K I R B Y A “KING” KIRBY PORTFOLIO twenty dollars
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KIRBY UNLEASHED KIRBY UNLEASHED, a collection of the artistry of Jack Kirby, originally published by and ©1971 Communicators Unlimited. This edition published by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614, 919-449-0344, fax 919-449-0327, e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com, web: www.twomorrows.com. Price: $20.00 per copy.
Compiled and annotated by Steve Sherman and Mark Evanier, with additional material by John Morrow. Boy Commandos, Newsboy Legion and Guardian, Forever People, Mr. Miracle, Oberon, Big Barda, Granny Goodness, Scrapper, San Diego FiveString Mob, OMAC, and Darkseid TM & ©2004 DC Comics. Captain America, Bucky, Red Skull, Agent 13, Sif, Invisible Girl, Karnilla, Watcher, Dr. Doom, Silver Surfer, Hulk, Thing, Machine Man, Galactus, Black Panther, Loki, Warriors Three, and Inhumans TM & ©2004 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Popeye TM & ©2004 King Features Syndicate, Inc.; Black Magic, Boys’ Ranch, Bullseye, Fighting American, Foxhole, Strange World Of Your Dreams, Young Love TM & ©2004 Joe Simon & Jack Kirby. This edition ©2004 TwoMorrows Publishing and the Jack Kirby Estate. Unless otherwise noted, all artwork contained herein is ©2004 the Jack Kirby Estate. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission from TwoMorrows Publishing and the Jack Kirby Estate. First printing. Printed in Canada.
THE 1970 MARVELMANIA PORTFOLIO
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Opposite top: Wraparound cover art for the JACK KIRBY PORTFOLIO from Marvelmania, circa 1970. Jack turned this into a painting in 1979, shown on pages 34-35. Opposite bottom: An example of Jack’s work with photo collages, which he incorporated into his comics stories in the 1960s and ’70s. This one appeared as a plate in the Marvelmania portfolio. Left: Plate from the Marvelmania portfolio that was used to create the envelope art for the set of GODS posters. For copyright reasons, Galactus was modified into a more generic character. Inks by Mike Royer.
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Kirby’s editorial cartoons, signed under a variety of names, were syndicated to approximately seven hundred weekly newspapers. From 1936 to 1939, he did these and the strips on the following pages.
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1943 found Kirby stationed overseas in the Fifth Division, Third Army, commanded by General Patton. Serving as a combat Infantryman, he fought in the campaign at Metz and earned two battle stars and a severe case of frozen feet. While in the army hospital, he kept a steady flow of letters back to the States and his new bride, Rosalind. At left, some of the “V-Mail” (letters reduced in size, photographically for easy handling and
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paper conservation) he sent back, all profusely illustrated. Above, a sketch done while on the move. Below, a drawing of Mrs. Kirby done, from memory, on the back of a piece of German stationery picked up off a dead enemy soldier. On the opposite page, a charcoal sketch done on the scene in a German bunker. In 1945, he returned to America and reteamed with Joe Simon to work with the newly-formed Harvey Comics Company.
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By 1959, Kirby was doing almost all his work for the company previously known as Timely and/or Atlas, soon to be known as the Marvel Comics Group. Their line at the time consisted of love, western and monster comics, and Kirby was put to work on all three. He drew Rawhide Kid and Two-Gun Kid and, as he had before, found the western setting to be an enjoyable one to draw. Most of his time however, was spent on the monster books which featured a rather lackluster format typified by such titles as “The Escape of Monsteroso” and “The Creature From Krogarr.” Produced by a small staff, these books were tiresome but their significance was great, for they eventually led to the creation of the Marvel Super-Heroes. A slight super-hero revival at other companies was leading to renewed reader interest. With nothing to lose, Marvel decided to try a few superheroes. The first Fantastic Four, issued in 1961, marked the beginning. The product of Kirby and Marvel’s editor and head writer, Stan Lee, it was a shaky start but one which aroused interest and considerable fan mail.
The Incredible Hulk
Editor Stan Lee had developed a new method of producing their books. Instead of beginning with a full script, which the artist would then illustrate, they began with an idea which would be discussed in conference between scripter and penciler and then drawn and paced by the artist as he worked. Dialogue and captions would be added afterwards to fit the pictures. This method allowed greater latitude in the artwork, but necessitated that the penciler not only be a competent artist, but, also a good story-man in his own right. Kirby, of course, was. And, the other members of Marvel’s small art staff at the time, Steve Ditko, Don Heck and Dick Ayers, were, also. Lee described the division of labor once by saying, “Some artists, of course, need a more detailed plot than others. Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean, I’ll just say to Jack, ‘Let’s let the next villain be Dr. Doom’... or I may not even say that. He may tell me... he just about makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing.” This technique, combining Kirby’s solid storytelling and Lee’s flashy dialogue, inaugurated the Marvel Super-Hero line. The Incredible Hulk, a super-hero version of Marvel’s old monster stock-in-trade, received his own magazine and Ant-Man, a costumed scientist from an earlier science-fiction story, took over in Tales to Astonish. Neither of these strips, both drawn by Kirby, were as successful as the Fantastic Four. In fact, The Hulk was dropped after a few issues, but kept around long enough after to become one of Marvel’s biggest stars.
The Thing
The Mighty Thor debuted in Journey Into Mystery and the final issue of Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy introduced Spider-Man, the first of their new heroes not drawn by Kirby. Spider-Man’s beginnings, however, date back to the mid-fifties when Simon and Kirby were devising new characters and trying to sell them to publishers. Along with Night Fighter, Man of Flame and other proposed heroes who never saw print, they had a projected character named Spiderman, who had progressed as far as cover mock-ups but never sold. Recalling the name, Kirby suggested it to Marvel and, working with Stan Lee, started on the first story. For reasons that remain unclear, production was halted in mid-story and Lee started over, devising a different Spider-Man with artist Steve Ditko. The Human Torch, revived from the forties as a member of the Fantastic Four, took over Strange Tales, and was soon joined by Ditko’s magician character, Dr. Strange. Marvel’s last monster book, Tales of Suspense, introduced Iron Man. Kirby was too busy at the time to pencil the origin story but he did have time to design the character for Don Heck to draw. Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos debuted, combining certain elements of the super-hero line with some of Kirby’s own war experiences. Kirby drew several issues, before Dick Ayers began drawing it. The Avengers and the X-Men were introduced, and with these, as with the other books, Kirby drew the first issues and established the momentum which other artists would, hopefully, keep going. In the early days of Marvel, Kirby had found it necessary to often pencil and plot five or six books a month. Now, with Marvel’s increased popularity, he could cut down his workload, and concentrate mainly on the Fantastic Four, Thor, occasional layouts for other artists, and a newlyrevived version of Captain America. It was in the Fantastic Four that Kirby first drew such popular supporting characters as: Dr. Doom, The Watcher, The Silver Surfer, the Black Panther, Galactus, and the Inhumans. It was when he cut down on his workload that many noticed a marked improvement in the quality of Kirby’s penciling. In the past, he had often been too rushed to do sufficient backgrounding or to pay very strict attention to detail. His pencils were
tighter now, much more ornate and all the more dynamic. Thor, for example, became a true saga of the gods, with its majestic pageantry, finelydetailed costumes, and awesome landscapes. Kirby’s many years of working at a feverish rate had trained him well as one of the comic industry’s fastest and, therefore, most prolific artists. With their peak of popularity being reached in the mid-sixties, the Marvel characters appeared on television in a series of cartoons and were the subject of many articles on the renewed interest in comics. With more and more staffers being added to Marvel’s crew, Kirby was able to take on a few outside assignments, such as a comic strip adaptation of Jack Ruby’s killing of Lee Harvey Oswald (Esquire magazine) and a poster for the “Captain Nice” TV show. Marvel was no longer the small, closely-knit operation it had been. With so many new artists and writers added to the crew, plus Marvel’s sale to a large conglomerate, Kirby found it less and less necessary to come into the office, or to even involve himself with the design of new characters and books. He could in fact, even relocate in California from New York, and mail his penciled pages to Marvel from 3,000 miles away.
The Silver Surfer
In 1970, after over a hundred issues of Fantastic Four, Marvel’s readers were rather shocked to hear that he had resigned from Marvel to take up an editorial post and to create a new line of comics for National-DC. Kirby had been with Marvel longer than with any other company, and his contributions there had been substantial. But it was time for a change. Marvel had given him no opportunity in the later years to experiment, and any more characters he would have created would have been pulled away from him. Moreover, the company had been acquired by a conglomerate and its new owners did not seem to even know who Jack Kirby was, let alone what he had contributed to the dynasty they had purchased and what they owed him. When Carmine Infantino, Editorial Director of National Periodical Publications, offered Kirby a means of escape, he made the inevitable move. Opposite: An unused cover for THOR #144, still in the penciled stage. Pages 50-51: A discarded THOR sequence still in pencil. Kirby’s notes in the margins are to explain the continuity so that the dialogue may be written afterwards. Page 52: Kirby’s pencils for four pin-up pages of the Inhumans in the 1967 FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL. The lettering by Stan Lee is to designate the copy areas for the letterer. Page 53: THE WATCHER.
Dr. Doom
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