Jack Kirby Collector #92 by TwoMorrows Publishing

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #92 $10.95

WINTER 2025

King Kirby Takes You To Doomsday And Beyond--

In The News!

Superman, Jimmy Olsen, Guardian, Newsboy Legion TM & © DC Comics.

Satiate Your Sinister Side!

“Heh-heh-heh! It’s me again—the CRYPTOLOGIST—

All characters and properties TM & © their respective owners.

and my ghastly little band have cooked up a few more grisly morsels to terrorize you with! Amongst them is ROGER HILL’s conversation with diabolical horror (and superhero) comics artist DON HECK! For something even more gruesome, STEVEN KRONENBERG slices up his favorite severed hand films! BARRY FORSHAW brings back the otherworldly horrors of Hammer’s QUATERMASS, while TIM LEESE spends more Hammer Time on that studio’s output. Then, editor PETER NORMANTON prepares a viewing of horror-inspired covers from the Shadow’s own 1940s comic book! We’ll cover another Killer “B” movie classic: CONRAD VEIDT and “The Man Who Laughs!”, along with more preCode comic books, and PETE VON SHOLLY gives his twisted take on cartoon horror. So peer into the dark side with TwoMorrows Publishing’s latest terror—scribed just for retro horror fans!” (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

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CRYPTOLOGY #3

CRYPTOLOGY #4

CRYPTOLOGY #5

This third wretched issue inflicts the dread of MARS ATTACKS upon you—the banned cards, the model kits, the despicable comics, and a few words from the film’s deranged storyboard artist PETE VON SHOLLY! The chilling poster art of REYNOLD BROWN gets brought up from the Cryptologist’s vault, along with a host of terrifying puppets from film, and more comic books they’d prefer you forget! Plus, more Hammer Time, JUSTIN MARRIOT on obscure ’70s fear-filled paperbacks, another Killer “B” film, and more to satiate your sinister side!

Our fourth putrid tome treats you to ALEX ROSS’ gory lowdown on his Universal Monsters paintings! Hammer Time brings you face-to-face with the “Brides of Dracula”, and the Cryptologist resurrects 3-D horror movies and comics of the 1950s! Learn the origins of slasher films, and chill to the pre-Code artwork of Atlas’ BILL EVERETT and ACG’s 3-D maestro HARRY LAZARUS. Plus, another Killer “B” movie and more awaits retro horror fans, by NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!

We dig up a few skeletons in the closet of our SKULL & BONES ISSUE! Ghost Rider from comics to movies, skeleton covers from Atlas Digests and pre-Code horror comics, HY FLEISHMAN’s 1950s skeleton covers and stories, Disney’s ’70s Pirates of the Caribbean models and Last Gasp’s Skull Comics, the films of William Castle, and Killer B films: House on Haunted Hill, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, plus our Hammertime section! It’s bone-chilling retro horror from NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!

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Contents

THE

IN THE NEWS! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 stop the presses! PAPER CLIPS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Lincoln Features and Kirby

C o l l e c t o r

ISSUE #92, WINTER 2025

INNERVIEWS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 it’s a 1973 comic strip con, with Neal Adams and Jack Kirby SPIN-ITCH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Socko the Sailor Man KIRBY OBSCURA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Archie’s dynamic duo THE CLIP JOINT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 newspaper clippings about Kirby JACK FAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Mark Evanier’s 2024 Kirby Tribute Panel, featuring Patrick McDonnell, Henry W. Holmes, and Kirbys! ARTVIEWS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 the LA Kirbyvision exhibition FOUNDATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Johnny Reb & Billy Yank INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY. . . . . 48 DC gets an Edge GALLERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Superman’s pal and the newsboys STRIPPER: MIKE MANLEY. . . . . . . 56 FOUNDATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 man steals train! STRIPPER: DAVID REDDICK . . . . . 69 KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Johnny Storm, rebel with a cause CLUBBING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 the Boys Brotherhood Republic COLLECTOR COMMENTS. . . . . . . . 78 Cover inks: DAVID REDDICK Cover color: GLENN WHITMORE COPYRIGHTS: Batman, Big Barda, Clark Kent, Deadman, DNAliens, Dubbilex, Forever People, Green Arrow, Guardian, Jimmy Olsen, Mister Miracle, Mokkari, Morgan Edge, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, Simyan, Spectre, Superman, Terry Dean TM & © DC Comics • Blondie, Flash Gordon, Popeye, The Phantom TM & © King Features • Captain America, Dr. Doom, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Giant-Man, Hulk, Inhumans, Iron Man, Lockjaw, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Thor, Wasp, Watcher, X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Animal Hospital TM & © Ruby-Spears Productions • The Man Who Stole A Train TM & © Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estates • Captain Victory, Jupiter Plaque, Montrose, Sky Masters TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • Destroyer Duck TM & © Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby Estates • Abdul Jones, Black Buccaneer, Blue Bolt, Captain 3-D, Cyclone Burke, Dash Dixon, Detective Riley, Facts You Never Knew!, Healthy, Wealthy and Wise!, Johnny Reb & Billy Yank, Lone Rider, Master Jeremy, Romance of Money, Socko the Seadog TM & © the respective rights holders • Black Hole TM & © Walt Disney Studios • Private Strong TM & © Archie Publications • The Fly TM & © Joe Simon Estate • Ben Casey TM & © Bing Crosby Productions • Judge Parker TM & © North American Syndicate, Inc.

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[above] While way too busy for Jimmy Olsen #138 (June 1971), this unused cover is perfect for this issue of TJKC! The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 31, No. 92, Winter 2025. Keeping the presses running quarterly 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, $82 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

Opening Shot

Stop The Presses!

Examining how many comic strips Kirby drew, by John Morrow

ack’s earliest work was done for newspaper strips, since comic books weren’t yet established when he was pounding the pavement in the mid-1930s. He met, and was influenced by, top strip artists like Walter Berndt, creator of the Smitty strip. He reminisced about those days during his interview on David Gerard’s 1986 Los Angeles cable access TV show This Is The Story:

JACK KIRBY: I gravitated to the newspapers, where I began to meet the people that worked at places like the Daily News and the Daily Mirror and the Daily Journal. I became friends with the people who worked for the Hearst newspapers. Finally I landed this job at the Fleischer studios, animating Popeye, and was quite gratified that I was able to make my way along those lines. I did syndicated stuff for a small syndicate called Lincoln Features, in which I had the opportunity to do editorial cartoons, individual illustrations, and I even did a panel cartoon called Your Health Comes First. [laughs] I believe it helped me, and the reader.

This issue, I only scratched the surface of Jack’s experiences with comic strips and newspapers. Here’s a chronological list of his known strip work—I tried to fit examples of most into this issue:

• Red Hot Rowe (1946) • Starman Zero/Tiger 21 (1947); the complete strips are in TJKC #74. • Inky (1948–1949); these were recycled for In Love, as shown in TwoMorrows’ book Best of Simon & Kirby’s Mainline Comics • Boy Commandos (late 1940s); art by the Simon & Kirby studio • Montrose (1950s); unfinished sample strip about a pugilistic dog • Master Jeremy (1956) • The Career of King Masters (1956); the full set of Kirby/Giacoia King Masters strips are in TJKC #51. • Chip Hardy (1956) •D avy Crockett, Frontiersman (Jan. 14–Feb. 24, 1957) • Johnny Reb & Billy Yank (July 28, 1957–Feb. 2, 1958) • Kamandi of the Caves (1958) • S ky Masters of the Space Force (Sept. 8, 1958–Feb. 25, 1961) • Surf Hunter (1959); all these Kirby/Wood strips are in TJKC #65. • On the Green with Peter Parr (1960–1961) •T he Black Hole (Sept. 2, 1979–Feb. 24, 1980) • Animal Hospital (early 1980s) • Thundarr the Barbarian (1981) • Valley Girl (1982–1983); inspired by Moon and Frank Zappa’s hit single (see TJKC #16, 30, 55)

• K’s Konceptions (early 1930s); for the BBR Reporter, shown this issue • Lincoln Features strips (1935–1939); see next page • The Lone Rider (Jan. 9–Feb. 18, 1939); signed “Lance Kirby” • The Blue Beetle (Jan. 8–March 9, 1940); signed “Charles Nicholas”

Is that a complete list? There are rumors of others he ghosted, and knowing Jack, there’s still more to be discovered, so worry not, Kirby fans. Any more that turn up will be featured in future issues. Now, let’s get to strippin’! H

[Looking at old strip examples in Kirby Unleashed] KIRBY: These were the comics I did for Lincoln Features. It gave me a lot of experience, personal experience in doing my own stories, doing my own illustrations, and combining both to make them sell. Abdul Jones was a satire, and I love satire. Satire is a kind of uplifting type of thing, and humor is beneficial in any atmosphere. [About the Lone Rider, shown below] KIRBY: Yes, I love westerns, and I’m a habitual movie-goer. What you see reflected in my comics is what I saw on the screen. I wanted to do my own movies, and this was my only way of accomplishing them. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to work in this kind of formula. [About the Blue Beetle newspaper strip] KIRBY: I didn’t create the characters. It was done by a fellow named Charles Nicholas, and then I became “Charles Nicholas.” I assumed the pen name because they wanted the pen name carried on.

[above] The Lone Rider from 1939. [top] In 1976, Jack drew his younger self as a newsboy character in Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles.

paper Clips

Lincoln Features

Kirby’s earliest comic strip work for H.T. Elmo explored by Richard Kolkman

n the early 20th century, newspapers were the binding force of urban society. Before radio and television, the comic strip pages provided both a welcome respite from the day’s news, and a springboard for the imaginations of a generation of youth that absorbed the comics, and wanted more. Some dedicated their lives to cartooning as they propelled this new art form forward. As Joe Kubert remembered in 1994: “…every Sunday

[this page] Here are two of Jack Kirby’s earliest professional jobs. The Black Buccaneer hails from 1937, when Jack was a mere 20 years old. Amazingly, this original art is still in existence. Jack’s mother Rose saved clippings from newspapers her son’s work appeared in, and many of those are the source material for images in this issue. Below is a previously unpublished Abdul Jones strip, drawn at the tail end of 1937, for release to papers in early 1938.

Features. Elmo most likely saw promise in Jacob’s earnest sample strips, and hired the young cartoonist who signed his work “Jack Curtiss” among a host of other pen names. H.T. Elmo [above] was born Arazio Theodore Elmo on April 3, 1903—the sixth of Joseph and Josephine Elmo’s seven children, in Manhattan. Elmo’s early art training is unknown, but his earliest known strip is Little Otto (1926), a daily for Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. He is rumored to have done some amateur pages in Judge magazine. By 1926, Elmo went by the name “Horace T. Elmo” or H.T. Elmo, now a lifetime resident of the Bronx. Elmo opened the doors of Lincoln Newspaper Features at 130 West 46th Street in New York City. Lincoln found a successful niche by servicing hundreds of small newspapers across the country. Ambitious and nimble, Elmo went where the major syndicates didn’t. It’s unknown if Elmo had sales agents or even how far his features reached, but John Morrow’s own research found that Socko the Seadog (usually accompanied by other Elmo features) got some decent geographical coverage with these now-defunct papers:

when the color comic strips came out, I’d lay on the floor and just kind of wrap them around me, around my head.” That was the world the boy cartoonists lived in. Kirby described his influences to biographer Greg Theakston: “I admired the newspaper strips of my childhood… we had a lot of daily and Sunday papers in New York—The Daily News, The Herald Tribune, The Journal American… I followed Tailspin Tommy, Smitty, Toots and Casper, Moon Mullins, Dick Tracy, and Buck Rogers—and they were all as near as the corner ash can. I thought, ‘I could do this!’” At age 12, Kurtzberg joined the legion of newsboys hawking newspapers in New York’s Lower East Side, while drawing crude comic strips for The Boys’ Brotherhood Republic Reporter. He rapidly improved his art and storytelling as he developed multiple strip concepts: untitled samples featuring family humor, space Vikings in spaceships, and nautical intrigue of pirates and plunder. At the end of 1935, while contemplating his departure from Max Fleischer’s animation factory, Jacob eventually landed (he likely answered an ad) at the doorstep of H.T. Elmo’s Lincoln Newspaper

•T he Rutherford Courier (Smyrna, Tennessee) •T he Dixie Democrat (Murfreesboro, Tennessee) • S cottsbluff Farm Journal (Scottsbluff, Nebraska) •T he Fillmore Chronicle (Fairmont, Nebraska) — the first Kirby Socko (#136) ran Sept. 14, 1939 •T he Indiana Democrat (Indiana, Pennsylvania) • I ndiana Weekly Messenger (Indiana, Pennsylvania) — Socko ran Jan. 2–Nov. 20, 1941 •N ational Road Traveler (Lewisville, Indiana; population 531 in 1940—now that’s a small paper!) •T he Lathrop Optimist (Lathrop, Missouri)

• Biff Baxter’s Adventures (1935–?) by Bob Dart (Larry Antonette) • Chuckle Corner (1941–1946) by Ted or Teddy (weekly panel) • The Fizzle Family (1935–1939) • The Goofus Family (1935–1939) by H.T. Elmo • It’s Amazing (1941–1946) by H.T. Elmo and Phil Berube (weekly panel); it derived some of its content from Curious Customs and Oddities and Facts You Never Knew. • Little Buddy (1938–1939) by Bruce Stewart • Nappy (1939–1943) by Irv Tirman • Puggy (1960–mid-1970s) • Rhyming Romeos (1950s) by H.T. Elmo (weekly) • Sally Snickers (1941–1946) by Jackson or H.T. Elmo (weekly); a Nancy clone, the Jackson pen name is likely for Jack Greenall • Some Fun! (1941–1946) by Ted or Teddy (weekly panel) • Tell Me (1960–mid1970s) • Useless Eustace (1941– 1946) by Jackson or Elmo (weekly panel); again, the Jackson pen name is likely for Jack Greenall

with him to Simon & Kirby’s studio. Evidence of this can be seen in one-pagers in Black Magic #20 [Jan. 1953] and #33 [Dec. 1954]. H.T. Elmo went on to create comic features such as “Little Aspirin” for Timely’s Oscar Comics (1947–1949). And according to the Grand Comics Database, Elmo also created one-page fillers such as “Quick Quiz” for various National (DC) comics from 1951 to 1955. From the 1950s to 1961, Elmo created mass market paperback books for Ace: 150 Games to Play, 101 Things to Make and Play, The Complete Book of Space, Modern Casanova’s Handbook, Hollywood Humor, and Mad Avenue. Elmo distributed a couple of his comic features into the 1970s, but after that he dropped off the radar. Horace T. Elmo died in the Bronx on October 23, 1992. H

Dash Dixon #136 (not by Kirby)

For completeness, here’s a listing of H.T. Elmo’s later non-Kirby features:

Dash Dixon #137 by Kirby (1938)

[Richard Kolkman lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is the curator of The Jack Kirby Checklist, and also the creator of the newspaper strip Big Flat City, syndicated from 1988–1996.] WORKS CITED:

Alter Ego V3 #76 (March 2008), “Simon Says” Joe Simon interview (TwoMorrows)

Detective Riley #136 (not by Kirby)

Comics Journal, The #172 (Nov. 1994), The Joe Kubert Interview (Fantagraphics) Comic Strip Jack Kirby, The by Greg Theakston (Pure Imagination; 2006)

Detective Riley #137 by Kirby (1938)

Though Kirby had nothing to do with the creation of Dash Dixon and Detective Riley, both strips’ #136 end on cliffhangers. H.T. Elmo called in young Jack to hurriedly wrap-up both storylines, so newspapers could go back to rerunning their adventures from the beginning.

Art of Jack Kirby, The by Ray Wyman, Jr. and Catherine Hohlfeld (Blue Rose Press; 1992)

(The author acknowledges input from, and many thanks to: Joe Getsinger, Alex Jay (Stripper’s Guide), Tom Kraft, Buddy Lortie, John Morrow, Grand Comics Database (www. comics.org), Wikipedia, and our ever handy Jack Kirby Checklist: Centennial Edition)

Complete Jack Kirby, The Vol. 1 by Greg Theakston (Pure Imagination; 1997) Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists (1924–1995) The Complete Index by Dave Strickler (Comics Access; 1995)

InnerviewS

Comic Strip Con

Excerpts from the 1973 San Diego Comic-Con, featuring Neal Adams and Jack Kirby • Held August 16–19, 1973 at the Sheraton Hotel, Harbor Island, San Diego, CA • Thanks to Jon B. Cooke for the audio recording

[The following excerpts are likely from August 16, 1973. This was the first year the convention was officially called the San Diego Comic-Con, and it opened with keynote addresses by Guest of Honor Neal Adams, Carmine Infantino, and Mike Friedrich. At this first panel, comic strip artists were well represented, with both Kirby and Adams having produced syndicated strips. The discussion focused on production, and specifically coloring:]

areas that are not to have a particular color, on acetate prints of the pages. And they have to do about nine of these acetates prints. And they photograph these onto a plate through a screen. The screen may be a 50%, or a 25%, or a solid. This way, they put together 50%, 25% of each of the colors on separate plates. It’s a very, very crude method. It’s called “fake separation” because that’s exactly what it is. Maybe one day we’ll get out of that, and get into really good color separation. At National Comics for a while, we were doing reprints of old ’40s material, which we did not have black-&-whites of. We photographed the color, and washed the color out. And what we do is, photographically, they would aim for the highest contrast of black-&-white, and then they would hire someone to sit down with white paint and go over and try and wash out all the registering of the other colors that came up in black-&-white. Red would always show up on a black-&-white, and so we’d have to go over and take white paint over all the values of red that would come through. We had problems with lettering on that too. If there was lettering on balloons—this was a slow, painful process, and there isn’t really any better way to do it at this point, at least economically. Shel has something to say about that.

GUS ARRIOLA (creator of the comic strip Gordo): I send in an indication of what I want. I have a black-&-white photostat made of the Sunday page, and then I color that in exactly the way I want it to appear—and plus that, they’ve given me a chart of the screens and the numbers, so there’s no mistake. So I not only color it, but I put the number of the color screen that I want, according to that chart, and it comes out very close. You wanted to know what medium I use to color that indication—it’s colored India inks. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Neal and Jack, do you both use colored India inks to do indications before you send in an issue? JACK KIRBY: Mike Royer [left, photographed at this 1973 con] works on my strips before I send them back to New York. As far as color goes, DC’s equipped to do that job, and has very competent people to do that job, and I rely on them in that respect, and I’m quite satisfied in what they do.

NEAL ADAMS: I try to get to color my own stuff, and a couple of artists do, because possibly you can be very personal about it, and possibly they think there are things they want SHEL DORF (co-founder of the San Diego Comic-Con, and one-time to get. I like to do my stuff with Dr. Martin’s Dyes. Some people do letterer of Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon newspaper strip): Jerry Bails it with watercolors. Some people do it with India ink. The problem asked me to do some of the work on his strips, for Who’s Who in is, comic book reproduction has, at its fingertips, only 64 colors to American Comic Books... I told him that I’d been playing around work with. Now, that sounds like a lot of colors, but it’s really not with trying to drop reds. As you know, when you photograph red, a lot of colors. What that means is that, comics books have in the it turns black. So you’ll see these pictures of people’s faces, and it red family, three values of red to use: 100% of red, 50% of red, and looks like they’ve got some disease. They have all these little black 25% of red. They have those same values in other colors, yellow and marks on them. One of the methods I discovered is, if you use panblue, as we all know, right? Printing colors are made of red, yellow, chromatic film and a red filter, it drops it and blue. Those are the only three colors that out, it becomes invisible. All the reds drop [l to r] Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Mike are used, and all the other colors are made Friedrich, and Bernie Lansky. out. The only problem with that is, all the by combinations of those colors. And unforblues turn black. [laughter] So when we’re tunately, you only have three values to work shooting for Batman, this was the hardest with. If you multiply those colors togethone. [He] has a pink face, and a blue and er—in other words, 25% of red and 25% of black costume. You shoot for red, and all blue and 25% of yellow, you get gray. 100% the blues turn black. You shoot for the blue, of yellow and 50% of red, and you get a nice the blues drop out white, and the red turns bright orange. These are the limitations of the black. So what we did, we shot two negacomic book reproduction method. They’re tives; one dropping the blues, one dropping very grave limitations, and the people who do the red. We made a sandwich, we made one color the comic books have to operate within print, and all of them dropped out together. these limits. Just to clarify; what happens It takes a little bit of experimentation, but to the color guides is, they’re taken to—in they came out. But it’s very expensive. the case of most comic book companies— Chemical Colorplate in Connecticut. Ladies ADAMS: National Periodicals has a pseudoin the area, and one or two gentlemen, work genius production department, outside of on a freelance piecework basis, and what they the fact that sometimes we think it’s part of do is, they take photographs of all the pages, their job to mess up our artwork. [laughter] and with this red paint, they paint out all the The fact is that there are people in there 7

Spin-Itch

Socko the Sailor Man by John Morrow

Kirby’s surviving continued Socko stories are: #136–145 (at the gym, Polynesian islands) #148–154 (in Baghdad) #155–158 (sea battle) #253–260 (shown here) #273a–285a (Max the mule, Mexico bullfight) #269b–285b (starts at end of #285a’s bullfight with “El Falfa” the bull, then Blatwood Blotz tries to get Socko to pilot his submarine)

ocko the Seadog is an obvious rip-off of Elzie Segar’s Popeye, but it’s not without merit—mainly, that it was an early training ground for Jack Kirby. Socko started its numbering with #100 and a 1936 copyright date, and strips through at least #107 were likely drawn by H.T. Elmo himself, using the pen name “Teddy” (from his middle name Theodore). Kirby joined Lincoln Features in 1936, and having experience working on Max Fleisher’s Popeye cartoons, took over Socko around strip #136 (sadly, no #108–135 examples exist). After extensive searching through numerous newspaper archives, it’s clear that most papers running Socko were weeklies (or twice a week at best), and would often run strips out of order. After reassembling the

There is a running continuity within Kirby’s Socko, but not always with consecutive numbering. The more loosely rendered, unconnected gag-a-day strips are randomly interspersed within Jack’s continued storylines, so presumably Elmo had some daily clients who could run continued stories without confusing their readers. Why are there “a” and “b” versions in those above numbers? Because there were 17 final continuity strips that reused the numbers 269–285. That final sequence abruptly ends with a beautiful French reporter “Evonne Evonne” trying to trick Socko into piloting Blatwood Blotz’ submarine. So I’m calling those last continuity strips #269b–285b. They’re in the correct order on the pages that follow, so you’ll see what I mean. During my research, I discovered the Saybrook Gazette and Arrowsmith News (published in Saybrook, Illinois) was running Socko as late as 1950. So either Elmo was still making sales that late, or that paper was just reusing old proofs in their files (that newspaper first ran Socko from its non-Kirby beginnings withstrip #101 on Feb. 5, 1942; #100 never ran). Despite some ethnic stereotypes that are looked upon unfavorably today, this strip shows Jack’s early skill at storytelling, and add#100 (The Crescent Times ran this debut strip on April 8, 1937, but ended Socko at #107, before Kirby arrived) ing a maximum of impact in just a few panels. By the end of Kirby’s run, he was using a crosssurviving strips numerically, there are numerous misshatching technique in his inking, akin to what he used Strip sources, in ing ones, including #108–135, 142–144, 171, 229–252, on the more serious Blue Beetle strip of the time. The addition to Jack’s own 270a–271a, 280a–282a, 281b, and #283b. Either those evolution shown across these examples indicates just files: strips never existed, or more likely there’s no surviving how quickly Kirby was improving during this era. H https://chronicling examples america.loc.gov/ due to their https://nyshistoric running in newspapers.org small town https://panewsarchive. psu.edu newspapers that are lost https://libguides. njstatelib.org/ to time and digitized-newspapers World War https://newspaper II paper archive.com drives. #136 (presumably the first Kirby strip, since there are no surviving examples of #108–135 to search for an earlier one)

#229–252 are missing strips, so this starts mid-story

#254

#256

#257

the Clip Joint

A collection of newspaper clippings about all things Kirby

From Mort Weisinger’s article in Pic Magazine, Feb. 1946.

[above] An article espousing the wonders of Kirby’s Fourth World, from the Wilmington Journal (Wilmington, Delaware), Feb. 23, 1972.

[previous page bottom] A little over three months later on June 1, 1972, the same writer (Terry Zintl) pens “Ax Falls on Two Comics Series” for The News Journal (also of Wilmington, Delaware), stating that “despite public protest,” New Gods and Forever People will be discontinued, but Mister Miracle will continue on. Jack is quoted saying, “The sales on the magazines were not as high as we anticipated. There was a definite lack of audience somewhere”—that they appealed to college-age readers, but younger readers wanted “a different type of story with more simple, straightforward action,” which his new books The Demon and Kamandi would deliver. Jack also stated that there is talk of DC occasionally publishing issues of New Gods in “large paperback form.” Readers in California are mentioned as circulating protest petitions about the cancellations, which Kirby said was “very gratifying, of course, but you’ve got to be logical and practical. Your audience is never static—you have to take in new types of readers, and most of the new readers are young.” Also shown is a clipping from the Nov. 28, 1974 Los Angeles Times with a quote from Carmine Infantino bemoaning the same thing. [above] Profile of Jack from the Ventura County Star Free Press (Camarillo, California) on Sun., June 24, 1973. [left] Notice in the New York Daily News, July 2, 1972, announcing Jack’s appearance at that year’s New York comic convention. 23

Mark Evanier

JACK F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

2024 San Diego Kirby Tribute Panel Held July 28, 2024 at Comic-Con International • Moderated by Mark Evanier, and featuring Tracy Kirby, Jeremy Kirby, Patrick McDonnell, and Henry W. Holmes.

[right] Back row, l to r: Tracy Kirby, Patrick McDonnell, Patrick Reed, Jeremy Kirby. Seated: Mark Evanier, Henry W. Holmes.

Transcribed by John Morrow Copy-edited by John Morrow and Mark Evanier

[below] Unpublished Master Jeremy strip from 1956. [next page, top] Editor John Morrow’s birthday is right around the time this issue is in your hands. If anyone out there owns this wonderful sketch and wants to gift it, you’d really make his day special—it’s even prognosticatedy personalized to him by Jack! [next page, bottom] We’ve no idea why Lockjaw from the Inhumans has a barbarian-looking dude riding on his back. Maybe this was an animation idea Jack pitched?

Photos by Chris Ng and John Morrow

MARK EVANIER: We have a different panel than was advertised because two of our people are sick. We also have a friend of mine—Henry, come over here and sit next to me. I’ll tell you who this man is in a moment, but first I have to greet one of my dearest friends. [pause as Henry Holmes makes his way to the podium] You’re probably wondering who this man is. Over the years, there were a lot of people who fought for creators’ rights in comics. I have been in the industry long enough to have seen how bad it was. When I got into comics, there were problems with Work For Hire, and the way they treated people—you didn’t get to keep your originals, they would treat people very badly. When I met Jack Kirby, one of the things that stopped me from trying to make my career in comics was seeing how unhappy Jack was with the way they had treated him. And I thought, “If they could treat Jack Kirby that way, think what they’ll do to me.” So I never did comics full-time, but I was around for this struggle and watched the industry change, and this is one of the men who changed it a lot. You may remember a comic book Jack worked on called Destroyer Duck. That was a benefit comic book to raise money, because Steve Gerber was locked in a

lawsuit with Marvel Comics over Howard the Duck—the ownership of it, and his firing from the company. We had to raise money, because Steve’s legal bills were getting to be astronomical, and Marvel was intentionally trying to drive them up. “We can outspend this guy. Maybe we can’t beat him in court, but we can beat him in his wallet.” So even with people chipping in, and people loaning him money that they never got back, it was still very financially ruinous. Steve fortunately had a very good attorney, who did wonderful things for him, got a great settlement out of it, and along the way helped open up the entire industry for creators to get much better deals. He negotiated some of the first creator-owned deals. That lawyer did the contract for my book called the DNAgents. He negotiated the contract when we took Groo to Marvel, and got the first real good creator deal ever out of Marvel. That lawyer’s name was Henry W. Holmes. This is Henry W. Holmes. [applause] We’re going to talk about other things first, and then we’ll talk to Henry in the second half of the panel. I will tell you, Henry represented some of the biggest stars and executives in Hollywood. His client list was insane; I’ll go through it. I am the only client he ever had that I’ve never heard of. [laughter] It’s amazing. In addition to Henry, we have some other wonderful people. Over the years I have been amazed at how Jack Kirby inspired so many other people in the creative arts. Obviously, he inspired a lot of people who wanted to draw big giant super-heroes beating up on each other. We understand that. But he inspired people who were poets and authors and musicians and dancers. I even got a fan letter one time after Jack passed away, from a guy who was a spot welder, who wanted to explain to me how Jack Kirby inspired him to be a better spot welder. I can’t figure that out to save

to get there, it closes on August 3rd. They’re hoping to work partnerships out with other galleries, to have this exhibit in other places, especially on the East Coast. So fingers crossed for that. I also had the chance—there’s a gentleman named Ray Wyman who did the Art of Jack Kirby [biography] awhile back. He is going to be launching a very cool podcast starting next Spring, and he has been working on about forty hours of recorded conversations with Jack. It’s really awesome, because it’s just offthe-cuff, completely out-there conversations, just letting Jack talk about everything. So I’ve been sitting and helping the guys at booth 1803, so come and say “Hi.” [spots the Kirby Museum guys in the audience] Oh, you’re right there! [laughter, applause] Jeremy? JEREMY KIRBY: I’m just here to see you guys! [laughter] Thank you all for being here. I’m excited. MARK: I’m always fascinated to ask Kirby relatives a question about this. I told this on another panel, but it belongs on this panel. As you may know, I broke my ankle earlier this year. It was a mess, a terrible situation, with agony—you’d never believe the pain I was in for a while. I broke it in the bathroom upstairs in my house. Four burly firemen, each one of whom should’ve had a superhero costume of his own, [laughter] showed up to carry me down the stairs. It should’ve taken a whole brigade. [laughter] They get me down the stairs, they put me on a gurney, they wheel the gurney out to the street, and they’ve got one of these fire rescue trucks out there—an ambulance, basically. And they put me in the back of the truck, and one of the guys is driving, and one is riding with me. I was almost screaming in pain, it was so excruciating. And I’m on this gurney, and he’s saying, “We’ll get you there, we’ll get you there...”, a very sympathetic person. And at one point he says, “Your house has a lot of comic books in it.” [laughter] And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Did you ever hear of a guy named Jack Kirby?” [laughter] “Jack Kirby? Let me tell you...!” All the way there, I told him about Jack. I love telling people about Jack, I love the reactions I get. I think I’ve told this story too many times, about the kid in Costco who looked at me. I had a CD-Rom of Jack Kirby comics, and this kid was boxing things, and he says to me, “These comics are by Jack Kirby, the greatest comic book artist ever. Marvel f*cked him over.” [laughter] You’d be surprised how many times in my career as a writer for TV shows and such, I’d walk into meetings and the people there say, “Never mind the thing you came to pitch. Tell us about Jack.” [laughter] What kind of reaction do you get these days, from people who know you’re related to Jack Kirby?

my life, but he did. [laughter] If you’re familiar with a comic strip called Mutts, you know it’s a brilliant, clever, funny comic strip, that people love, with characters people love around the world. You’d never think that guy was inspired by Jack Kirby—well, he was. He’s Patrick McDonnell, sitting right here. [applause] And what would a Kirby panel be without Kirbys? [laughter] Say hello to Jack’s grandkids: Tracy Kirby and Jeremy Kirby. [applause] Tracy, Jeremy, what news have you got for Kirby fans, about things that are going on in Jack’s world? Oh, and we have an announcement a little later about something special, but first, Tracy, tell us about what you’re working on.

TRACY: I get a lot more reactions than I used to, that’s for sure. The cool thing is that, over the most recent years, my kids have been getting a lot of reactions, and some of the teachers know who Jack Kirby is. My daughter’s got a Kirby gene in her, for sure. She’s definitely a much better artist than I am. She was in advanced art in middle school, and she said, “Mom, this has been cool. They did a comic book inspirational piece,” so the art teacher who found out

TRACY KIRBY: Well, now that my children have been getting a little bit older, thank goodness, I’m able to dedicate more time to my own career. My creativity stems in landscape design; that’s about as good as I could get, with drawing circles on paper. [laughter] I stuck with that. But I’ve been really excited to start working with the wonderful guys who created this amazing nonprofit, the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center. Hopefully there will be, one day in the future, a brick and mortar [location], which would be amazing. The pop-up exhibits have been going great. If you are in the L.A. area, there’s two more weeks of the Kirbyvision exhibition at the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles. It is amazing! The first time I stepped in, it was like, “Finally, a professional, amazing exhibit that is dedicated to Jack Kirby and his inspiration, instead of it always being Jack Kirby art as part of another exhibition.” So this is a really wonderful exhibition. If you have a chance 27

how Google works, and for a while, I couldn’t figure out why they kept showing me pictures of vacuum cleaners. [laughter] And I realized there were Kirby vacuum cleaners, and I was searching for Jack a lot. And now if you go in and type in “vacuum cleaner,” it’ll show you a picture of Jack Kirby. [laughter] TRACY: That’s funny, I received that exact same reaction. When I would say my last name, I always got the joke: “Oh, are you related to the Kirby vacuums?” And honestly, for the last ten years, I have not received that joke. [laughter] It’s usually the opposite now.

Sydney is Jack Kirby’s great granddaughter kind of let it slip out to the class. [laughter] And Sydney said it was kind of weird; it was the first time a couple of the kids near her went “No way!” [laughter] So it’s kind of cool, because probably ten years ago, I would say “Jack Kirby” and people would say “Who?” or “Oh, isn’t that Stan Lee who created everything?” Not a lot of people knew, and now when I’m at work or people will see a movie and say, “Hey, I think I saw your grandfather’s name on the movie credits.” So it’s been nice. It’s been a long time coming... I definitely feel like we get a lot more people coming up. It’s cool letting people know who my grandfather is, and what he did. And of course, everyone will get on their phone and start googling it and go, “Oh my God, you’re right! Whoa!” [laughter]

HENRY W. HOLMES: Stan Lee didn’t have a vacuum cleaner named after him. [laughter] MARK: Before we move off of Tracy and Jeremy here to get to our next guest, do you find that there are people who go, “Could you draw me a picture of Captain America?” TRACY: I immediately tell people I did not get the gene. When I did archaeology, I used to get made fun of for not being able to draw pottery shards. I’m creative in other ways, but I’m definitely not the artiste. My daughter, though, is actually getting people to ask her to draw pictures. In fact, she got her first little commission by another artist at the Kirbyvision exhibition.

JEREMY: I agree. [laughter] Absolutely. It’s a big change from years past. It used to be the opposite. I was never ashamed, but I would kind of hide it a little, cause you don’t know what reaction you’d get if you told them, “Yeah, my grandfather was instrumental in creating this character,” and their first thought was “the other guy.” And then you’d have to explain things, and after a while you just got sick of explaining it. I’d say, starting fifteen years ago or so, when credits started to finally go on some of the movies, and comic art started getting more popular, and people started deep-diving on the Internet—sometimes the Internet can be a good thing. Now it pops up in the weirdest places. I run a software company; we work with digital forensics for the federal government, and state and local agencies. I was on the phone with the head of HSI [Homeland Security Investigations], their cyber division. We were talking, and he brought up my last name, and he’s like, “Y’know, Kirby’s an interesting name, blah, blah, blah,” and I brought up [my grandfather] was an artist, and he goes, “I was hoping you were related to that Kirby. He’s awesome.” [laughter] And a police chief, literally just two weeks ago, one of my guys that works for me was on a live Teams meeting with him, talking about our products. And he saw a bunch of comic book stuff in the back, and said, “I’m the biggest Jack Kirby fan there is.” And they obviously [bought] the software and everything else. [laughter] And I sent him one of my grandfather’s comics, and said, “Thank you so much for what you do.” [laughter] We’re seeing it in so many new places that we’d never have seen it in the past, and it’s awesome.

JEREMY: She’s amazing. You’ll definitely be seeing her in the future. She has the gift. Her ability to draw—it’s awesome. MARK: One of the things I’ve tried to convince people of over the years, is that Jack was more than a guy who drew. Jack was more importantly a guy who thought, a guy with good ideas. Somebody on the Internet said, “Well, I like John Buscema’s Silver Surfer better than Jack Kirby’s.” That’s fine if they like John Buscema’s art, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But I think sometimes they don’t get that John Buscema and Jack Kirby were not doing the same job. Drawing a comic book, drawing a character, is only a small piece of what Jack Kirby did. John Buscema did not approach his work as—and this is not a knock on John Buscema or any of those guys—“Okay, how do I revolutionize the business with this story? How do I create something new that will spin off into other avenues, and make the company more successful? How do I take comics to another level, moving in new directions?” One of the things that Jack was not that good at was looking backward. He really didn’t want to do the same characters over and over again. He wanted to come up with the next idea, the new idea, and his time at DC was very frustrating, because some people at DC didn’t want new ideas, especially from the guy who did those awful Marvel ideas. He was up against a bunch of people who, first of all, I think did

MARK: In the early days of Google, I was searching for things, learning 28

not appreciate what he had to offer; and secondly, who thought Marvel comics were not very good. And getting Jack away from them? Well, that would hurt Marvel, and maybe the Marvel fans would come over and realize how great Superboy is, and Aquaman is. One of the people who was supposed to be on this panel, but cancelled because of illness, was Paul Levitz, who took over as the head of DC. I wanted Paul to tell the story of how New Gods, and Forever People, and Mister Miracle sold pretty well. You’ve all seen people knock those books, but they actually sold very decently. When Carmine Infantino was in charge of DC, in my opinion, one of the main mistakes that company made was they cancelled new ideas too fast. Bat Lash wasn’t a hit as of its second issue; they cancelled it. Anthro wasn’t a hit as of its second issue; they cancelled it. If you’re doing something new, you’ve got to give a chance for the audience to find it. You’ve all seen cases where a TV show was in trouble. There were people at CBS that wanted to cancel M*A*S*H halfway through its first season. If they’d cancelled it, that would not have been a failure of the material, it’d been a failure of the network. I think, too often, people do not recognize that the failure of some comic books was the failure of the publisher, and not of the creator. And Paul would’ve told the story of how, one of the last things Carmine Infantino did before he was ousted there, was he cancelled a book Mike Grell was doing called Warlord. And then when Jenette Kahn came in, she looked at the recent sales figures and said, “Why the hell did he cancel that?” and put it right back on the schedule. And if Kirby had still been there, she would’ve put New Gods and Forever People and Mister Miracle back on the schedule, because they sold very decently. You were maybe too young to see how devastating that was to Jack when they cancelled those books. It is one of the saddest memories I have of him, is the day... JEREMY: The feeling was still around, that pressure. My grandfather’s kind of sadness or disappointment that they were cancelled, it was still around. It lingered, absolutely. MARK: Jack was a very strong man. He was courageous. My admiration for him does not just have to do with what he put on paper. It was who he was, how he talked; I learned from him as a human being. That was the only time I really saw weakness on Jack’s part. He was pale, sad—then he rallied and called Mike Royer and said, “Hey Mike, we’ve got some new books, and they’ll be even better,” and all of a sudden, The Demon and Kamandi were there. And they were very good books, too. I’m going to move the conversation to Patrick for a minute. You’ve got a new book out. Tell people about that book. PATRICK McDONNELL: Sure, sure. It’s called The Super Hero’s Journey, and it’s a love letter to Jack Kirby and the early Marvel comics. I’ll namedrop here; I just had the amazing opportunity—I did a book with the Dalai Lama about the environment: his words, my pictures. And I was trying to figure out, “How do you follow up a book with the Dalai Lama?” [laughter] The great editor from Abrams Books, Charlie

Kochman over there, came up to me and said, “Patrick, would you be interested in doing a book with the Marvel superheroes?” Oh yeah, you follow up a book with the Dalai Lama with Jack Kirby! [laughter] Made total sense. So I had the opportunity to do something with those characters. You had mentioned before about Jack being more than an artist. I think that was his inspiration for me. When you look at my Mutts comic strip, you wouldn’t necessarily think of Jack Kirby being an influence. What he inspired for me was his imagination. I don’t think there’s another artist in the history of the world, who invented more characters, costumes, and whole worlds, and that amazing imagination was always an inspiration for me. Mutts came out—Jack’s inspiration is definitely there. MARK: Tell me the earliest Jack Kirby comic you remember reading. PATRICK: I’m old enough to have had the pleasure of seeing that whole Marvel world appear before me and my brother’s eyes. I had an older brother, so he told me and my younger brother what we were allowed to collect. [laughter] He gave me X-Men. So probably X-Men #11, with the Stranger, which is a really strange comic. I was blown away by that. MARK: Not long before Jack got off that book... it’s interesting. Jack started drawing X-Men, and the idea when he started the X-Men, was they were going to have him do the first couple of issues, and then they would pass the book to [inker] Paul Reinman as artist. Paul Reinman was a longtime comic book artist, and he didn’t want to be an inker. He was doing it because he needed the work, and this was to break him in on the characters and Jack’s style. And Reinman was never quite able to pencil anything Stan Lee was happy with—not so much the drawing, but because of plotting, telling the story. So Reinman never took over, and the same thing happened with Chic Stone, who followed Reinman as the inker on X-Men. He didn’t want to be an inker, he wanted to pencil, and they thought they could break him in. He still never quite was able to plot a story the way Jack could, though he could draw nice pictures. So Jack finally stopped drawing X-Men, and they gave it to a man named Werner Roth to pencil over Jack’s layouts. And Werner Roth was exactly the kind of artist that Stan Lee didn’t want to have 29

[previous page] Unused 1956 Chip Hardy strip, and a 1971 letter from DC’s circulation manager, asking why In The Days of the Mob #1 never made it to many newsstands. [below] Patrick McDonnell’s new book The Super Hero’s Journey. His heartfelt take on growing up Marvel is a delight to read, and visually original, as you can see from this sample art page from the book.

Artviews

Kirbyvision was quite a show, from the authentic 1940s newsstand that greeted you at the entrance, to the 3-D artwork and giant Galactus mural. Kirby fans, family and friends turned out in force for the exhibit’s opening night.

Kirbyvision!

nal semi by a f o e Hopp ecap hibit, The r rby art ex nd Rand ] a Ki below Kraft Tom [pictured

[Summer 2024 saw one of the largest exhibitions of Jack Kirby original art ever put on in the United States. Kirbyvision took over Los Angeles’ Corey Helford Gallery from June 29–August 3, showcasing 50 pages of rare Kirby art alongside new work by over 70 artists from the New Contemporary scene, each providing their own unique interpretation of Kirby’s characters, concepts, and sensibilities. We present here a conversation with curators Randolph Hoppe and Tom Kraft of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, as they reflect on what it took to be a part of such an ambitious event.] THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: How did you end up working with the Corey Helford Gallery to bring Kirbyvision to life? TOM KRAFT: I met [Corey Helford Gallery owner] Bruce Helford at an LA Comic Art Show around 2019. He collects Jack Kirby’s original art from Captain 3-D, a 1953 Harvey Publishing comic book that only ran for one issue. He told me his dream was to create the best Kirby exhibition ever. I mentioned that the Museum would love to bring something like the pop-up exhibitions we’ve done in New York City to Los Angeles. In July 2022, he suggested we contact [CHG director] Sherri Trahan. Sherri mentioned that the gallery was booked til 2025. So we waited. Then, in February 2024, we received word that the gallery had a cancellation, and the Kirby show was scheduled for July, leaving us less than five months to put it all together. TJKC: Where did “Kirbyvision” come from? TOM: I started brainstorming ideas for a thematic approach to the show. Sherri explained that the show wasn’t to be just an exhibition of original art, but also to showcase some of the 200 artists they represent, who would show new art that could be sold. So the combination of new artwork combined with Kirby original art, made “Kirbyvision” a perfect choice. RANDOLPH HOPPE: We hosted a blog for a number of years called Kirby-Vision by Jason Garrattley. So when Tom mentioned that he thought “Kirbyvision” was a good idea, I thought so too, because we’d already been hosting it! I did reach out to Jason and let him know that we were using that name. It’s pretty important that we’re not only getting Kirby’s work out there, but also showing the world that he did have a vision for comics and storytelling. It’s also just a great name. TJKC: How did the “Kirbyvision” concept shape the exhibition going forward? Where did the 3-D elements come from? TOM: The idea of having 3-D elements was 100% Bruce Helford’s. So we centered the exhibit around his suggestion to enlarge three pages from Captain 3-D into four-foot wide panels to hang on the wall. He also wanted to display some of the original Captain 3-D art that he owns. TJKC: Those huge 3-D panels, as well as the complete reprint of Captain 3-D you did at Treasury size, looked really spectacular. How did those come together, and how did you get the 3-D just right? TOM: That took scanning in the comic at high resolution. The original comic had faded and browned, so color correction and restoration were needed. Eric Kurland from 3-D Space, a museum in Los Angeles dedicated 36

the show, you would see the pages from Captain 3-D, but when you walked around the back of that wall, there was a giant Galactus mural, which was really cool.

to preserving the history of 3-D, provided guidance on how to enhance the files so that we could really showcase the effect.

TJKC: Is this the first time the Museum has been involved in something of this scale? TOM: Part of the mission of the Museum is to promote Jack Kirby and his legacy for educational purposes, so we’re always happy to help other institutions and museums with their Jack Kirby exhibits. RAND: We’ve been approached over the years by a number of curators who are interested in mounting exhibits or displays. One of our favorites was for Fumetto in Lucerne, Switzerland, where they had a building in their old downtown that had been hosting a Picasso Museum. They took all the Picassos down and put up Jack Kirby art, which was a real treat! We were very helpful in getting original art on the walls there and elsewhere. It was just great to have something this large and expansive at the Corey Helford Gallery, there in the arts district of LA. It really was a step up from our usual US based exhibits, which are often pop-ups at smaller art galleries in Manhattan.

TJKC: How did the “Kirbyvision” concept influence the presentation? TOM: We organized the exhibition into thematic sections, which had text information panels that positioned the original art and display items. We even added 3-D images to the panels to carry the 3-D concept throughout the show. We designed 3-D glasses with Eric which were handed out to attendees, and there were 3-D glasses icons that indicated when they should put their glasses on. We also made a decision in the design process to feature Jack’s “blitz” at Marvel, so we had a whole Marvel superhero wall that we felt was important to explain or express that the Fantastic Four through the Avengers and the X-Men came about from pitches of concepts and characters that Jack made to Marvel. TJKC: How did you feel about the work from the contemporary artists? RAND: Including the contemporary artists’ interpretations of Kirby is actually very similar to what Jason had been doing with the KirbyVision blog. It wasn’t all that much of a surprise to see people from all over the spectrum of artistic interpretation tipping their hat to Jack Kirby’s work. We were actually asked to suggest some artists, which we didn’t expect at the beginning of the process, and was a nice surprise. We created a list and did the best we could to come up with contact information for the gallery to reach out. But, you know, it still felt kind of like pulling together a wedding reception in four weeks. We realized that we missed some people, but it all worked out. It was really fun to see who contributed out of the people that we suggested. I think the real highlight was Skinner, whose work is filled with monsters and horrors, but is also colorful. He was so enthusiastic about the show that he contributed a huge Galactus mural on the back of the gallery’s feature wall. So when you walked into

TJKC: How did you source the original art for the exhibition?

Jack Gave DC...

...A sharp edge!

Incidental Iconography

An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld

f I asked you about Jack’s time at DC in the 1970s, there are any number of things that might spring to mind: New characters like The Demon, Kamandi, and OMAC. Huge new concepts like The Fourth World. Perhaps just the massive industry shift of Marvel’s primary architect leaving for their chief rival. It speaks to the breadth and imagination of Jack’s work that I could follow up that initial question with “What else?” a hundred times and you likely wouldn’t get to the topic of today’s Incidental Iconography: Morgan Edge. Which is interesting, given that Jack introduced the character almost immediately: on page 5 of Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #133 to be precise [above]. (Of course, Jack being Jack, despite that being the first book of his contract, he managed to introduce the title character and five other brand new characters in the four preceding pages!) Not only was Edge introduced early, but he was picked up and used by other creators quickly as well, hopping over to Superman #233 by Denny O’Neil and Curt Swan before Jack’s third issue of Jimmy Olsen came out! I’ll point out the real significance of that in a bit. But let’s look at how Jack created the character in the first place. In 1967, Kinney National Company purchased DC (then still called National Periodical Publications) and the next few years saw other purchases that included Panavision, Elektra Records, and Warner Brothers. And while nothing was proven illegal in 1970, rumors of Kinney’s questionable business practices had been circulating for a while. Jack began toying with the idea of a large corporation run by someone who was effectively a mob boss, and the idea of Morgan Edge was born. A key story element around Edge that Jack introduced was the character’s two-faced nature. He is shown to be charming and pleasant around Clark Kent, but as soon as Kent leaves, Edge places a call to have him killed. It’s this sort of duplicitousness that likely steered Jack to using Kevin McCarthy for the basic likeness of the character. While McCarthy at that time was appearing on the TV series The Survivors, he was probably more well-known as the main protagonist from the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers [left], in which aliens appear as humans, but are slowly and soullessly trying to take over. It is, in fact, this younger version of McCarthy that Jack seems to have been looking towards over McCarthy’s then-current appearance, inspired by the movie’s core concept. Jack did not just lift McCarthy’s appearance from the film directly, though. McCarthy’s suits in the movie are simple single-

breasted, one-color suits that a suburban doctor might wear; Edge’s suits by contrast are double-breasted, pin-striped pieces with a pocket handkerchief and, frequently, a lapel carnation more befitting a Metropolis executive. Clearly, Jack wanted to signify Edge was from a different class than McCarthy’s Miles Bennell. Also, whether intentional or not, Jack opted to part Edge’s hair on the opposite side as McCarthy. Interestingly, Julie Schwartz was appointed to edit Superman just as Jack was starting on Jimmy Olsen and came in wanting to make some changes. While he primarily wanted to rein in Superman’s power set, he also was vocal about moving Kent from newspaper to television and saw Edge’s station as a media mogul as a serendipitous set-up for that. So we have Edge making appearances in other issues Jack had no input on right away. Edge’s first appearance not drawn by Jack was in Superman #233 [top right], which hit newsstands less than a month after Jimmy Olsen #134, Edge’s second issue. Which means that Swan was contributing more to readers’ understanding of Edge’s appearance than Jack was, since Superman was selling about 30% better than Jimmy Olsen on top of being monthly, versus Jimmy Olsen’s eight-issues-per-year schedule. Additionally, Jack left Jimmy Olsen in 1972 while Swan continued on both Superman and Action Comics for over a decade. While Edge’s basic design remained in place, Swan [right] was more attentive to men’s fashion and always drew the character in stylish contemporary suits, not necessarily the more timeless designs Jack used. I suspect Jack was unconcerned about Swan’s relatively minor aesthetic changes though, particularly compared with the retcon over in Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane (about six months before Jack left Jimmy Olsen) that the evil Edge that readers had been seeing was simply a clone made by Darkseid. Jack no longer used the character after that; I suspect he no longer saw it as his and moved on to the bigger Fourth World stories he was developing anyway. This was hardly the first instance of Jack’s design work being superseded in its iconography by a subsequent artist. But it’s probably the fastest that’s ever occurred, likely because a new Superman editor saw possibilities to bring a powerful character more down to earth, and not how an equally powerful villain might exploit the human condition. H 48

Gallery

EXTRA! EXTRA!

Read all about Jack’s Jimmy Olsen pencil work, through commentary by Shane Foley

[left] Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #144, page 6 (Dec. 1971) Speaking of Morgan Edge (you have read the previous piece, have you not?), what better way to open a Kirby pencil gallery than with a page of his final depiction of Edge. And what a sinister, evocative image it is in panel 4—one of Kirby’s best of him, surely—and, as we can see if we compare this to the published version, far better in pencil than in ink. (I’m not one who hates all Vince Colletta’s inking—there were some very good jobs—but this book isn’t one of the best. The inking on panel 4 here loses much of what Kirby achieved in pencil form, while there are details omitted in panels 2 and 6, Edge’s hair is often simply blacked in over the detail, and the background in panel 2 has lost all life.) [next page] Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #145, page 12 (Jan. 1972) EXTRA! The Evil Factory has been found (as seen in pencil form in TJKC #48) and this following page has the fallout. Two action panels showcase Kirby’s explosive action, then in panel 4 we get a stunningly powerful portrait of Mokkari. Here, he has finally been drawn more closely to his original appearance after some inconsistent previous appearances. The only downside is, in the inks (again), the detail in that gun in panel 4 is very sloppily changed. And of course, Olsen himself is inked by Murphy Anderson, making him far less Kirby-ish.

STRIPPER

[above] Mike Manley in 2016. Photograph by and ©Luigi Novi, Wikipedia Commons. [right] Mike’s inks over Jack’s Doctor Doom entry from Roz Kirby’s 1970s sketchbook. [below] Examples of Mike’s current work on the syndicated comic strips Judge Parker and The Phantom. [next page, bottom] Mike pays tribute to Kirby’s cover for Fantastic Four #97 (April 1970).

Mike Manley

The syndicated cartoonist, Draw! magazine editor, comic book artist, and co-creator of Darkhawk, interviewed by John Morrow via e-mail on August 28, 2024

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Tell our readers how you got your start in comics and newspaper cartooning. MIKE MANLEY: I’m 62, and probably 63 years old by the time this sees print. I guess I was always aware of newspaper comics, mostly because of the Sunday papers as a kid, and I remember them being pretty big, and liking Peanuts. I don’t remember a lot of the other strips, although I’m sure I looked at them. I was much more into comic books than newspapers as a kid, although my dad was a comic book and newspaper strip fan, and he used to tell me about certain comic books and characters that he liked as a kid, like Popeye and Dick Tracy and the Phantom. I remember him telling me about Eugene the Jeep, the little character from Popeye, which I found fascinating, because he was never in any of the Popeye cartoons that I saw as a kid. I became a much bigger fan of comic strips in my teens because I really got into studying comic books, which led me back to comic strips and all the great classic comic strips, especially the adventure strips. So as a teenager, I was very aware of the history of the comic strip, and I had some reprints of Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon, especially. I also was aware that all of the comic book greats like Neal Adams and Wally Wood and Joe Kubert, and all the artists I’d admired, also had a hand in doing comic strips, and greatly admired the classic comic strip artists who were giants. Then in the ’80s I got to know Al Williamson and befriended him, and shared his studio along with Bret Blevins. And of course, Al was one of the all-time greats, and had an amazing collection—not of his own work, but so many great Hal Fosters and Alex Raymonds, and so many classic comic strip pieces that he basically saved from being destroyed. And of course, because he had all of that stuff, it was a great opportunity to study the originals of so many of the classic strip artists who were very influential on all of the comic book artists of that first Golden Age generation, especially people like Jack Kirby. You can see a lot of Milton Caniff, as well as Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, in Jack Kirby’s work if you know where to look. Their way of spotting blacks, especially, was very heavily influenced by Caniff. I really got my start in comic strips through a chance job, again connected to Al Williamson. Around 2008–2009, King Features was doing some new work or new stories with Secret Agent Corrigan or Secret Agent X9, which was the strip that Al used to do, and there was a publisher named Egmont Scandinavia that was reprinting Al’s strips along with Modesty Blaze, and they wanted to do a new story or two. So Brendan Burford, who was the editor at King Features at the time, got my name, 56

got my first Adams issue—it was Batman #234 [August 1971] that had the giant Two-Face on the cover with Batman tied to the ship, sinking into a swamp—and those two comics just sent me to the moon!

I believe, from Bob Wiacek, who recommended me for the job. I did those two jobs, which was a lot of fun. They even just recently reprinted them. Anyway, shortly afterwards, Brendan Burford contacted me to see if I would be interested in doing Judge Parker, the long-running soap opera strip, because he knew me and my work working on Corrigan. Eduardo Barreto had been doing the strip but had taken ill. So initially I was going to come in and do, I suppose, a few weeks or a month or two while he recovered, but unfortunately he became worse and passed away, and I took over the strip. I was a fan of certain soap opera strips like On Stage by Leonard Starr and The Heart of Juliet Jones by Stan Drake, but I never imagined that I would do a comic strip myself, because I was a comic book guy. The same thing happened, unfortunately, eight years ago when Paul Ryan, who was doing The Phantom, passed away suddenly, and because I had that relationship with King, they asked me if I would be interested in doing The Phantom. So I ended up doing two classic comic strips, which is quite a bit of work, as you can imagine, because both strips require a large amount of reference and realism.

TJKC: What’s your favorite Kirby work? MANLEY: I suppose my favorite overall is probably the Fantastic Four, because I think he was really happy and firing on all cylinders, at least until probably the last year or two of the run on the book—although I do love everything except for his work at the very end of his career. I love those Captain America stories he did, and I remember very specifically being excited as a teenager when he came back to Marvel, because my dad had a part-time job and I would go and help him. Across the street there was a supermarket or a drugstore that sold Marvel comics, so I was able to start buying the Kirby stuff when he returned to Marvel. Then we moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor and there was a comic book store there, and I was able to [above] The published version of Jimmy Olsen buy all of the stuff that Kirby did when he came #138’s cover (June 1971), which so captivated Mike back to Marvel, and even if it wasn’t quite as Manley. Compare it to our front cover this issue. good as his stuff before, I was just tickled pink to be buying fresh new Kirby books. A lot of the Kirby books I had before that as a kid from Marvel were books that were sold with TJKC: What was the first Kirby work you saw? And how did you the cover ripped off. So for years I had Marvels that were sold as respond to it initially? returns, but I never saw what the actual original comic books looked MANLEY: I clearly remember my first experience seeing his work, like until we moved to Ann Arbor, and I could track down the actual which was a Jimmy Olsen comic—I believe the first issue was the one issues. It turns out what I was reading as a kid was the Spider-Man where Superman is carrying that giant machine, and it’s one that reprints and the Fantastic Four reprints, which I believe had pages was inked by Neal Adams [above]. I remember suddenly Superman, omitted. who I did like as a kid, seemed really super! All that stuff with the As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve learned to appreciate the ’40s Guardian and the Newsboy Legion and the DNAliens, all of that Kirby and the ’50s Kirby and the ’60s Kirby and the ’70s Kirby. He stuff with the FourArmed Terror and everything—I remember very specifically there was a shot of [Mokkari] with a yellow face and his assistant, and he had weird black squiggles on his face, and that stuff just riveted my attention. I think I was probably right around ten years old, and that summer I became conscious of artists’ names in comics—the first being Jack Kirby, because they kept advertising “Kirby is coming. Kirby is coming. Kirby is here!” So he was probably the first artist in comic books, whose name and artwork really stood out for me, and then the second was Neal Adams on Batman. I’ve still 57