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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR EIGHTY-SEVEN

SUMMER 2023

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Contents

THE

LAW & ORDER! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 JACK FAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Mark Evanier’s 2022 Kirby Tribute Panel, featuring Frank Miller, Jeremy Kirby, Bruce Simon, Rand Hoppe, and Steve Saffel

ISSUE #87, SUMMER 2023

C o l l e c t o r

COP OUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Sgt. Muldoon: Villain or Hero? GALLERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Kirby’s super cops INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY. . . . . 28 Sean Kleefeld accuses Ronan of fluctuating design HOT DOCS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Kirby’s days in and out of court BAD MAN-AGEMENT. . . . . . . . . . . 32 who redesigned Paste-Pot Pete? FOUNDATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 a never-reprinted crime story INNERVIEW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Joe Simon speaks... INNERVIEW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 ...as does Jack Kirby! KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 order and chaos in Kirby’s work KIRBY OBSCURA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 more 1950s treasures TRAIL JUSTICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 the Silver Kid and the Black Rider COLLECTOR COMMENTS. . . . . . . . 78 Front cover inks: MIKE MACHLAN Front cover colors: TOM ZIUKO

[right] Sandman and Sandy (sans mask), drawn for the 1978 Kirby Masterworks portfolio. Sadly, this issue’s cover inker Mike Machlan passed away earlier this year. COPYRIGHTS: Boy Commandos, Challengers of the Unknown, Darkseid, Dingbats of Danger Street, Funky Flashman, Guardian, Houseroy, I Doomed The World, In The Days of the Mob, Izaya, Kalibak, Lightray, New Gods, OMAC, Orion, Sandman, Sandy, Superman, Terrible Turpin, Terry Dean, Terry Mullins, The Magic Hammer TM & © DC Comics • Black Rider, Cap’n Barracuda, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Dr. Doom, Fiery Mask, Galactus, Hulk, Human Torch, Invisible Girl, Mr. Fantastic, Nick Fury, Paste-Pot Pete, Roderick Kane, Ronan, Sandman, Sentinels, Sgt. Muldoon, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Steve Rogers, The Terrible Time Machine, Thing, Thor, Trapster, Vision, Wilhelm Van Vile, Wizard TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • The Black Hole TM & © Disney • Boys’ Ranch, Bullseye, Fighting American, Jail, Justice Traps the Guilty, My Date, Police Trap, Speedboy, Stuntman TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates • Captain Victory, Cyclone Burk, Galaxy Green, Satan’s Six, Sky Masters, Surf Hunter, Wonder Warriors TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • Blue Bolt, Johnny Reb & Billy Yank, Silver Kid TM & © the respective owner • Captain 3-D TM & © Harvey Comics

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The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 29, No. 87, Summer 2023. Published quarterly (by law?) by and © TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $15 postpaid US ($19 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $53 Economy US, $78 International, $19 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

Mark Evanier

JACK F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

2022 Kirby Tribute Panel Held at Comic-Con International: San Diego on July 24, 2022

Featuring moderator Mark Evanier, Frank Miller, Jeremy Kirby, Bruce Simon, Rand Hoppe, and Steve Saffel. Transcribed by Karl Heitmueller Jr., and copyedited by Mark Evanier and John Morrow.

[above] Jack being mobbed by fans at a mid-1970s San Diego Comic-Con. All photos on this page are by Shel Dorf. [top] Just for fun, here’s Mark Evanier from another early 1970s San Diego con. You haven’t changed a bit, Mark! (Can anyone out there send us images of each year’s San Diego Con badge, to help identify exact dates of these con photos in the future?) [right] Nelson Bridwell, also mid-1970s. [below] A very happy Hulk illo. The “H-5” designation implies that this might be an animation concept drawing for a potential Hulk cartoon—maybe for Ruby-Spears? (Or maybe it’s just a sketch for a sick friend who had trouble getting the child-safe lid off their prescription bottle...) [next page, top] The 2022 panelists (l to r). Back row: Mark Evanier, Frank Miller, Steve Saffel. Front row: Jeremy Kirby, Bruce Simon, Rand Hoppe.

MARK EVANIER: Good morning, it’s Sunday, isn’t it? Wow. Well, it’s lovely to see one third or one half of all your familiar faces out there. This is the panel I look forward to most at the convention. Does anybody here not know that I’m Mark Evanier? Okay, thanks. (moderate applause) Either a lot or nothing, please. (laughter) I look forward to this panel because, first of all, I spend much of every convention talking about Jack Kirby. I spend much of my life talking about Jack Kirby. I hope each and every one of you, at some point in your life, meets someone who is so special, and is so important to so many people’s lives, that you could spend the rest of your life talking about them and have people say, “You mean you actually knew him, you actually met him?” I told a couple stories before about the reactions I got when people learned that I knew Jack Kirby, and they’re all 100% positive except for the production department at DC Comics, (laughter) and Mort Weisinger. (crowd murmurs) I met Mort Weisinger on his last day as the editor of Superman; literally the last day. A man named Nelson Bridwell introduced me to him, and Mort Weisinger remembered my name vaguely, and I said to him, “I had a lot of letters printed in your comics, and you and I had a brief correspondence, and you almost bought my first script.” And he said, “I wish I’d been able to,” you know, because what else can you say in those cases? And he said, “Are you working in comics now?” And I said, “Yes, I’m an assistant to Jack Kirby,” and the reaction was kinda like, (grunts and growls)… it’s hard to describe it, but it was not a positive reaction. Mort Weisinger had said, “Jack Kirby will work for DC over my dead body,” and that was pretty much what had happened. (laughter) He shook my hand again, and he walked out. He was there to sign off on the last issue of Superman to go to press that he had anything to do with, and he left DC after forty years that day. A couple of years later, I ran into Nelson Bridwell at a convention, and he mentioned that meeting to me. I said, “I’m surprised you remember that,” and he said, “Remember? I’ll never forget it. Seeing that man leave was the happiest day of my life!” (laughter) Anyway, we’re going to talk about Jack for a while here. We’re also going to talk about a fellow named Steve Sherman, whom some of us were also privileged to have in our lives. I’ve asked my friend, Bruce Simon… I’ve known Bruce longer than anyone in this room. BRUCE SIMON: Since 1968. EVANIER: Yeah, Bruce was a member of our old comic book club, and he was a good friend of Steve’s for a long time. Bruce has his own wonderful work he’s done as a cartoonist, but we’re not going to have time to talk about that today; we’re gonna talk about Steve. We also have on the panel Jeremy Kirby, Jack’s grandson. (applause) Isn’t it great that he’s on here carrying on the legend, the tradition? I get so sick of the word “legend,” I think it’s an overused word, it’s becoming so meaningless. You know, Paul Bunyan was a legend, Johnny Appleseed was a legend. These people did not exist, but they were legends. And I’m going to get him to talk a little bit about the reactions he gets when people find out who he’s related to. We also have—Frank Miller will show up when Frank Miller shows up. Oh, there’s Frank Miller! (Frank walks in, applause) Thank you my friend, have a seat here. Let me finish introducing other people. The gentleman in the hat 4

down there is the, uh, what’s your title? I always forget your title. RAND HOPPE: I could go for Executive Director. EVANIER: Executive Director of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, Rand Hoppe. (applause) And the other end, this is my good friend Steve Saffel. Steve has worked over the years for most of the publishers in the business, and was heavily involved in representing Joe Simon on those Titan books that collected Simon & Kirby material. He was a good friend of Joe’s, somebody who helped Joe a lot, and Steve and I used to visit Joe together, and just extract comic book history from him. He’s another person who has the brag of, “Hey, I knew Joe Simon,” that was a very important thing. STEVE SAFFEL: The thing with Joe, it was a little bit like Tuesdays with Morrie, but all comics. (laughter)

moment that I’m sure you’ve heard about, when Jack was fighting to get his original art back from Marvel. It was a very ugly thing, way uglier than it had to be. There was only one possible outcome: they had to give back to him whatever they had, but they dragged their feet, and they stalled, and they tried to get him to sign papers, and they tried to get him to relinquish rights that they claimed they already owned, and “We’d like for you to sign again that we own them”—it was very ugly. At one point, the main argument that Marvel was using to justify holding onto all this artwork—which they were returning to other people—was that it was industry custom. And you know you’re on shaky legal ground when you can’t produce a single piece of paper, and you have to say, “It’s an industry custom.” Marvel would not have accepted you doing work for them without a piece of paper signing away the rights, but it was industry custom that you already had, and “industry custom” didn’t cut it as far as lawyers were concerned, but it was all they had. Now, Frank here, you all know what Frank’s done for comics, it’s an amazing track record. If he’d quit halfway through it, you’d still be praising his work, and he had a lot of clout in the business. He still has a lot of clout in the business, but he had a lot of clout, and people can use their clout for themselves, to enrich themselves, to further their lives, or they can use it to help other people out. Frank chose to use his clout to help Jack out a lot—at one point on a radio show in L.A. that laid out the case against Marvel very brilliantly, I thought Frank was wonderful on that. Then he went to the people at DC Comics, Jenette Kahn and Dick Giordano, and he got them to release a statement. When this panel is transcribed and printed in The Jack Kirby Collector, I hope this page is facing a reprint of that statement on the opposite page. [Taa-dahh! – editor] It was DC Comics declaring essentially that the way they’d always done business with artists had always been wrong; that “industry custom” was not to keep all the artwork. They knocked all the legs out from underneath Marvel’s principal argument, and essentially undermined all the things that previous managements at DC had claimed. I just stared at that letter when I first saw it, aghast. I could not have believed that DC lawyers would let them do that. It caused a lot of internal problems; remember that DC Comics owned MAD Magazine, and

EVANIER: Joe was an amazing guy, if you ever got to see him talk. Now, I always start this with a little history lesson. Frank, don’t listen to this, because you’re in it. I want to take you all back to a

month. The first person he allowed us to tell was Bruce… SIMON: “Are you kidding?” EVANIER: …and Bruce didn’t believe us at first. SIMON: No, but it was the best move he ever made, so we owe him a lot for that. Go on, Mark, you can always speak, I’m having a moment. EVANIER: Well, the thing was, that he embraced everybody. Jack was your friend the moment you met Jack, and Steve was also, he got along well… and we kind of wince sometimes, because people took advantage of Jack. He was not that difficult to take advantage of, unfortunately. But Steve did so much for the family. [Jack’s daughter] Lisa had a horse in the back of the house, and every so often, Jack would say, “I’m gonna go out and shovel sh*t for a while” and he would go out and he would pick up a spade and start shoveling horsesh*t and flinging it into the canyon down there. Steve and I would go, “Jack, why don’t you go back and draw? We can shovel sh*t as well as you can! You can use your time best at the table.” MILLER: That’s wonderful. EVANIER: And Jack thought that was honest work. And also, the canyon it was overlooking had these motorcyclists that just drove him nuts, because the canyon amplified the sound… MILLER: Did he hit ’em? EVANIER: Well, he was trying to imagine, flinging the sh*t down and hitting them with it, and he’s like, “This is for the guy with the big beard!” (laughter) And of course, he never came anywhere near them, and he wouldn’t have wanted to. But it was a very cathartic venture, and Steve and I kept fighting over the shovel… SIMON: Let me tell a quick story. After Steve passed and before his memorial last August, his beloved Diana, his widow, asked me to come down and help sort through his library, and his collection of art and this and that, and pick out special things among [it]. He had every book on comics and stop motion animation and special effects and this and that. And knowing Steve, like myself, he would squirrel things away in books—like, we have the same kind of nitwit habits. Going through the library, I would separate them into piles, and one was like, the very common junk pile. And there was a beat-up copy of Origins of Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, that mass-market paperback that printed the origin stories, and it was really beat… and something stopped me from tossing it into a box. I opened it up, and on the inside cover were beautiful portraits of Reed Richards, the Thing, Johnny Storm, and the Hulk licking a lollipop, and it was just something [Jack] drew in there for Steve. And I almost tossed it! [Rand holds up a copy of TJKC #84’s splash page with that drawing on it, shown above.] Oh, there it is! It made me go back through every single item.

literally what happened was, ABC asked me to write these O.G. Readmore spec segments to be taped, and I said, “Sure.” And they said, “We’ve got a puppeteer who’s going to make this puppet and operate it; it’s two guys named Greg Williams and Steve Sherman,” and I went, “I know Steve Sherman, he was my partner for years.” And then later, I was working for Sid and Marty Krofft, and two or three times, they hired Steve on shows I would write, just by coincidence. SIMON: Yeah, they wanted the top, so they got the top writers, and the top puppeteers. EVANIER: Well, top puppeteers. Steve was—this is a word people sometimes use as a pejorative—decent. He was just a really decent guy. He was honest, he wasn’t rude to people, he was friendly. He got along with everybody, and he was a great friend to the Kirby family.

SAFFEL: One quick suggestion: get down to the Kirby Museum booth as soon as you can to buy the copies, because there’s one less available at the moment. (applause)

SIMON: And he had an incredible work ethic. I just want to tell you, if you are interested, TwoMorrows put together a Steve Sherman tribute issue of the Jack Kirby Collector [#84], which will be out in September. We do have a limited amount of advance copies that were air freighted out. So come by the Jack Kirby Museum table, and perhaps you’d like to buy one. It’s a great tribute to a really great guy who we all miss dearly. I considered him my best friend, and it was a real shock when he left us last year.

EVANIER: We’re going to do two things here, the second of which is, we’re all going to pose for photos for the people with cameras in the front row. That’s Bruce Guthrie, who goes around and takes ten thousand photos of every panel, and everything at the convention, and does an amazing job. (applause) But for the first thing, I want you to thank Steve Saffel for being such a good friend to Joe Simon, Rand Hoppe for being such a good friend of Kirby history, Bruce Simon for being such a good friend of Steve Sherman’s, Jeremy Kirby for being such a good friend to his grandfather, and Frank Miller—not just for all the comics he did, but for all that he did for Jack Kirby. H

EVANIER: Yeah, his memorial service was the first time I’d left the house in the Covid period, because I could not miss that moment. He was important to me in many ways. We never had a fight; we went through a lot of grief and stuff like that. When Jack hired Steve and myself, he swore us to secrecy about the fact that he was leaving Marvel and going to DC, and we had to keep this secret for about a 16

Sgt. Muldoon: Villain or Hero— Sample Headline

cop OUT

[below] Pencils from Mister Miracle #6 (Feb. 1972). If Stan was going to parody Jack as Sgt. Muldoon in Captain America #139 (July 1971, right), Jack would up the ante with Funky Flashman.

You Decide!

verything is quiet, until—that voice pierces the air! Funky Flashman has entered the room. TJKC #75 (Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said!) is an amazing, firsthand document of Marvel’s 1960s alchemy—and beyond. Rest easy, Stan and Jack, your history now belongs to the ages. One mystery: In the summer of 1971, why did Kirby theorize Funky Flashman? The satire of Stan Lee in Mister Miracle #6 has fascinated fans for years. What would compel a forward-thinking visionary like Kirby

by Richard Kolkman

to look backward for inspiration? Sean Kleefeld (TJKC #62, page 44) raises the question: “I’m sure Jack’s anger and frustration with Lee hadn’t subsided, but why choose this moment to mock him?” The answer begins when we look at Kirby’s appearances in Marvel comics. Kirby made five self-portrait appearances in Marvel comics in the 1960s/1970. The first two, Fantastic Four #10 (Jan. 1963) and Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965) are scripted by Lee, and Kirby’s features are occluded or obscured in some way. He’s either turned away, shielded by his arm, or in the shadows. Kirby manages to appear and not appear! This was no accident. Kirby appears next in Fantastic Four Special #5 (Nov. 1967). “This Is A Plot?”—Kirby scripts this, and the unpublished version of “The Monster” intended for Chamber of Darkness #4 (April 1970, see TJKC #13), in which Kirby and Lee appear at the end as unmasked warlocks. Kirby’s final appearance is his mute self-portrait for Marvelmania (inked by Royer) in 1969. The remaining few, assorted cameos of Kirby appeared in Not Brand Echh #11–12 and SubMariner #19. Kirby left Marvel for National (DC Comics) in March 1970. (Let Kirby be free—and find himself!) The first “Funky” mention at Marvel, as Kirby leaves, comes at the end of June 1970’s Bullpen Bulletins page: “Who says mighty Marvel’s not taking over the whole funky world?” (Street date: March 1970) As always, the times they were a’changing. In Captain America #139 (July 1971), we are introduced to Sgt. Muldoon. Fashioned by Stan Lee and John Romita to be Steve Rogers’ C.O. (while Cap works undercover for the police), Muldoon is clearly based upon Kirby—affectionately, down to the gruff exterior and chewed cigar. Kirby has always been associated with anger. The Thing, Kirby’s metaphoric self-portrait, is appropriately named: Benjamin (Kirby’s father), J. (Jacob), Grimm (means “anger” in German). (Note: this issue also features the debut of Leila—Sam Wilson’s dynamite doll sweet sister! Kirby features Leila in Roz’s Valentines’ Day Sketchbook—but not the Human Torch!) Just before Muldoon appears, “The Badge and the Betrayal” (Captain America #139) features a swipe of Kirby’s Cap and Bucky from Captain America #105. This story, featuring a Kirby-

Gallery

SUPER COPS

[right] Jimmy Olsen #144, page 7 (Dec. 1971) Solid pencils from this weird part of Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen storyline where cloned police officer Jim Harper’s alter ego as the Guardian vanishes from the series without warning. Panel 4 is interesting in that we see Kirby’s use of flash lines, even on a small scale, where they surround Terry Dean and give the largely static panel more life. That Kirby’s instincts were right is shown by the published page, where we see inker Colletta has taken one of those shortcuts he’s often maligned for—and not only blacked out the flash lines, but the whole door, losing Terry Dean altogether. Strangely, in other parts of the panel, Colletta added solid blacks where Kirby had light spots, and lost blacks that Kirby included. [next page] New Gods #8, page 14 (May 1972) A perfect example of Kirby as the master of power and tension. As well as the shattered but powerful figurework and the explosive flash lines, even minor details add to the overwhelming atmosphere. In panel 2, the rising, curling smoke and broken pipe subliminally add tension in the way a coiled snake does. In panel 4, not only is there the battered figure of Sgt. Dan Turpin—the focus the reader sees— but the broken pole and dislodged wire subtly continue the tension. A note about the inked version: in panel 1, Kirby has Kalibak’s foot in front of the “Whom!” (a sound effect saying “Whom!”?), but letterer Royer covered the foot with the letters. Does it make a difference?

Drawing law and order in Kirby’s work, with commentary by Shane Foley

Twice-told Kirby covers, with commentary by Shane Foley

Who the Heck redesigned Paste-Pot Pete?

bad man-agement

by Will Murray

O [below] Cover and splash page from Strange Tales #104 (Jan. 1963), where Paste-Pot Pete debuted. [next page, left] That’s definitely the Wizard (not Paste-Pot Pete) in this sequence from Avengers #6 (July 1964). Which begs the question: Did Jack draw the wrong character, or did Stan call him by the wrong name? [next page, right] Dick Ayers depicts Pete’s upgraded design on the cover of Strange Tales #124 (Sept. 1964).

ver the course of his long career, Jack Kirby created a great many memorable creations. Some will probably long endure, but just as often as not, he created what I like to call his “wild hair” characters. These were semi-comical figures who seem to have emerged from some particularly bizarre cranny of his imagination. I’m thinking of such oddball ideas as the Human Top, Egghead, and Diablo.

For unknown reasons, villains in the “Human Torch” strip running in Strange Tales between 1962 and 1965 more often than not were extreme caricatures who possessed unusual facial features and cranial constructions, and usually sported outlandish hirsute adornments. The Wizard was first and foremost, and Wilhelm Van Vile (the Painter of 1000 Perils), followed by Cap’n Barracuda [all above]. Come to think of it, the mustached Acrobat also belongs in this class of crooks. Some of these characters could almost be viewed as cousins—or at least guys who shared a common barber. One of the most peculiar––at least to my mind––was the early Human Torch foe who originally called himself Paste-Pot Pete. I don’t know what Kirby was thinking back in 1962 when he designed this ridiculous character. For those who don’t know or may have forgotten, Paste-Pot Pete was an outlandish personality tricked out in some type of house painter’s coveralls, replete with exaggerated beret, elaborate ribbon bow tie, and weird chin whiskers, who carried around a pistol that fired a special formulation of powerful paste which was fed by a metal paint-pot Pete toted around. I can’t imagine attempting to rob a bank with one hand on the grip of your paste pistol and the other 32

gripping the thin handle of your open hardware-store bucket with the dangerous super-sticky paste slopping over the rim. That’s what Jack Kirby designed back in the early days of Marvel’s resurgence, and that’s what Paste-Pot Pete attempted in his first foray. Although thwarted by the Torch—or was it the other way around?—the baggy-pantsed marauder soon graduated to grabbing an experimental US “delta-cosmic” missile in the hope of selling it to the Reds— that’s Communist Russia, not the Cincinnati ball club. The Torch foils this daring scheme, but Pete escapes capture. This gave him the distinction of being the first Human Torch foe to avoid prison. Obviously, he was being set up as a recurring opponent.

Readers with long memories might have wondered back in 1962 if Paste-Pot Pete wasn’t a fugitive from an unpublished issue of Fighting American. I still ask that question myself.

The Original Captain Sticky

instead, then neglected or didn’t care enough to have the character’s face corrected. Either villain was hypothetically capable of solving the Avengers’ sticky predicament. This is another mystery of the Silver Age—one that will probably never be satisfactorily explained.

Bucky’s death and Captain America’s long icy suspended animation, and who found himself permanently wearing a hood because his head was splashed by his own unbreakable adhesive, which was a version of Superglue long before products like it and Gorilla Glue were invented. That’s Jack Kirby being ahead of his time as usual. One could say that Baron Zemo is something of a more dramatic re-imagining of Paste-Pot Pete. Anyway, when Captain America and Giant Man became unbreakably trapped by Adhesive X in Avengers #6, the imprisoned Paste-Pot Pete was released in order to formulate a super-dissolving solvent to release them. This wins Pete an early parole. One of Kirby’s most famous goofs in the early Marvel days was the fact that he did not draw Paste-Pot Pete in that Avengers issue. Instead, he apparently depicted Pete’s former confederate, the Wizard, who also sported an unusual goatee and had a strikingly narrow face. But this character doesn’t exactly look like the Wizard, either. He’s much more handsome and his chin is clean-shaven. He does have a pencil-thin mustache—which neither the Wizard nor Paste-Pot Pete ever wore! Although Kirby was infamous for making artistic mistakes (such as not drawing the correct number of buttons on Thor’s costume from panel to panel, and depicting a Skrull spaceship entirely differently from page to page as he did in Fantastic Four #2), since Kirby was as much a plotter of the stories as was Stan Lee––if not more so in many instances––it would not surprise me if it was Kirby’s idea that the Wizard provided the Avengers’ salvation and Lee decided as editor and scripter to make him Paste-Pot Pete

Having been paroled in Avengers #6, Pete returns a month later in the pages of Strange Tales #124, not reformed, but determined to resume his interrupted life of crime. Pete went back to being a solo act. Evidently, he had had enough of the ingrate Wizard during their brief felonious flirtation. Stan Lee was back, now scripting solo. He, or perhaps vocal readers, recognized the ridiculousness of this Human Torch antagonist, and Lee did something about it. Deciding that he was seen by the public at large as clownish, Pete apparently shaved his goatish goatee and adopted a completely redesigned outfit with a much enlarged and improved reservoir for his miraculous paste, which he used to “paste” the Human Torch and the Thing in a credible way. The redesign was so striking that you could hardly recognize the original Paste-Pot Pete under the black face-framing hood, bulky chest plate, and thick boots. The key to the redesign was that Pete now wore a rectangular contraption on his upper body, vaguely similar to Iron Man’s original chest plate, but much thicker and filled to capacity with his special paste solution. By plugging the feed hose from his new streamlined “paste jet pistol” into any one of several outlets in this bulletproof “vest,” this inventive villain could now access his paste solution from a less sloppy and evidently spillproof reservoir. His boots were also filled with paste, and the soles

A few issues later, Paste-Pot Pete returned, this time teaming up with the Torch’s main recurring foe, the Wizard, for a double rematch. It did not go well. Even though Pete had broken the Wizard out of jail, the scientist’s abrasive ego complicates and finally sabotages their plan to implicate Johnny Storm as a spy. This time, both malefactors ended up behind bars. Ernie Hart, writing as H. E. Huntley, scripted this story from a Stan Lee plot. Dick Ayers soloed on the art. Kirby only drew the cover, which depicted the same clownish Paste-Pot Pete he originated. The next time Pete is seen is approximately a year later in the pages of The Avengers #6, when the Avengers tackle another character who uses a powerful glue known as Adhesive X. This, of course, is Baron Zemo, the Nazi-era super-villain who was responsible for

A New Glue Review

INNERVIEW [below] Stuntman was a victim of the postwar comics glut Joe Simon discusses here, and back in TJKC #61, we published the first seven pages of the unpublished Stuntman #3 story “Terror Island” featuring the villain The Panda. To complete the story, we still need pages 8 and 14 (and higher if page 14 isn’t the last page of the story). We also need all the pages from the other unpublished Stuntman story “The Evil Sons Of M. LeBlanc.” Help us finally get these lost stories into print!

conducted & transcribed by David Armstrong [See David’s actual video interview on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrJ8nynNIQ0]

Hearst closed his chain of newspapers, one after the other, as I moved from one to the other. I stayed there for a year, and then Hearst closed them and finally I migrated to New York… ran out of newspapers.

DAVID ARMSTRONG: Where were you born? JOE SIMON: In Rochester, New York, and I grew up in Rochester. I got my first job there when I was 18 years old, for the Hearst Newspapers, Rochester Journal American. Course they’re out of business now, ’cause

ARMSTRONG: Did you have formal training in artwork? SIMON: No, not really. I migrated from little junior classes in art galleries, local art classes and did sculptures out of Ivory Soap and paintings and so forth. Won some junior awards. They gave us lovely framed prints, which immediately disappeared from my household. I don’t have any recollection, any souvenirs of those days, but they were nice. ARMSTRONG: So when you got to New York, what did you do? Do you remember when that was? SIMON: I was 24 when I came to New York. [At] 18, 19—I was working for the newspapers about six years and then I ran out of them in Syracuse and came right to New York. I was getting some art jobs for McFadden Magazines and other… we used to call them flats. They weren’t slicks—they weren’t on slick paper and they weren’t on pulp—but they had very wide distribution. And we used to draw things like teaspoons and other little “spots,” as they called them. ARMSTRONG: How’d you find out about the comic book business? SIMON: Well, one of the Art Directors there was a friend of a person named Lloyd Jacquet who ran a company called Funnies, Incorporated. This was at the beginning of the whole comics business. And Funnies would supply art and editorial work for the publishers. Publishers, at that time, didn’t want to invest in their own departments, invest in editors and space, rent space and so forth. So they hired these little companies to prepare the work for them, prepare the insides of the comic books—people who supposedly had worked for the syndicates and knew something about art and story. So, I was sent to Lloyd Jacquet at Funnies, Incorporated and [they] had a little talk with Lloyd. He was an ex-colonel, he worked for a syndicate in New York. This syndicate supplied dailies and Sundays for the newspapers. So Lloyd went out on his own and he was supplying, among other clients, Timely Comics, which was owned by Martin Goodman and was the original Marvel Comics. My first assignment was just 52

to turn in stuff. You know, they didn’t give a script, they didn’t give me any direction, they said, “Whatever you turn in, if we sell it, we’ll pay you.” I did a western. They didn’t tell me how many pages, though this thing went about ten pages. Lloyd said, “We’ll pay you on publication.” That sounded great because newspapers, you know, publication was the next day. But, as I later learned, publication in comic books was like six months to a year after you did the job. I was new in New York and, you know, trying to get along—that was a problem there. ARMSTRONG: A problem paying the rent. SIMON: Yeah, I had to pay the rent, sure. I lived in Haddon Hall, it was a rooming house, rooming apartment house near Columbia University. Anyway, I did the western. Fortunately, they sold it right away. I have never seen it since, but I know it was published. From [there], I got an assignment from Funnies and the assignment was for what is now Marvel Comics, Martin Goodman. He wanted a strip like the Human Torch—you know, a guy who sets himself on fire and goes out and raises hell. You know, it was okay. I did a strip for him called “The Fiery Mask” and that appeared, that was a late story in Daring Comics, 1940 I believe. Martin Goodman accepted it and published it. I was paid pretty quickly for that, because Martin had a successful operation going. Then, I did a couple more things for Funnies Incorporated. I did something called “Key Man,” which they bought and I never saw it published, but it was published. It wasn’t like today. If you do something for a company, they’ll send you a box of magazines. I never saw the stuff that was done then.

[above] Early Simon photo and illustrations. [right] Blue Bolt #1 and The Fiery Mask.

INNERVIEW

Kirby Interview, Part 1 Conducted by James Van Hise for his article in Comics Feature #34 (1985) Thanks to James, and to Jim Van Heuklon for his assistance in facilitating this transcript

[below] An example of Chris Fama’s restored Bulls-Eye work from TwoMorrows’ new The Best of Simon & Kirby’s Mainline Comics book, out now. It includes a complete reprinting of all the Bulls-Eye stories, as well as all the other Mainline work that featured Joe and Jack’s art, along with select work by other artists, including Mort Meskin.

JAMES VAN HISE: Why did you start doing the crime comics, the non-super-hero comics in the late ’40s, when things were shifting away from the super-hero for awhile? JACK KIRBY: In the late ’40s, I think we had to [shift]. We were shifting away from the [super-hero] and we began doing Westerns… and I don’t remember if we did any crime comics or not. But we did a thing called Stuntman and Boy Explorers, Boys’ Ranch. VAN HISE: Like the Headline comics, that was the late ’40s. KIRBY: Yeah, they came after; after we went to Harvey Comics. VAN HISE: At that time, did you just generally work for one publisher at a time? Or freelance?

KIRBY: No, we worked for one publisher at a time. When we left Harvey, we had time. We began to work for everybody else. Joe began doing promotional work for Nelson Rockefeller. I began to write a few things on my own. I began to work for DC. VAN HISE: How did Black Magic come about? KIRBY: Joe and I were still working together at that time. We worked for Mike Bleier and Teddy Epstein. We worked for Crestwood Publications at the time, and that’s where we did a lot of the comics. We worked for McFadden. We did some pseudo-Archie date comics and romance. They were publishers of romance magazines so I suggested that, what the heck, if we’re doing these date magazines, we might as well do the real thing. And of course romance did very well. Romance is a kind of staple of the people. Just like romance is a staple of any of the media: pictures, pulps, paperbacks. VAN HISE: Would you contrast your romance comics with what followed as having a different slant? KIRBY: Our job was to sell comics. The theme doesn’t matter. If you do the theme well, that’s what matters. At the time we worked for Crestwood, we were also competing with EC, which was a very, very good publishing company, and EC was doing very, very well. They had a lot of good men… Harvey Kurtzman, I don’t remember their entire staff, but they were doing a fine job. Of course, we were entering a very bad period, a very bad cycle. That was the time when this fellow, Frederic Wertham, was taking pot-shots at us, and the comic field didn’t have a code and it couldn’t defend itself, and a lot of publishers were finding it hard to capitalize their comics because they were losing sales because of all this bad publicity. And Joe and I began to have our own publishing venture at that time because it was a bad time. But not surprisingly, we put out some very good comics. And we broke even when we might just as easily have lost money. Our comics always sold. We just knew how to do it. We just knew comics. VAN HISE: Which titles did that encompass? KIRBY: Comics called Win-APrize. We had Police Trap, Foxhole, which was a war comic; we didn’t have super-hero comics. Strangely enough, when we did our own comics, we didn’t have any super-heroes. That was the time actually preceding my split-up with Joe.

VAN HISE: You didn’t actually split up with him until, what, later in the ’50s? KIRBY: Yes. I guess Joe himself may have been soured on the field; I couldn’t blame him. He had some opportunities in the promotional field, which he’s good at, because he was an ex-newspaper man himself. I myself was raised in comics. I’m an editorial man. Of course, I know every idea in the book. So comics was the medium I worked best in and I stuck to it. That’s why Joe went back to doing promotion at Nelson Rockefeller’s; I just went back to do comics. I went to Classics Illustrated where they were so finicky that they drove me crazy, because you had to be so accurate. With the people I had to represent, my goodness, if I had to draw Cleopatra or Ulysses S. Grant, I’d have to know every button, every part of the costume correct, and of course, that’s not my forte. My forte is telling a story. I don’t care whether Cleopatra’s clothes are accurate. I never drew an accurate tank in my life, until later on I began to experiment a little, just because it was fun. I didn’t care about accuracy. I was once criticized for not tying the shoelaces right on a character. He said, “Those shoelaces aren’t tied correctly,” and I said, “Those shoelaces aren’t going to sell the book.” That was my job. My job was selling the book. Whether the shoelaces were tied correctly or not, that book sold. I can’t remember a book that never sold. I sold well, and a lot of other people lost. I’m a good storyteller. I come from a background of storytelling. I do that very well. It doesn’t matter what the story is; if it’s a romance story, I can guarantee it’ll be a good one. Or if it’s a crime story, I can guarantee it’s going to be sincere. It’ll be about people who indulge in crime, not because of any light sense to play around with crime. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in people. Why do they get caught up in crime? Or why they get caught up in romance—what happens with people when they enter these situations? If they happen to them, they could happen to me. What would happen to me if I was in that situation? Life to me is very real, and so are comic books. VAN HISE: How did Captain 3-D come about? KIRBY: That began with a guy named Busy Arnold. Busy Arnold was a publisher who had a company of his own and was the first one to come out with 3-D. And of course, it was a success. It was an instant success. So the Harvey people wanted Joe and me to do a 3-D comic for them, so we did Captain 3-D. And of course, working on a 3-D book is a heart-breaking experience—heart-breaking and back-breaking because the mechanicals involved are very intricate. I couldn’t see a

future in it because I could see 3-D as a toy. I could see putting out one 3-D book, or three, but I can’t see putting out 3-D books steadily. Because initially 3-D books are very hard to read. I gave them my opinion. I said, “This thing is a toy and it’s not going to last.” Besides, I don’t like to do them. They are very hard to do because each panel might require five or six cels. You might do a hand on one cel, you might do a face on another. And of course, we tried to get as much depth as you can. That’s the trick of it. And the more depth you got into the picture, the more realistic the effect. But in reading a 3-D magazine, you have to put all your faculties to work. 3-D work doesn’t pop out at you. You have to pop in. You’ve got to work yourself and of course, you’re not going to do that every month of the year. 59

[above] Unused cover for a proposed 1954 Prize Comic crime title. The public outcry against comics, and the newly-formed Comics Code, likely put an end to this project.

Trail Justice

Kirby’s Silver Kid by Tom Morehouse

ack in TJKC #60, Rand Hoppe, Executive Director of the Jack shot by the Sheriff. Britt is exonerated Kirby Museum & Research Center, wrote about the rare Jack (when Kreeger confesses as he’s dying, Kirby western story “Showdown at Snake River”, published overheard by Brady and the Sheriff ) only in Australia and Italy sometime in the early 1960s. Not being and he and Stacey can begin a life fluent in Italian, I had been seeking a copy of the Australian version, together, leaving The Silver Kid behind and I recently acquired one. forever. That last fact, in my opinion, There’s some debate among Kirby experts as to the origin puts to rest the notion some have posof this story. Its inker has been identified by Michael Vassallo as ited that this was done as a daily newspaper strip. I can’t imagine George Klein (inker of Fantastic Four #1) and its job (#0-254) visible anyone going to all the trouble of creating a strip and then having in the Italian version, while similar to the Goodman/Lee/Atlas job his character, as they say, “ride off into the sunset”! numbers, is unknown to both Greg Gatlin’s atlastales.com and the Now, to the point of all this; what inspired Jack to write and Grand Comic Book Database. The most likely explanation is that draw this, and why wasn’t it published in the US? Let’s start with this was created by Kirby for Atlas, but was rejected for some reaKirby’s inspiration. As I mentioned, Jack was an avid reader of pulp son (see further on) and released only to the foreign market. That magazines and, in fact, had quite a collection of them. In the early explanation is backed up somewhat by the fact that there is also a 1930s pulps, there was a drifting, heroic gunfighter named Solo Jack Kirby drawn Black Rider story, “Guns Roar at Snake River”, Strant (an odd name for a pulp hero), who was also known by the that only appears in the Australian comics The Fast Gun #9 (1960) more conventional nickname The Silver Kid because of the silver and Giant Western Gunfighters #4 (1962). buttons on his black shirt, the silver [That story follows this article.] conchos on his chaps, and the band of Whatever the reason, my interest his black hat, his silver-butted Colts, is not so much why it wasn’t published and the small silver skull that adorns in the US, but rather what inspired Jack his hat’s neck strap. Author H.W. to create it. He was a prolific reader of Ford wrote more than sixty Silver Kid pulps, and loved Hollywood movies, stories between 1935 and 1950. At both of which I think played a part in the first they appeared regularly in Wild creation of this tale. The story centers West Weekly around three men who are traveling to and then Snake River for different reasons, all eventually of them typical Jack characters and all migrated of them related in some fashion to the over to the same individual, The Silver Kid. One is a Columbia The Silver Kid of the pulps (left), and Jack’s version. dangerous criminal, Hank Kreeger, who pulps Real is being escorted by the Sheriff to his date with the hangman; the Western, Double Action Western, Western second is a wannabe hot shot gunfighter named Whip McCall, who Action, and Complete Cow-Boy. Kirby’s wants to make a name for himself; and the third is a nerdy-looking protagonist Whip McCall resembles bank detective named Artemus Brady. All three are searching for a the pulp illustrations of this character gunslinger who vanished sometime prior. with his classic western eight-button There’s also a rancher in Snake “Bib Shirt.” Jack was also a movie fan, River named Jim Hutchinson, his grandand in 1949, Audie Murphy starred in daughter Stacey, and a ranch hand called a film Duel at Silver Creek (eerily similar to the title “Showdown at Britt, who was fished out of the river by Snake River”) playing a gunslinging character named The Silver Kid. Jim but has no memory of how he ended Murphy, the most highly decorated G.I. up there, nor what his real name is. He of World War II, was short in stature, is, in fact, The Silver Kid, an outlaw who but could hold his own in a fight. I’m supposedly pulled off a daring bank pretty sure Kirby could identify with robbery before disappearing. Brady, that, and while I can’t prove it, I’d be McCall and Kreeger (whose men busted willing to bet Jack saw that film in him loose) eventually figure out who which The Silver Kid ends up working “Britt” really is and go after him for on the side of law and order, gets the their own reasons: Brady to retrieve the girl, and gives up gunfighting. bank’s money; McCall to challenge and In “Showdown at Snake River”, Britt show he can outdraw The Silver Kid; and Jack Kirby was writing the final chapter Harmon. Kreeger, who actually robbed the bank in to the Silver Kid story. He was, in essence, wrapping up the two question, but was relieved of the stolen threads (pulps and the movie), conveniently never revealing “Britt”’s money by The Silver Kid, who planned on returning it. real name. What Kirby didn’t do much of was read competitors’ The story is packed with classic Kirby fight scenes and guncomic books, so he may not have known that there was a Silver Kid fights, and in the end, the bank payroll is found, Kreeger and McCall Western comic published by Stanley Morse in the mid-1950s. Stan both end up dying—Kreeger is thrown from his horse, and McCall is Lee, on the other hand, was no doubt aware of it, as part of his job 68

[above] Some of Kirby’s earliest work, from January 23, 1939’s Lone Rider newspaper strip, under the pseudonym “Lance Kirby.” [below] Kirby’s Silver Kid from the Australian comic Showdown at Snake River from the early 1960s (but likely drawn in the late 1950s). Perhaps Comics Code restrictions kept it from being published in the US?

as editor was to know what the competition was doing. In addition, I.W. Publishing’s Super Comics in 1958 began reprinting them, which may be why this particular story was sold to the foreign markets, to avoid any claims of US trademark violation. In an odd twist, the cover to Showdown at Snake River is by John Severin, who also did the covers of the Super Comics reprints, the first of which has a similar (showdown) feel to it; the second draws more on the western pulp imagery. Speaking of imagery, the fact that this story is missing any splash page may be due to the fact that there was an Australian-drawn Silver Kid

Jack Kirby Collector #87