INNERVIEWS (early Lee & Kirby interviews)

artist Carmine Infantino used to lament what he called his “unfin- ished symphony.” What he meant by that was the interrupted arc of his artistic career, which broke off when he assumed the position as publisher of DC Comics and ceased drawing monthly stories, halting his stylistic development.

Jack Kirby had many unfinished symphonies, although of a different kind. His unfinished symphonies were books he started and left prematurely, or which were canceled before they got off the ground. Kirby’s career is littered with such debris, beginning with Captain America, which he left after only ten issues.

Military service in World War II took him away from DC’s Sandman, Boy Commandos and the Newsboy Legion. After he returned, Kirby had a number of horses shot out from under him, largely due to the economic troubles in the comic book industry prevalent during the post-war period. Stuntman, Boys’ Ranch, Boy Explorers, Fighting American, Race to the Moon, and several others were among the casualties. Declining sales, publishing gluts and censorship issues all contributed to these misfires. At DC, Kirby was making a new name for himself with Challengers of the Unknown when a dispute with editor Jack Schiff over agenting fees associated with the Sky Masters newspaper strip led to him losing the strip, which he created. Later in the 1950s, he was taken off Radio Comics’ Double Life of Private Strong and Adventures of the Fly. Two decades later, Kirby experienced one of his gravest disappointments, the premature cancellation of New Gods and its associated Fourth World titles. It was better at Marvel Comics during the Silver Age. Although Jack had a tremendous run on Fantastic Four and Thor, Kirby was forced to

abandon most of the characters he started with collabFormations orator Stan Lee, because Lee needed him to start new strips or to rescue fading features. Kirby was an idea factory and Lee used him as a kind of four-color Johnny Appleseed. I doubt Jack cared when he was taken off Ant-Man. Iron Man was more Stan Lee and Don Heck than it was Jack Kirby, who merely designed the original armor. While The (right) An extreme close-up of Magneto Incredible Hulk was canceled after six issues, Kirby was able from X-Men #1, to develop the character furand fine artist Roy ther in guest appearances, and

Lichtenstein’s painting then later in the revived Hulk

“Image Duplicator” (1963, Oil and Magna on canvas, 24 × 20 in.), feature in Tales to Astonish Reading these books . based loosely on Kirby’s back in the 1960s, I was really panel art. saddened when Kirby left

Painting © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein The Avengers, especially after introducing such an intriguing (below) More of the villain in Kang the Conqueror,

Master of Magnetism a futuristic Dr. Doom who was from X-Men #1 (color image, Sept. 1963), and his battle with Thor in shaping up to be the Avengers’ main antagonist after the

Journey Into Mystery death of Zemo. While Kirby #109 (Oct. 1964). was able to complete the character arc for Zemo, he never got to develop Kang any further, which was unfortunate. But the original Avengers consisted of super-heroes Kirby had previously created and would continue to draw occasionally. I think the real tragedy of an unfinished symphony of his 1960s Marvel career was The X-Men. These were original characters, and although the team was designed to be a kind of knock-off of the Fantastic Four, Lee and Kirby gave them significant differences. Stan Lee’s account of the genesis of The X-Men has usually boiled down to a different take on people with powers. “We’re always looking for new super-heroes––not so much for new heroes as for new explanations of how they came about, and I was getting tired of radioactive accidents,” Lee told Leonard Pitts, Jr. “I felt, ‘Why not get some people who were born the way they are, who had mutant powers?’ So we created the X-Men.” It’s impossible to determine if by “we,” Lee meant Marvel Comics as a publisher, or he and Jack Kirby. Lee has consistently claimed that the feature was originally called “The Mutants,” and when publisher

DC

The Maddening Mystery of

Magnetoby Will Murray

Martin Goodman shot down that proposed title, he came up with X-Man, the X signifying eXtra power.

The important part was coming up with fresh powers. “What powers can I give them that are not in use at the moment?” Lee recalled to The New York Times. “There are mutants in nature, and with all the atomic explosions they’re more likely than ever before.”

Despite the many interviews he gave over the years, Jack rarely spoke about the X-Men. But he, too, was consistent when he did, making it sound as if he had created the concept himself.

“This was a period when we were experimenting with the atom bomb,” Kirby recalled to Steve Pastis. “People were wondering what the effects would be. Everybody worried ‘Would we all become mutants?’ We played around with this ‘mutation thing’ and I came up with the X-Men, who were associated with radiation and its effects on humanity.”

Expanding on this claim, Kirby told James Van Hise, “I created X-Men because of the radiation scare at the time. What I did was give the beneficial side. I always feel there’s hope for the human condition. Sure, I could have made it real scary. We don’t know the connotations of genetics and radiation. We can create radiation, but we don’t know what it’s going to do. I think there’s a possible path through these dangerous courses that will steer us to permanent peace and make new people of us. That’s what I did with the X-Men. They were young people who enjoyed life and had a teacher.”

Kirby’s thinking is illuminating. This wasn’t just another version of the F.F. “I did the natural thing there,” he explained to Leonard Pitts. “What would you do with mutants who were just plain boys and girls and certainly not dangerous? You school them. You develop their skills. So I gave them a teacher, Professor X. Of course, it was the natural thing to do. Instead of disorienting or alienating people who were different from us, I made the X-Men part of the human race, which they were. Possibly, radiation, if it is beneficial, may create mutants that’ll save us instead of doing us harm. I felt that if we train the mutants our way, they’ll help us— and not only help us, but achieve a measure of growth in their own sense. And so, we could all live together.”

Stan Lee’s perspective was identical, which shows how difficult it is to separate their individual contributions.

“As with all super-hero teams, I had to have an excuse for putting them together,” revealed Lee to Tom DeFalco in Comics Creators on X-Men. “The Fantastic Four were essentially a family, the Avengers were a club. What could the X-Men be that would be different? I figured if they’re teenagers, what’s more natural than a school?”

As far as I know, Kirby never talked about the master mutant named Magneto in any interview. So we don’t know his thinking there. Like Kang, the X-Men’s chief opponent was never explored by the team of Lee and Kirby beyond the first dozen or so issues of The X-Men. Mysteriously, Magneto was virtually written out of their series early on.

In several interviews, Lee commented that he had plans for Magneto that were never explored.

“I always wanted Magneto to turn out to be Professor X’s brother. If I had stayed with the book, that’s what I would have done.”

I sometimes think there’s such a thing as Stan Speak, where Stan Lee makes comments and claims ideas that may or may not be exclusively his. The idea of Magneto’s relationship to Professor X might have been a Jack Kirby idea that Lee rejected, or it might have arisen as a possibility during story conferences, where the origins of a concept may not be so easily remembered by either party.

But if one looks through the short run of the Lee and Kirby X-Men, one can see that perhaps it’s not merely a possibility that was never developed, but a plan Jack Kirby was executing on and which either he or Lee or both of them abandoned before it could be explored.

Jack Kirby once said it takes about four issues of a comic book to find your characters. This may have been true with Magneto. When first introduced, he was a cipher—a mutant possessing magnetic powers and ambitions of world domination. His mask, based on a Corinthian battle helmet, was striking and provided only a glimpse of his features without revealing any details that would give away his true identity. There is no indication that he and Professor X share a past––at least, not in Stan Lee’s dialogue.

The X-Men defeated Magneto in their first mission, but like Dr. Doom, he escapes, leaving intact the potential for his return. With the fourth issue, the master mutant resurfaces, and has gathered around him his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, a counterforce to the X-Men. Here, his schemes take on a new light and his true motivations become clear.

When Magneto attempts to take over the tiny Republic of San Marco, Professor X goes into a trance and attempts to contact the malevolent mutant. They meet on what Xavier calls “the mental plane.”

Kirby depicts both antagonists in what appears to be their astral forms over and above the earth, where they telepathically have

Boom! Eclectic Bursts of Genius!

by Shane Foley W ith this issue covering Kirby’s “wildest, most experimental ideas,” his “prodigious imagination,” some of his “unhinged lunacy,” and his “non-stop inventiveness,” most Kirby-ites will have many favorites that immediately spring to mind. Here are some of mine. (There are lots more, of course, but there is a limit, not the least of which is excluding things I’ve written about before.) When compiling my list, some examples immediately suggested others, for reasons that will become clearer as we go along. In the end, I found I could arrange the examples into three lists. All except one item are chronological, but while the third is of random examples, the first two are thematic.

List 1: Personal Transport, Kirby style!

This list was inspired by once noticing the difference between the vehicles mentioned below for 1974 and 1980. It grew from there.

1 1959 • SKY MASTERS SUNDAY STRIP—

SECOND WEEK: THE ATOM HORSE What a brilliant design. Was this based on anything in NASA’s files? Or was it a Kirby original, based, no doubt, on 1950s futuristic designs he’d absorbed over the years? Either way, it’s stunning and set a benchmark for such designs in the future. 2 1962 • FANTASTIC FOUR #3: THE FIRST FANTASTI-CAR

By any artist’s standards, and particularly after the Atom Horse, this bathtub design is very bland.

There are many factors seen in the very early FFs that give me the distinct impression that Kirby initially had little confidence that the FF would be a success— and this bathtub design is one. For example, a few months later, in the same year...

3 1962 • TALES OF SUSPENSE #35: THE SPACE CRAFT IN “ZARKORR” ...Kirby created this spacecraft, for a one-off story. Yet how much more inspired is this craft than the Fantastic Four’s flying car, which would be seen regularly? But then...

1 4

4 1963 • FANTASTIC FOUR #12: THE SECOND FANTASTI-CAR ...exactly 12 months after FF #3, the F-Car got a face lift—and what a beauty it is, too. Kirby knew by this time that the FF was a huge hit and he let rip with his designs. This redesign is one of the first fruits. What a terrific design this is, based no doubt on some ideas he had read about. We’re unsure if Kirby had real scientific or mechanical knowledge (see page 56!), but he sure knew how to make things look like they would work!

Gallery 1 Beta Redux

Twice-told Kirby covers, with commentary by Shane Foley

[right] Marvel’s Greatest Comics #77 (1978)

What can we say about this piece, which simply reverses the original cover to Fantastic Four #96 (1970), except that (a) it proves Jack’s light-box still worked and (b) he had absolutely no interest in adjusting the reverse image to get the hair of Reed, Sue or Johnny ‘correct’. The only differences I can see between the two, besides the reversal, are a change in the torn curtain, an upgraded telephone and its cord, the deletion of the pipe and cigar, and the lack of dwindling flame on both Johnny figures, with a table added to fill the gap. We could ask the question: Why the need to reverse the original? The masthead/logo certainly did not require it. Perhaps Jack was asked for a new cover and he simply decided to do it this way, rather than try to think of another. After all, if it was an editorial decision, anyone in the office could have light-boxed the original. The new version is signed “J.K./M.R.”, so it’s possible Mike Royer did the light-boxing.

[next page] Marvel Collector’s Item Classics #19 (1969)

Fantastic Four #27 is from June 1964 and MCIC #19, reprinting that story, was from nearly 5 years later. Why, in the middle of a run of reprint covers, is Kirby suddenly doing a new one? This is a lot earlier than a batch of new covers for reprint comics he did about 18 months later (and about which I have a theory). Perhaps Marvel simply couldn’t find a good copy to print—we know for example that Marvel had no copy of the Iron Man story from Tales of Suspense #50 and Tom Brevoort commissioned Don Heck to replicate it. For whatever reason, Jack did a new cover—using the same basic layout, but beefing up the tension and action in accordance with the change in his art style that had pervaded his work in the time since the original was done. And it’s a beauty!