan Lee’s liltin’ dialogue and Kirby’s magnificent visuals stuck with us. Jack’s visuals— let me rephrase that, Jack’s ‘suitably impressive visuals’—stuck with us since his costumes and uniforms elevated his splash panels, covers, pin-ups, and posters to a pinnacle no other cartoonist of his day could reach. The King’s garb for the gods (Balder, Heimdall, Loki, Hela, Pluto—and Odin’s closet saw no end!) or impressive uniforms for the baddies who served Hydra, A.I.M., and the Red Skull never disappointed loyal readers, whose eyes were blown out by the “senses-shattering’’ look of it all. Jack and Stan’s characters were always supremely confident, and their attire matched their status among their own. Here’s a modest compilation of some of them and the way the master storyteller may have used past storytelling—in this case, from the Biblical spectacles of another master, director Cecil B. DeMille, to invigorate his tales… of Asgard and Midgard.
by Jerry Boyd
courtesan Mary Magdalene in the former, and before Samson’s humiliation before the Philistines in the latter. DeMille played heavily on his superb composition of these scenes and others with magnificent costuming for all. Jack would do the same for the murderous Mogul (Thor #139) and Zeus (Thor #129), among others. DeMille wasn’t shy about adding scarcelygarbed handmaidens to attend to the main female characters (something some film critics said was too sexy) any more than Jack would do by supplementing his backgrounds and foregrounds with ugly gnomes, ogres, and the like to his super-villains’ celebrations. For additional information, we’re all fortunate to have Kirby friend Scott Fresina share his memories of Jack. The first anecdote deals with costuming.
GAMES OF THRONES Even seated, in their palatial throne room chambers— or in Harokin the Barbarian’s case, facing death (sheeesh!)— Jack Kirby’s heroes and villains radiated power or menace or majesty in those big pictures we cherish so dearly. In some cases, à la DeMille’s incredible silent masterpiece King of Kings (1927) and the later Samson and Delilah (1949), dancers would prance about the opulent settings before the wealthy
SCOTT FRESINA: I recall telling Jack I was impressed by the regal throne rooms of Atlantis and the pageantry of Asgard… when I asked where the inspiration came from, he only offered, “I lived at the movies when I was a kid; I’d watch them over and over because they didn’t clear the theaters between showings. My mother would come charging down the aisle at dinner and drag me out of there!” He did 9
Foundations
Here’s our next installment of the complete Link Thorne stories by Simon & Kirby, this one from Airboy Comics V4, #6 (July 1947): “Dynamite.” Art reconstruction and coloring by Chris Fama.
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Let’s Watch...
...How He Changes!
INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld
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hen I first started collecting Fantastic Four comics, trade paperback collections were few and far between—which meant that I was picking up mostly original back issues and, thus, obtaining them wildly out of publishing order. So a point of mild confusion I had was when I finally got to read Fantastic Four #13, and found The Watcher looked pretty substantially different than when I had seen him in the Galactus Trilogy. For this issue’s “Incidental Iconography” column, I’ve finally gone through and figured out what happened and when. The Watcher is an interesting and unique character to study because, despite debuting in Fantastic Four, that wasn’t really treated as his “home” book in the same way as other characters. A year after his first appearance, he’d been migrated over to Tales of Suspense for a back-up feature. A year after that, he started
hopping around in Fantastic Four, Strange Tales, Avengers, and Tales to Astonish. He eventually (and somewhat logically) landed in the Silver Surfer series that started in 1968 before getting dragged over into Thor during Jack’s last days before leaving Marvel for DC. With all that jumping around, he was drawn by a good chunk of the artists at Marvel at the time: Larry Lieber, Don Heck, George Tuska, and Gene Colan 1 to name a few. With all those artists working on the character, and then mostly 1 sporadically, it’s little wonder that The Watcher’s appearance changed rather quickly compared to other characters who were drawn more regularly by a single artist. WHO WATCHES THE WATCHER? The Watcher’s first appearance is fairly surprising. 2 It occurs about halfway through Fantastic Four #13, after the story has largely been set up as the FF versus the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes. The Watcher suddenly appears from the shadows and starts throwing the issue’s villains around. Jack basically draws him as a variation on his typical “big head” aliens: a relatively gaunt figure with a proportionally over-sized, bald head. He’s given a sort of toga, and a cloak with a high, stiff, and stylized collar. There are only two full-body drawings of The Watcher in this issue, and both have the clothing drawn differently. The idea is the same in both, but almost none of the specifics match. His appearances in Fantastic Four #20 and #29 feel similar. They’ve got the same general idea, but none of the specifics match anything else, even within a given issue! That isn’t terribly unusual for Jack at this time. What’s of particular interest during this period, though, is that The Watcher began appearing in the Tales of Suspense back-up feature, “Tales of the Watcher,” drawn by Larry Lieber. The stories as the series began are short EC-style vignettes with The Watcher acting as a host character, so despite appearing every month beginning with ToS #49, we don’t see many full illustrations of him at first, and initially Lieber was largely copying Jack’s drawing from FF #13. As the series progresses, though, Lieber does try
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to show the character from different angles and perspectives. In doing so, the character’s proportions normalize somewhat. While his head does remain over-sized, it’s not as jarringly so as he was shown originally. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this was done deliberately; with The Watcher as a host character, it would make sense to make him less alien-looking and, theoretically, more relatable to the reader. So when Jack picks the character up again for FF #29, he follows Lieber’s trend of normalizing the character’s size somewhat. Again, he still maintains the over-sized head, but the body proportions are closer to a human’s overall. (As an interesting aside, FF #29 and the “Tales of the Watcher” story from Tales of Suspense #56 have sequential job numbers. While The Watcher continues to appear elsewhere in enigmatic cameos, by this point, he’s become a more central figure in the ToS stories.) THE LAY(OUT) OF THE LAND After the Watcher stories are dropped in favor of Captain America with ToS #59, we then have what I think is a critical juncture in Avengers #14. The reason it is critical is because the story was drawn by Don Heck over Jack’s layouts. This was, of course, a not uncommon practice at the time as Stan Lee tried to “teach” what might be considered Marvel’s house style of storytelling by having Jack do quick layouts for an issue so that another artist could draw over top of them to get the general storytelling rhythm Lee felt was integral to their sales. Jack’s work here was necessarily very rough, so the details were left up to the other artist. And because of that, we see here the largest departure from previous illustrations of The Watcher. Heck draws The Watcher as a normal-sized figure wearing a robe. Presumably Jack’s quick sketches to indicate a toga were misread because of the lack of detail. More intriguingly, it looks as if Jack did indeed draw The Watcher’s head in its typically over-sized proportions, but Heck seems to have assumed that was a mistake and shrank it back down, judging by some faint hints of an erased halo-type effect around the final inked lines. However, the general roundness of the head remains, giving a hint of a double-chin in some panels. When we get to Fantastic Four Annual #3 later that same year, Jack adopts this more proportionally-sized Watcher. Whether he used the Avengers issue as reference or not, he continues with the thicker, rounder head. He does return the character’s toga as well, but by omitting the cloak and the chest decorations—as Heck
unintentionally had—The Watcher now appears to be wearing swaddling clothes instead of a toga. Although I suspect some would point to inker Vince Colletta as a potential culprit here, as he’s been given (unfairly, in my opinion) a reputation for leaving out critical details, many of the specifics he would have had to have left out here would make the final drawings more complicated rather than less. I suspect this was more an issue of Jack working quickly under a tight deadline—not only was this issue an Annual (an extra issue for the year) but this is the one that featured Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Girl’s wedding, and is packed to the gills with different characters. Jack was no doubt somewhat rushed in putting this issue together, and more loose than usual with the details. Roughly simultaneously, we have The Watcher show up in Tales to Astonish #73, wherein we once again have Jack doing rough layouts, this time penciled over by Bob Powell. What is interesting here is that Powell had already drawn The Watcher in Strange Tales #135 earlier in the year and was already familiar with the character. His depiction in Astonish seems to be a blending of the heftier Watcher that Jack was drawing at that point, and the thinner version he must have used for reference previously.
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BACK ON TRACK The following year, The Watcher finally returns to the main Fantastic Four title with the start of the Galactus Trilogy. 3 Here we see The Watcher in his more-or-less final form: Jack draws him as visibly heavier with a kind of stylized toga, but we see a collar/chest piece poking out from underneath with flared shoulders. The collar wraps tightly enough around his head as to almost make it appear separate from his body in more than a couple panels over the next few issues. Likely because of the power of the story and the relative frequency of its reprinting, this is the version of The Watcher I suspect most people were familiar with for at least a couple of decades. However, Jack seems to have continued modifying the character design beyond this appearance. When The Watcher appears next in Fantastic Four #60, Jack continues to use the basic design from the Galactus Trilogy but adds some classic Kirby-style design elements to his now-uncovered chest piece. Jack expands on this idea considerably in FF #72, and draws a virtual geometric universe on the back of The Watcher’s collar. We then start getting into some seemingly incongruous appearances. 4 Fantastic Four Annual #5 from late 1967 features a pin-up of “The Greatest Array of Supporting Characters Ever Assembled in One Issue.” The Watcher is seen towards the back, towering over many of the other characters but, strangely, he’s holding a cape across his chest much like Dracula stereotypically does. This covers his body almost entirely, almost as if Jack felt he couldn’t be bothered to look up the costume specifics and did that to crank something out. I have trouble believing this to be the case, though, as Jack does include the much more complicated Galactus on the same pin-up. The art on this page, to me, seems a bit crude by Jack’s standards, and while that could be partially laid on the feet of inker Frank Giacoia, I’m forced to wonder about the origins of this particular piece. While The Watcher does make a few more appearances over the next year, Jack doesn’t use the character again until Thor #165 from late 1969. This brief appearance again plays with some “typical” Kirby-esque designs on The Watcher’s collar, but we don’t see the character’s legs or torso to see if the classic toga remains. And that’s a question because we then get into the slew of problems surrounding Jack’s final Thor issues. A THOR-NY ISSUE John Morrow covered this in much greater detail back in TJKC #52, but the gist of things is that Thor #168-170 were heavily
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Gallery 1
ONE MAN’S AMAZING
I
Brother Eye, return to comment on some of my chronicler’s work about me and my human brother OMAC. Before Jack Kirby began documenting our exploits for public consumption, he created for his publishers some presentation sheets showing his ideas. I shall analyze the second of these for OMAC first. Like most of these sheets produced during this period, he presented an amazing array of ideas and undeveloped concepts, showcasing possibilities he saw for his work. That they did not represent any definite planned direction is clear, because many of the ideas were never developed or were used very differently. In OMAC’s and my case, while Kirby’s ‘brain transplant’ concept gets full treatment in the third storyline, he never chronicled ‘Professor Brainwave’, or anyone else who ‘attacks minds’. Whereas an entire country wasn’t put up for sale, as postulated here, he did instead showcase an entire city up for rent for one evil night. Clearly, Kirby’s mind was in overdrive as he sought to inspire his employers with the potential in the series. He may have chronicled more of these ideas if the series continued beyond its eight issues, but it is also quite possible that once the series took clearer form in his mind, he may never have looked back to these ideas at all. That the ideas were sparked by Kirby’s reading of the direction that the science and authority of his time were taking is undeniable, and that he foresaw many possibilities that others did not, is as obvious now as it was to me when he wrote them. Next (page 31) is where I was introduced (OMAC No. 1, page 7). My creator was Myron Forrest (although there are indications my chronicler, Mr. Kirby, had considerable conceptual input) and we know part of his inspiration for me was a then current fictional entity from “2001: A Space Odyssey” named Hal. (This is mentioned by Kirby on his first presentation sheet, not shown here.) Some also think of me as a kind of robotic version of ‘Shazam’, from the old Captain Marvel comic. Others say I was named after George Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ concept – though I reject that notion, since I see no evidence that my chronicler saw me as anything but totally benevolent in nature, unlike ‘Big Brother.’ Also introduced is the Global Peace Agency (GPA). At the time he wrote, my chronicler’s audience was familiar with the United Nations, so he was sure they would grasp the concept of the GPA, whose agents worked toward world peace, but whose features and nationalities were hidden by ‘cosmetic spray’ (those featureless faces were colored orange originally, but unfortunately, often got colored a Caucasian pink in later issues). My chronicler took the view that the GPA were wise and well intentioned and that their actions were warranted and moral – something many younger comic-book writers following him would never assume, in this series or any other. There is the paradox of a super ‘god of war’,
such as OMAC, being an agent to enforce peace, though there are many instances where Kirby attempted to define that, showing violence was not his normal method. He never addressed the issue of Buddy Blank not being consulted in his melding with me. I wonder if he would have, had the series continued? What he did write, in his editorial in OMAC No. 1, was about advances in technology. It was very insightful: “We’re too human to stop it. And we’re too human not to abuse it!” he wrote. Thus was the basis of my chronicler’s intent in this series. Oh – a quick aside. See the sequence Mr. Kirby drew on page 5 – where OMAC walks calmly away from a massive explosion behind him? How action movies have plundered that scene, ad nauseam, ever since! As always, Kirby was there first!
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CONCEPTS
Commentary by Brother Eye, channeled through Shane Foley
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Change-Ups
(below) Jack also included Crystal in this sequence from FF Annual #5, but she was removed from the page before publication.
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MARVEL MYSTERIES A SCHEDULING GLITCH? by Shane Foley
Here are my reasons for thinking this. The first and most obvious hint is the presence of Triton. 1 In Fantastic Four #64, Triton is still staying with the FF after helping them in FF #62. 2 In FF #65, Triton is said to have left (page 4, panel 1). 3 Yet in FF Annual #5 (on sale the month of FF #68), Triton is with the FF when they come to join the other Inhumans. He then stays with the Inhumans at story’s end. It’s a nice, logical piece of detail in the FF’s continuing storyline. But if this is the case, it means Kirby not only produced the Annual between FF #64 and #65, but believed it would be on sale in that order. 4 This also means Kirby would think that the news of the Richards’ baby, announced in the Annual, would be common knowledge starting with FF #65. As pub4 lished, that knowledge wasn’t public until three months later, around the time of #68, when the Annual actually appeared on sale. Is there any evidence in FF #65, 66 and 67 that Kirby thought news of the baby was known to the readers; evidence that Lee, as scripter, would have to write around carefully? I believe so. Look at Reed and Sue. 5 In FF #65, Reed and Sue are seen flirting and having an intimate, almost celebratory dinner together. It really seems as though it’s something special for them. Stan scripts it as if it’s just a date (and it reads nicely that way), but if the original pages turn up, I’ll bet that Kirby’s border notes 5 mention that it’s to celebrate
nderstanding how the amazing team of Lee and Kirby worked is endless fascination for most of us who love Kirby’s work. When were there real story conferences? When did Kirby take over as chief architect of the work? Just how much editorial input did Lee have at times in that marvelous decade of the ’60s? We have anecdotal evidence from other Bullpenners that there were times aplenty when Kirby raced off in a direction that Lee had not anticipated, causing, it seems, more than a little frustration. And we know of other times where it was Lee who annoyed Kirby by altering his story motivations after he’d plotted and drawn his work. Here is one little example of what may be, or may not be, a little glitch in their working relationship.
3 She was supposed to be back at the Baxter Building, taking care of a newly pregnant Sue Storm—not off galavanting with the Inhumans.
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Fantastic Four Annual #5 appeared opposite FF #68, dated November 1967. Yet there are a number of factors that make me (and, I’m sure, others) feel it was produced months earlier than that—between FF #64 and #65 to be precise. This would be no big deal—books were produced out of order all the time—except that this time, it seems to me there was a bit of fall-out.
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A wealth of observations by a trio of Kirby fans
the Annual was not going to be available in the same order that he was producing it. Whereas the plot surprise that the Richards were expecting a child surely can’t have been one that editor/scripter Lee didn’t know was coming—something that momentous simply must have been discussed beforehand—perhaps Kirby, in his impassioned way of forging ahead with storylines, simply forgot the timing of the Annual’s release, and wrote all the FF issues after the Annual as if the baby announcement had already been made, because in his head, it had. We’ve heard many stories of Kirby totally forgetting what he and Stan had discussed for various issues—maybe this is another, tiny example of this happening. Is this all very important? Not to us as readers, no. But to Stan Lee and the editorial staff, it would have been quite frustrating, and I’m sure they breathed a sigh of relief when it was realized that it could all be scripted around and no art changes required. If only no one notices Triton... ...and yes—this is definitely trivia!
5 their forthcoming child. The date just seems very ‘special’ to me. 6 Then in FF #67, Reed is suddenly very protective of Sue, “forbidding” her to follow the rest of the FF through the transfer grid to the Beehive. Why? She’s just held her own against the Sentry and plenty of others before that! Could it be because he is concerned she now has a child to think of as well? (Sure, she was 6 present fighting Ronan after their dinner in #65, but she was abducted that time—Reed had no say in it.) What about Kirby’s schedule? It fits. Almost perfectly. Looking at Kirby’s output at the time, we see that he had a fivemonth hiatus from his 10 pages per month assignment of “Captain America,” being Tales of Suspense #87-91, cover-dated March-July 1967. The FF Annual featured around 50 pages of new material, so it is fair to assume that the leave of absence from Captain America was to allow time to produce the Annual. Kirby then is back on Cap in Tales of Suspense #92—the same month that FF #65 appears. Perfect! So—if Kirby got the timing wrong, how did this happen? One possibility is that the Annual was originally to have come on sale earlier, but was then pushed back in the schedule after Kirby had completed it, forcing Lee to write around Kirby’s references to the pregnancy. There’s no evidence for this, for the FF and Spider-Man Annuals—presumably the biggest selling Annuals—had always been the last to appear in the three-month block in which Annuals were released. But if the original plan was for the FF to be first that year, rather than last on the schedule, it would have come out opposite FF #66—very close to where Kirby intended it. The other possibility is that it was Kirby himself who mucked up the schedule, forgetting that
MYSTERY OF THE FLYING HULK by Ross Morrison After originating the character, Kirby’s initial Hulk run was a mere five issues (of a total of six), during which the character’s circumstances, speech patterns and personality varied significantly. While it wasn’t unusual for a 7 strip to take time to develop, the Hulk really did seem to be an example of trying out many different ideas to see which 8 Kirby/Lee ones would work best. The result was a strip in constant flux. 7 The third issue’s cover highlights an exciting new development to draw in potential readers. “Look!” cries a soldier who is pointing to the Hulk soaring through the air with a hapless Rick Jones. “Nothing can stop him now! He can fly!” Two major changes are revealed inside. 8 The first involves a psychic connection to Rick, allowing him to control the creature’s movements and summon him from afar. The second is revealed when, while escaping 43
Mark Evanier
JACK F.A.Q.s
A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby
about something. When I was working with Jack in the early ’70s on the Fourth World books, one of the problems that the books had was that they were considered kind of a hostile presence at DC by some people. There were people there who were kind of rooting for them to fail or didn’t see how they could possibly succeed because DC Comics, for years and years and years before there was any notion that Jack might come back there, was the company that considered Marvel comics garbage. “They’re all lousy! Look at the Marvel books! Oh, look how terrible they are!” And they got very frustrated at the idea when they looked and saw that Marvel was outselling them. They knew how Marvel was outselling them because they had the same distributor, the distributor that DC Comics, in effect, owned—Independent News. And there’s the embarrassment. Your own distributor is reporting higher sales figures on your competitor’s products to you. So you can’t really think, “Oh the distributor must be lying.” And around the DC offices, there was this feeling… not unanimous. There were people who loved Jack there, but enough people to kind of influence the attitude in the office that Marvel comics were flawed comics, badly drawn, badly done. And it was kind of jarring, all of a sudden, the announcement that, “We’ve just hired Jack Kirby. He’s coming over here.” Not that many people could make the jump to, “Oh! He’s good now!” So that was a problem that he had there. And the people at Independent News and the people at the licensing department, and some people at DC’s offices said, “Oh, these things, these New Gods, they’re never gonna sell. They’ll never do well and they’ll especially never be merchandised.” I was there when the guy from the licensing department told Jack to his face there would never be dolls of Darkseid or t-shirts of Orion or anything like that. How many people have seen dolls of Darkseid and t-shirts of Orion? [chuckles from audience] And then people proclaimed the books were failures because they weren’t putting Marvel out of business. I have in my office a shelf of the hardcover and paperback reprints of The New Gods and I look at it… It’s kind of there because I wrote the Forewords for ’em, but it’s really there
2019 Jack Kirby Tribute Panel Held Sunday, July 21, 2019 at Comic-Con International: San Diego. Featuring (standing, left to right) Buzz Dixon, Tracy Kirby, moderator Mark Evanier, Jeremy Kirby, Paul S. Levine, (seated) Kurt Busiek, and Mike Royer. Transcribed by Steven Thompson. Copyedited by Mark Evanier and John Morrow. Photo by Kendall Whitehouse.
(right) Kirby in his California backyard, circa 1971, during his time on the Fourth World series. (below) Jack scribbled these DC job production numbers on the back of his photocopy of Mister Miracle #7, page 15.
MARK EVANIER: Good afternoon, people. Please grab seats. [heavy background chatter] Thank you. This is the annual Jack Kirby tribute panel. That means I must be Mark Evanier. [applause] There’s my name plaque. Oh, wait a minute, that’s the wrong one. I’ve got… [laughter] Let’s see, this one… and this one… and this one, and this one, and this one, and THIS one… [Mark puts out dozens of name plaques from earlier panels at this convention] MIKE ROYER: And that’s all from yesterday! [laughter] MARK: … this one… and this one. You think I do enough panels at this convention, folks? [applause] Let me introduce the people on the panel here. How many people on this panel were ever Jack Kirby’s favorite inker? [laughter] Here’s Mike Royer! [laughter and applause] How many people on this panel are the attorney for the Rosalind Kirby Trust? That’s Paul S. Levine! [applause] How many people on this panel are related to Jack Kirby? Tracy Kirby and Jeremy Kirby! [applause] How many people on this panel ever collaborated with Jack Kirby on Destroyer Duck and worked on Thundarr the Barbarian with him? Buzz Dixon! [applause] And we may or may not have Kurt Busiek showing up here sometime soon. You know why we gather every year. We love Jack Kirby, we love his memory. I noticed on the way in, the panel in this room after us is “How to Do Comics the Marvel Way.” [light laughter] This is the panel on how to do comics the Marvel way! [laughter and applause] It’s just Jack Kirby. That system was built around having Jack Kirby. I think the public is beginning to notice that more. I get alerts on Google all the time when Jack’s name is mentioned, and frequently it’s like a Jack Kirby who’s a judge in some small county in the Berkshires or something. I got a flurry this morning because they made some announcements yesterday about the Eternals movie. Now, let me tell you, I have a feeling of great satisfaction 60
SIX DEGREES OF INDEPENDENT NEWS by John Morrow, based on research by Richard Kolkman
because I like seeing that shelf and looking at it every so often and going, “Yeah. Failure of a book, huh? Going into its ninth printing?! And the books you thought were hits then? I don’t see them being reprinted!” And I’m not allowed to tell you that there’s another reprinting coming up of all the Fourth World books in about a year, in a fancier format, which they’re doing just to give Mike Royer more money. [laughter] MIKE: Mark, I’m delighted when they reprint, especially The Demon, because every penny of reprint money for inking and lettering will come to me, because they’re all issues I worked on. I always hated to see a book that was one third Vince Colletta and two thirds me because… I wanted all of it. [laughter] Now, I have nothing but good things to say about DC. In the beginning, when Jack had made the decision to leave Marvel and go to DC, I was to be part of the package. I don’t know specific reasons given why they didn’t want me, but after Mark and Steve [Sherman] pointed out to them so many things that Vince was changing, and leaving out in his inking, DC finally said, “Okay, you can use the kid.” And I’m sure they were convinced that I would fail. MARK: Oh, absolutely. MIKE: And to their chagrin, I didn’t! And I’m proud of that fact. Yesterday someone from the SYFY Channel said they wanted to interview me. They’re doing a thing on Jack and they said they wanted to know what it was like working for Jack, and I said, “I don’t know because I had to ink three pages a day, letter a whole book in two days…
(right) House ad from Forever People #7. (left) August 21, 1971 Billboard magazine article.
F
ormer DC Comics publisher Paul Levitz wrote in his 2010 book 75 Years Of DC Comics: The Art Of Modern Mythmaking, that the reason DC used the name “Hampshire Distributors” in the indicia of Kirby’s In The Days of the Mob #1 and Spirit World #1, was to keep DC’s name off such adult material. But was anything else distributed under the Hampshire moniker? Take a look inside Forever People #7 or Jimmy Olsen #146. Those February 1972 DC comics contain an ad for two new bi-monthly music magazines: Planet #2 and Words and Music #1. The indicia in W&M states it’s published by “Hampshire Distributors Ltd.”, while Planet is published by “NPP Music Corp.” (NPP stands for National Periodical Publications, DC’s official name up to that point), and both mags have a December 1971 cover date and the same business address: 909 Third Avenue, 21st Floor, New York, NY (ie. DC’s address). Also, both W&M #1 and October 1971’s Planet #1 (the issue before the one shown in the ad) contain a special notice to magazine retailers about displaying these mags; it’s from Independent News Corp. Inc., DC and Marvel Comics’ distributor. There’s another curious connection between Kirby and Independent News’ other clientele. The back cover of Mob #1 and Spirit World #1 features those mags’ only ads—for a revival of Liberty magazine. This new iteration was nostalgia-oriented, reprinting material from Liberty’s 61
original 1924-1950 run (thus a good fit for promoting in Kirby’s magazine about 1930s gangsters, but not necessarily for one about the supernatural). This new Liberty was published by Twenty First Century Communications, and its staff included publisher Leonard Mogel and editor Matty Simmons—who had been producing National Lampoon since its debut in April 1970. NatLamp’s New York offices were at 635 Madison Avenue, in the same building as Marvel Comics—and the December 1972 National Lampoon featured Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Roy Thomas appearing semi-nude in its “Foto Funnies” strip. (Marvel’s Crazy later ran a parody of Roy’s risqué strip, and he promises to give me the long and funny story behind it all soon.) The early 1970s was a tough time for magazines. Words and Music (which hung on till 1973) was also advertised in June 1972 DC comics, but Planet appears to be gone by then, only lasting three issues. The new Liberty ended in Fall 1976. But this drive for new mag launches seems to have been the impetus for Kirby pitching other “Speak-Out Series” concepts, like a war-themed mag. (Despite its 1980 copyright, was Jack’s “Stop The Panzers” art originally drawn for it? It fits size-wise.) Would the never-published Demon #17’s vampire story have repurposed art or ideas from Dracula Forever, another Kirby undeveloped magazine idea? For more on Jack’s plans for his “Speak-Out” series, plus all the unpublished Kirby stories for Soul Love and True-Life Divorce, get my new book Jack Kirby’s Dingbat Love, available now.