Fully Authorized By The Kirby Estate
$4.95 In The US
CELEBRATING THE LIFE & CAREER OF THE KING!
44-p age ISSUE Spo tlighting Kirby In Ho llywo o d!
Issue #11, July 1996
Simon & Kirby’s Hollywood Hero
Stuntman How Deep Is it?
The Black Hole WHy the
Lord Of Light Never Saw The Light Of Day unlocking Jack’s Adaptation of
The Prisoner From Thundarr to Sco oby-Do o : Jack’s career in
Animation Unfilmed Ideas Will Jack’s Movie Ideas ever get made? May the So urce Be With You:
New Gods vs. Star Wars including Jack’s Pencils Befo re They Were Inked, And Much Mo re!! 1996 Eisner Awards Nominee For Best Comics-Related Publication
Stuntman © Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
Unpublished Art
KIRBY
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KIRBY
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A JUMBLE OF JUBILANT JARGON JUXTAPOSED AROUND JACK! ITEM! There’s nothing new to report on the tribute book that Mighty MARK EVANIER and Fearless FRANK MILLER are co-producing, or on the one being done by Manic MIKE THIBODEAUX and Jaunty JIM STERANKO. We hope to get more details on them at this year’s SAN DIEGO COMIC CON, so stay tuned! ITEM! Speaking of comic conventions, if you missed the Ramapo Comic Con in Spring Valley, NY (May 18), you missed a wonderful one-day con featuring guests like DICK AYERS (who’s wowing comics fans with his new work on Old Town Publishing’s DR. WONDER), MARIE SEVERIN, HERB TRIMPE, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, MURPHY ANDERSON, WALT SIMONSON, AL WILLIAMSON, and many others. The TJKC table was strategically placed next to JOE SINNOTT’s, so we got to chat with JOE and his lovely wife BETTY, and watch him draw sketches for fans. All in all, it was a great day, made even better by getting to meet so many Kirby fans from the New York area. Special thanks to RANDY HOPPE for picking us up at the airport, to JON B. COOKE for setting up our table, and to Jon’s brother ANDY COOKE for letting us crash at his place that night. Next up: HEROES CON in Charlotte, NC (June 14-16), the CHICAGO CON (June 2123), and the SAN DIEGO COMIC CON (July 4-7). Be sure to stop by and say hello! (Sorry, Southwest fans, we won’t be able to attend the DALLAS FANTASY FAIR this year.)
Pure Imagination’s The Complete Kirby Vol. 1 (a series reprinting all of Jack’s work from the beginning of his career) is ready to go to press, but 400 people must commit to buying a copy before it can be published. Volume 1 includes Jack’s early work from Blue Bolt, Red Raven, Crash Comics, Jumbo Comics, plus other early comic book and comic strip work (some never published in the US), and a text feature to put it all in perspective. Vol. 1 will be a 164-page softcover in black-&-white with color cover, and would sell for $25. If you are willing to commit to purchasing a copy when it’s published, write to Greg Theakston, 1707 East Lake Dr., Marietta, GA 30062 or e-mail him at: 75451.3472@compuserve.com and let him know. DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY NOW! You’ll be notified by mail when it’s published. ITEM! Gregarious GREG THEAKSTON reports that for Vol. 2 of his COMPLETE KIRBY reprint series, he still needs Famous Funnies #75 & #80. If you know where he can get these in any condition, call him at (770) 424-5151. ITEM! Once production on this issue of TJKC wraps up, we’ll be getting together with RICHARD KOLKMAN to get started on the updated Kirby Checklist, which’ll include everything Jack ever had published (including reprints and interviews). We’ll be modifying the existing one from Blue Rose Press’ THE ART OF JACK KIRBY, in cooperation with AOJK author RAY WYMAN. We hope to have the first draft ready for proofing by interested volunteers this Fall, but you can still contribute now. Keep sending lists of errors and omissions from the AOJK checklist, or if you’ve got an accurate list of your own to contribute, write us! ITEM! The Feb. 20, 1996 edition of DAILY VARIETY carried a story about the acquisition by Fox Family Films of rights to produce a live-action SILVER SURFER movie. We’ll keep you posted as details develop.
JOHN’S JUKEBOX It’s no secret that Jack always wanted to direct a movie. As a young boy, he thrilled to the adventures of screen stars like James Cagney, and wanted to be an actor. Luckily for us, his mother wouldn’t let him go to Hollywood, so he channeled his energies toward creating stories on paper instead of celluloid. But inevitably, he ended up working on numerous film-related projects and animation in Hollywood after moving near Tinseltown later in his career. So we thought we’d use this issue to cover some of Jack’s well-known and notso-well-known Hollywood connections. I hope you give this issue “two thumbs up!” Now, in case you missed the blurb on this issue’s cover, here’s the big news this month: TJKC has been nominated for an EISNER AWARD for Best Comics-Related Publication (Periodical)! The Eisners are given out every year at the San Diego Comic Con, and they’re like the “Oscars” of the comics industry, voted on by over 5000 professionals. Let me publically thank everyone who’s contributed art and articles; your efforts are the reason for this honor. Pat yourself on the back, folks! And to those of you who’ve subscribed or picked up TJKC at your local comics shop, thanks for helping spread the word about our ongoing tribute to Jack. With your continued support, we’ll be able to keep going until we run out of Kirby stuff to write about (and considering Jack’s prolific career, that could be awhile). Long Live The King!
John Morrow, Editor • 502 Saint Mary’s St. • Raleigh, NC 27605 • (919) 833-8092 • FAX (919) 833-8023 e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com ITEM! This fall a new Superman animated series will debut. Fans of Jack’s FOURTH WORLD series may notice some familiar faces in the series, and MARK EVANIER will be involved in the writing. There’ll be other surprises for Kirby fans, so be sure to tune in! ITEM! Pull out any Marvel comic from October 1975, and read Smilin’ STAN LEE’s Soapbox. In it, he states that Jack is “the co-creator of most of Marvel’s greatest strips!” Since Stan thinks Jack deserves co-credit, shouldn’t you let Marvel Comics know you think so too? Write to: Mr. Terry Stewart, Marvel Comics, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016 and ask that they put “Created by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby” on books they co-created. (We’re doing this in conjunction with Dr. Mark Miller’s ongoing letter-writing campaign to get Jack a credit line.) ITEM! Check out the KIRBY COLLECTOR HOME PAGE on the World Wide Web, put together by RANDY HOPPE. The URL is: http://www.mordor.com/thehop/kirby It’s got biographical information on Jack, and a synopsis of each issue of TJKC published to date, with samples of Kirby art and articles from each issue. And we’ll be putting the updated Kirby Checklist online for free downloading once it’s completed, so everyone can have access to it. ITEM! If you’re on the Internet and enjoy interesting discussions of all things Kirby, join the JACK KIRBY MAILING LIST. Send an e-mail message to CHRIS HARPER at ampcon@dircon.co.uk and ask him to put you on this FREE mailing list. Then prepare yourself for a deluge of e-mail; Jack is a pretty hot topic of discussion on the ’Net! ITEM! Don’t forget, you can still make donations to the educational fund that was set up in Jack’s name shortly after his death. Send donations to: The Jack Kirby Educational Fund, Temple Etz Chaim, 1080 Janss Rd., Thousand Oaks, CA 91360.
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KIRBY COLLECTOR CHECKLIST These Issues Of TJKC Are Available – See Page 43 TJKC #1: This 16-page INTRODUCTORY ISSUE features rare Kirby posters, articles on a 1978 Kirby traveling display and the MARVELMANIA PORTFOLIO, Jack’s original OMAC concept sketch, an unused THOR page, and more! $2.50 ($2.70 Canada/Mexico, $3.70 outside N. America) TJKC #2: A 16-page GENERAL INTEREST issue with rare 1970s SANDMAN pages, a fan’s phone conversations with Jack, MARVELMANIA PORTFOLIO plates, unpublished FANTASTIC FOUR panels, a page of the Jack Ruby ESQUIRE story, other rare art, and more! $2.50 ($2.70 Canada/Mexico, $3.70 outside N. America) TJKC #3: A 16-page CAPTAIN AMERICA theme issue with a JOE SIMON interview, more MARVELMANIA plates, convention sketches, 1960s & 70s CAPTAIN AMERICA pages before they were inked, and more! $2.50 ($2.70 Canada/Mexico, $3.70 outside N. America) TJKC #4: A 16-page GENERAL INTEREST issue, with a MIKE ROYER interview, more MARVELMANIA plates, THOR pencil pages before being inked, unused ATLAS #1 cover pencils, Euro-Kirby fandom, and more! $2.50 U.S. $2.50 ($2.70 Canada/Mexico, $3.70 outside N. America) TJKC #5: A 16-page GENERAL INTEREST issue featuring transcripts of Jack’s 1972 speech at VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, unpublished FANTASTIC FOUR pencils, how Kirby used real people in his comics, essential Kirby collectibles, unpublished KOBRA pencils, and more! $2.50 ($2.70 Canada/Mexico, $3.70 outside N. America) TJKC #6: A 36-page FOURTH WORLD theme issue featuring interviews with MARK EVANIER and STEVE SHERMAN, more of our MIKE ROYER interview, the NEW GODS portfolio, the story behind HUNGER DOGS and Jack’s original ending to NEW GODS, and unpublished art, plus FOURTH WORLD pencils before being inked! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada/Mexico, $7.40 outside N. America) TJKC #7: A 36-page KID GANG theme issue with an unpublished 1987 interview with Kirby, overview of the S&K KID GANGS, plenty of unpublished art from BOYS’ RANCH, BOY EXPLORERS, JIMMY OLSEN, DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET, X-MEN, and more! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada/Mexico, $7.40 outside N. America) TJKC #8: (Our first full-color cover!) A 36-page all-star CONVENTION theme issue with transcripts from the KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL at the ’95 SDCC (with JOE SINNOTT, MIKE ROYER, MARK EVANIER, and TONY ISABELLA), convention memories, essay by JIM STERANKO, CAPTAIN AMERICA pages before they were inked, convention sketches, and more! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada/Mexico, $7.40 outside N. America) TJKC #9: A 44-page FANTASTIC FOUR theme issue with everything you wanted to know about the FF! JOE SINNOTT interview, FF pencil pages before inking, the original version of FF #108, unpublished art, and more! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada/Mexico, $7.40 outside N. America) TJKC #10: A 44-page HUMOR theme issue! ROZ KIRBY interview, STEVE GERBER on DESTROYER DUCK, GOODY RICKELS, FIGHTING AMERICAN, plus JIMMY OLSEN and THOR pencil pages before inking, other unpublished art, and more! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada/Mexico, $7.40 outside N. America) AND ON SALE RIGHT NOW: TJKC #11: If you’re reading this, you already know what’s in this 44-page HOLLYWOOD Theme Issue! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada/Mexico, $7.40 outside N. America) THE JACK KIRBY PORTFOLIO (from Dark Horse Comics): Available thru comics shops, and limited to 500 copies, signed by Roz Kirby. Includes 5 plates of Jack’s Biblical imagery, plus pencil sketches. Price: $175. TJKC POSTER: Full-color, 17” x 23”, shipped in a mailing tube. See page 43 of this issue to order. $7 US.
Lights! Camera! Punch’em! The Silver Screen Saga of Stuntman, by R.J. Vitone tuntman, “The New Champ of Split-Second Action,” occupies a S&K took the movie motif to heart. The plot is classic “whounique but very obscure corner in the Kirby closet. Hitting the dunit,” with plenty of humor, romance, and menace thrown in. Jack stands during a post-WW II comics glut, the title scarcely had used the circus as a visually colorful background for the events of the time to find an audience before it was cancelled. And since its publisher story, and the manic motion fills in the rest. only sporadically re-entered the super-hero market, the strip last saw Kirby’s art for the series is inspired. This was one of his “transiprint in mainstream comics in 1955, long before most collectors tional” periods, and his figure work reached new heights of stretched would have noticed it. looseness. Stuntman’s elongated figure is a far cry from the earlier That’s a shame, because Stuntman is a terrific Simon & Kirby package, and an important one as well. Even though the team was widely regarded as tops in the field, Stuntman stands as the only “traditional” superhero created by them since The Guardian (in ’42), and would be the last until Captain 3-D (in ’53) and Fighting American (in ’54)! When you think of how identifiable Kirby is with the genre, it’s amazing to find that long of a stretch away from it. Stuntman Comics #1 hit the newsstands early in 1946. Produced by Harvey Publications (with whom both Jack and Joe seemed to enjoy a decent working relationship over the years), the book must have held bright promise for S&K. They were back from the war, anxious to tackle new projects. Stuntman led the way at Harvey, to be followed a month later by Boy Explorers. It was time for a fresh start. And what a start! The first story plays like a Cecil B. DeMille epic. Amid the pageantry of a traveling circus, calculated evil claims the lives of two of the “Flying Apollos.” The surviving member, Fred Drake, dons a stylized version of his acrobat costume, determined to claim justice. Along the way, he meets foppish movie star Don Daring, who spends his idle time as an amateur detective. As (comic-book) fate would have it, the two bear an amazing resemblance to each other. Don hires Fred to act as his “stand-in” and perform physically demanding movie scenes for him, as well as to free up his time to pursue his sleuthing hobby. Beautiful actress Sandra Sylvan turns up in time to provide love interest and be menaced by the killer. Stuntman swings into action, saving the day by acting as a lion tamer. Newspaper headlines crown the new “Nemesis of Crime,” and a legend is born! This unused splash page from Stuntman #1 was penciled on thick illustration board, rather than thin bristol.
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The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 3, No. 11, July 1996. Published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Advertising, 502 Saint Mary’s St., Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Assistant Editor. Single issues: $4.95 each U.S., $5.40 Canada, $7.40 outside North America. Six-issue subscriptions: $24.00 US, $32.00 Canada and Mexico, and $44.00 outside North America. First printing. The initial printing of this issue was mailed the week of April 15, 1996. All characters are © their respective companies. All artwork is © Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors.
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we had a 40-page outline of the story. Later Jack used this plotline for the Silver Star comic book. Jack never threw anything away, and ideas and plots that couldn’t be used immediately were saved and used later; not that they were written down in notebooks. Jack somehow managed to keep it organized in his head. One idea was a 13-episode series that involved UFOs. I had just finished reading the novel Rendezvous with Rama and was talking it over with Jack. The more we discussed it, an idea took shape about what would happen to ordinary people who became involved with UFOs. Within an hour, Jack had come up with an anthology show about UFOs. It was very dramatic in tone with comedic elements; very Twilight Zone-ish. Jack had 13 plot synopses in no time. Just to
hear Jack describe the show, I was sold. Jack held the premise that not all aliens would be friendly. Each person who came in contact with them would come away with something different, and not all of it good. The show had a lot of great story elements, especially since it would have a different guest star each week meeting these great Kirby aliens. Jack never got around to using it, but it was amazing to me how these ideas would just flow through him. Even without the drawings, Jack could be a spellbinding storyteller. With the advancements being made in computer-generated graphics and digital technology, hopefully we will someday see Jack’s vision translated into reality. ✩
A Nice Surprise by Tom Morehouse y wife and I had rented a cabin in the Pocono Mountains for the 1996 New Year’s weekend. On January 1st, we came across an ephemera dealer named Mr. 3L’s whose warehouse has to be seen to be believed! When we walked in, that delicious aroma of old paper hit my nose and (to paraphrase Herman’s Hermits) somethin’ told me I was in for somethin’ good! I, of course, made a beeline for the comics, but found none of the elusive “Love” books I needed. Moving around I saw examples of Americana wherever I looked: recruiting, movie and other posters from as far back as the turn of the century; songsheets, calendars, handfans, newspapers and magazines of every nature piled on the floor and on shelves in every square inch of the place! Now I really got excited because I’ve been searching for the September 1966 issue of Esquire for years, and here were three long shelves and several piles of said magazine in front of me! I stooped down to the first pile and there, on top, was a nice condition copy of Esquire 9/66! My hands were shakin’ and my knees were weak (sorry Elvis!) as I picked it up and commenced to thumb through, looking for the article on Marvel Comics illustrated by Kirby and Marie Severin. As I got to the page before the article, a small (61⁄2" x 31⁄2") piece of paper with obituary notices on it fell out and drifted towards the floor. As it flipped over, I realized that on the other side of the obits was a TV ad for Captain Nice, a 1967 NBC-TV show starring William Daniels as a bumbling (but nice) superhero. The art in the ad, as in the opening credits of the show, was by Kirby! I’d seen a really poor quality dub of the promo trailer for the show before, but never any flat art. There it was staring up at me from the top of my shoe. And here it is for us all to enjoy—Captain Nice by Jack Kirby. ✩
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rooftops. The full art was shown on TV commercials, zooming in to show specific details and out again to display the entire piece. The original art was inked by Chic Stone. Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to track down a copy of the complete art, although the original is owned by a collector in England. Does anyone out there have any idea where we can find a repro of it? Write and let us know!)
(Tom’s art is from an ad that appeared January 16, 1967—the night Captain Nice premiered—in the TV listings of newspapers across the US. Captain Nice is described in the ad as “a super-nemesis of crime... who’s such a nice guy that he feels sorry for the villains he brings to justice...” The Kirby figure is cut from a larger scene that included a birds-eye view of a cityscape, crammed full of assorted villains and weapons on various 10
May The Source Be With You Comparing New Gods and Star Wars by Fievel Elliott
does not mark the moment that Lucas stepped into the cinema scene either, which in reality occurred around 1965 after meeting cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Already Lucas would have lived out what audiences would view in 1973 as American Graffiti. His first full length film THX 1138 (1970) was a science fiction saga which already hinted toward the later mannerisms of Star Wars. From this point forward the inspiration of Flash Gordon would eventually flesh out into the movie all of us know today. But, forward in time serves no meaning at the present. With both New Gods and Star Wars, the audience must start out in the middle of the epic. The past retains a titanic proportion of the ideas and myth that distinctly led Kirby and Lucas down two distinctly different paths of thought, which in time found them bumping into each other.
here exists a belief among many Kirby fans that George Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy may have been inspired by Jack Kirby’s Fourth World series, or expressly New Gods. Emotionally and socially, Star Wars and New Gods may appear to dramatically delve into near bliss. More than a few professionals seem to agree. In the first issue of DC’s 1984 New Gods reprint series, Mark Evanier wrote briefly about New Gods resembling a science-fiction trilogy in a text piece. “See, there’s been this series of science-fiction movies, three in all the last few years...” Evanier said. “I’ve only seen one of them myself, and it seemed altogether Kirbyesque to me. More than a few folks who’ve seen all three have told me that it’s The New Gods; that is, certain of the characters and certain of the villains seem to parallel a lot of what Mr. Kirby had going in the series... only, of course, he did it first.” Comic book artist and writer Frank Miller attends that Lucas likely did derive some ideas out of New Gods “...much [of] the genre of space opera, in story and visual design, came from Kirby. Ignore Lucas’ smokescreen on naming films by Akira Kurosawa as his inspiration in creating Star Wars. Read The New Gods.” (“God Save the King,” The Comics Journal #105, Feb. 1986) But to accept that may mean denouncing a plethora of inconsistencies at the matrix of both creations. Star Wars does resemble New Gods on an emotional and social level, but to make comparisons on a grandiose scale can open room for doubt. To eliminate this doubt one needs to first and foremost know the facts. By 1970 Lucas had already envisioned the idea of composing a heroic space fantasy in the form of Flash Gordon, and probably would have, until he found he couldn’t afford the rights. Now, this is the point for some Kirby fans to contort, “Hey! That’s the same year Kirby started his Fourth World stuff!” This is true; although, this does not christen the theory that Lucas peered into a copy of New Gods one afternoon and then suddenly—BOOM—we have Star Wars. This also
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Inspirations Lucas arrived at organizing reference for Star Wars by traipsing back through his predecessors, from Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and John Carter of Mars (obviously Lucas cherished the comic strip over the comic book). Other renowned authors of our past, without which Star Wars would not feasibly exist, include Cyrano de Bergerac, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Hugo Gernsback, H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, and numerous others. Film-wise Star Wars combines elements of a plethora of past movies, including Stagecoach, Capt. Blood, The Wizard of Oz, The Sands of Iwo Jima, Tod Browning’s Freaks, The Searchers (Lucas derived quite an amount from this movie, including the ideas for Mos Eisley Cantina and Luke returning home to find his aunt and uncle dead. Siskel and Ebert attest that Star Wars stands as one of the best westerns ever made), B’wana Devil, The Crimson Pirate, Mark Of Zorro, Scaramouche, Knights of the Round Table, The Shadow, 2001, Soylent Green, and Planet of the Apes. In May 1973 Lucas completed the first draft of Star Wars. In this
An enraged Orion bares little resemblance to Luke Skywalker. Here Orion battles Kalibak, in uninked pencils from New Gods #8. 11
Kubrick à la Kirby by Jon B. Cooke t takes a Kirby-size stretch of the imagination to call Jack a great non-Kirby characters were never treated with much enthusiasm, and he dialogue writer. Malevolent rantings and hyperbolic oaths belted seemed resistant to ever “get it right,” whether it was the “S” emblem or out staccato style were more his line. Jack was more apt to verbalize Spidey symbol. A sense of the dreaded editorial hand (almost always a rage and fury than to creating realistic, delicate chit-chat. Let’s face it, bane to Kirby’s work) pervades over parts of this oversize edition, with a Jack’s storytelling abilities improved with age, but in writing converfeeling that the artist was anxious to get to the good stuff. And with his sations his talents were sometimes wanting. vistas of space, spreads of the Monolith, and splashes of the Moon’s And that’s the crux of the problem when faced with his adaptaterrain and the Dawn of Man, he gives it to us. He gets it right, and contion for the Marvel Treasury Special of Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A tinued to for some spectacular issues of the subsequent comic series. Space Odyssey. The script, the book, and the movie all retain nuance Don’t expect to find answers to Kubrick’s enigmatic film in Jack’s and subtleties that are missing from the otherwise stunning 72 pages version. Overall, while you may find the adaptation itself the least of of Kirby art. The wonderfully mundane dialogue found in Arthur C. all the versions of 2001, you will find Jack Kirby exploring the infinite Clarke’s script and novel is reduced to declarative, good-natured banand beyond, and that is an awesome sight (and currently one hell of a tering in the comic. Hal, oddly the most interesting — and human — bargain!). ✩ character in all the forms of 2001, is changed from a guilt-ridden sentient machine, submitting to murder to hide the shame of lying, to becoming a maniacal, raving villain, hellbent on getting the crew out of the way in the Kirby version. There’s an important distinction to be made in this, one that reveals Jack’s moral views of right and wrong and his hopes for mankind. As endeared as he was to super-science, Jack cared more for the righteousness of man’s aspirations and less the promise of technology. No machine could ever replace the indomitable human spirit, so the appliances become the bad guys in 2001. While Clarke used irony and banality of his human characters to underscore the profoundness of our first contact with Other Life Forms, Kirby brings forth the black and white conflict of good and evil in his version, of man versus machine, which may just miss the point of Hal’s presence in the story. But then, Jack was rarely known for his subtlety and nuance, and his art, making up for any overly-enthusiastic wordage, is sock-o. (Much of the captions are lifted verbatim from Clarke’s novelization.) The 10" x 131⁄2" format showcases some astonishing Kirby spreads, especially his all-tooshort version of the Stargate “light show” — five straight splash pages of awesome power and tumult. Frank Giacoia’s ink’s are as faithful and striking as ever seen on Kirby’s work, and Adkins’ cover inks are especially loyal to the pencils (surprising for such a stylized embellisher) and testament to the creator’s talent. Of note is some exceptional coloring by Marie Severin and Kirby, the King doing a rare turn with the four color palette. Especially nice is the muted grey and yellow tones of the closing hotel room sequence. Four full pages of photo collages (using mostly production shots from the film) pale against the peak skill of his cartooning, and suffer from the perennial problem with Jack’s collages: bad reproduction. Jack Kirby rarely adapted other creators’ works, and usually his reluctance comes through. Whether Deadman, Superman or Spider-Man, Splash page pencils to Jack’s 2001: A Space Odyssey adaptation.
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Once Upon A Time: Kirby’s Prisoner by Charles Hatfield What happens when your favorite cartoonist gets his hands on your favorite television show?
will and individual identity in the face of near-overwhelming odds; week after week, he succeeds in foiling all attempts to make him talk, yet fails to escape the Village. Ironically, he is never named, despite his repeated cry, “I am not a number! I am a free man!” Though Number Six matches wits with a series of figurehead leaders, all known by the title “Number Two,” the ultimate power behind the Village (Number One, presumably) remains unknown. Throughout the series, the stalemate between Village and Prisoner is challenged but never broken—that is, until the last two episodes of the series, an infamous two-part story in which No. 6 defeats his captors, encounters No. 1, and “escapes,” only to begin the same cycle all over again! Under McGoohan’s direction, the series departed radically from its literal premise, so much in fact that writer/script editor Markstein eventually bailed out of the project. By then the show had become a truly strange blend of spy heroics, Orwellian SF, absurdist humor, and philosophical allegory. After more than a year of production, ITC pulled the plug on The Prisoner—which was, after all, costly, behind schedule, and (by TV standards) obscure. Broadcast in the UK in 1967-68, and in the US in the summer of ’68, The Prisoner caused brief ripples of enthusiasm, puzzlement, and outrage; in fact, British reaction to the last episode was so hot that McGoohan went abroad to escape notice. Yet, once shown, The Prisoner faded into obscurity—only to be recovered by a growing fan following in the 1970s, and rerun in the States
The Prisoner! British response to the 1960s’ Bond-inspired fad for spy thrillers, The Prisoner was conceived in 1966 by writer (and former secret service agent) George Markstein, and brought to life by actor/ producer Patrick McGoohan, co-producer David Tomblin, and crew (under McGoohan’s banner, Everyman Films Ltd, but financed by the company ITC). A conceptual follow-up, if not a direct sequel, to McGoohan’s popular series Danger Man (US title: Secret Agent), Markstein’s Prisoner concerned a former espionage agent imprisoned in a retirement community for spies. As finally produced, the series elaborated on Markstein’s premise by treating it symbolically: the spy thriller became an allegory of the tension between individual self and institutional authority—in McGoohan’s words, an “allegorical conundrum” open to myriad interpretations. The allegory rests on a plot elegant in its simplicity: a secret agent resigns his position, only to find himself a prisoner in the Village, a superficially quaint yet rather sinister locale. Unnamed powers want to know why he resigned, and try to force his secrets from him, but he refuses to say anything, and dedicates himself to escaping. Week after week, the Prisoner, dubbed “Number Six,” fights to preserve his free
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Kirby’s 2-page spread from pages 2-3 of his Prisoner adaptation. Inks by Mike Royer. 15
Seeking The Lord Of Light Producer Barry Ira Geller interviewed by John Morrow (In November 1979, the movie industry was abuzz over the announcement of a planned $50 million science fiction movie based on Roger Zelazny’s Hugo award-winning novel Lord of Light. It was scheduled to begin filming in July 1980 on 1,000 acres of land near Denver, Colorado. The plan was that, instead of removing the sets after filming, they’d be incorporated into a new theme park called Science Fiction Land, which would’ve been three times the size of Disneyland, and would open in 1984. The entire project was the brainchild of screenwriter Barry Ira Geller, who commissioned Jack Kirby to provide a series of drawings for the theme park and movie sets, and incorporated them into a promotional package to help secure funding for the project. Legal problems eventually arose for which members of the local city council and Geller’s second-in-command were convicted; and although Geller was cleared of any wrongdoing, neither the movie or theme park were ever completed. We asked Barry Ira Geller to elaborate on his experiences with Jack and the Lord of Light, and he generously allowed us this interview, conducted on January 18, 1996.)
TJKC: Did Star Wars’ success give you greater incentive to proceed? BARRY: I guess you could say that. I was really pushing science fiction for several years as a screenwriter. I got turned down all over the place. (laughter) In 1975, I was living on options, and I did have a small film produced, but no one would listen to me. I talked to a lot of producers. I was promoting science fiction stories left and right, but no one would listen to me. It wasn’t until after Star Wars that people started listening to me. TJKC: Did you know Jack before you got him involved on the project? BARRY: No, I didn’t. I took over and bought the first option in late 1977 or early 1978. For those who don’t know, an option is when you purchase the rights to make a movie for a limited period of time, to see what you can do with it. Then if you want to, you can purchase the full rights. Initially, I spoke to a couple of artists, and I’d say, “Can you do this like Jack Kirby does it?”
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Could you give us a brief synopsis of the plot of Zelazny’s novel? BARRY IRA GELLER: Basically, it’s about a band of survivors fleeing the destruction of their planet which was called Urth. They were selected for their different psychic abilities or expanded-consciousness abilities. They later become the crew of a spaceship that lands on a planet they call Earth, as in our Earth, and turn themselves into the gods of the Hindu pantheon. In the course of a thousand years, they take over the creatures of the planet and build their own cities in a remake of Earth’s ancient India. The story is really one of those love/hate triangles between three very powerful people, which ultimately ends in one of them fighting all his colleagues for the freedom of the planet, and the freeing of technology for mankind. His name is Sam, short for Mahasamatman, or the Lord of Light. His ex-lover was also the most powerful female goddess, and it’s quite intriguing. Imagine having the most passionate, explosive relationship you can dream of... and having it continue for 800 years! The book was originally published in 1967, the same year it won the Hugo award.
TJKC: So you were familiar with Jack’s work? BARRY: I read Fantastic Four #1 off the newsstand! (laughter) When I was a teenager, FF, Iron Man, X-Men, and Thor shaped my whole consciousness of super-heroes. I was very much into his knock-’em-dead artistic style. I went through two artists and wasn’t happy with their work, and the obvious dawned on me. Why not just call up Jack Kirby? (laughter) So I did in 1978, and I found out he was living here in California. I was totally away from comics for years, so it was just my memories I was going on. TJKC: At that point, had Jack ever read the novel? BARRY: I don’t think so. Jack really wasn’t so much of a reader as a storyteller, so I put together an adaptation that I think he glanced through. But generally it was our conversations that gave him the greater idea. He was a concept man.
TJKC: When you first approached him, was he immediately enthusiastic about the project? BARRY: Actually, he was. There was an interview our Public Relations person “The Lord of Light” featuring the character Sam. did with him, and he was quite excited by it. He saw the characters as larger-than-life. TJKC: How did you get involved in making a movie out of the novel? (Editor’s Note: The interview Barry mentions accompanies this one.) BARRY: In the early 1970s, I was looking for a property like Lord of Light, because I felt there was a great message and a spiritual awareness TJKC: What criteria did you give Jack to work from? Did you tell him of the rest of the universe, very much like Lucas did with Star Wars. I how many drawings you needed, and of what? was working with a director who had initially optioned it. I was a screenBARRY: We were doing two things at once. I was involved in building writer, and I dropped another job to take up the screenwriting on that a theme park at the time. In fact, it was the theme park that was going one, and ultimately he left the project and I just bought it. This is in to be financing the film. Jack had the extraordinary feat of doing the mid-1970s. Star Wars had just come out. I was actually working designs that would also be theme park structures. The drawings he did on the first adaptation of Lord of Light before Star Wars came out. 22
are for the theme park, but they’re also for the Lord of Light movie. Jack was probably the most incredible artist that I’ve ever worked with. I was working with top people in their fields; several Oscar winners, and the number one architect in the world at that time. And Jack was the most amazing one of all. It was kind of magical. I would basically sit down with Jack for a few hours, and we’d discuss concepts. For example, on The Northeast Corner Of Heaven, I came to Jack and said, “My feeling is, these guys are bringing their technology to this planet, and everyone copies them.” We talked about the Hindu religion and mythology, and the Tibetan Mandala design of temples; it’s a sort of traveling up through consciousness as you get to the top, and we sort of said, “This is a good place for the spaceship to be.” And we just threw ideas back and forth. It was the strangest thing. How do you know when someone got what you said? And the funny thing was that I’d see a certain kind of shine in his eyes, a certain glow. And I went, “Hmm, I know he’s got it.” (laughter) Normally if you give someone instructions, you don’t know if they got it until they hand you some(above) “The Northeast Corner Of Heaven” • (below) “Terminal Of The Gods” thing back, and you help them a little bit more. I really am a believer in allowing a person to create. I think that was TJKC: Were you planning to use the movie sets for the theme park one of the most important aspects of our relationship. And I’d get a before Jack ever got involved? call two or three days later, and I’d come back to his studio, always BARRY: Correct. bearing a box of Dunhill cigars. (laughter) And there it would be. He hit every one of those drawings first time out of the gate. It was amazing. TJKC: There’s one here that looks like it was watercolored. I was awed. Then we’d get to work on the next one. BARRY: That’s the only one that wasn’t what I was originally thinking The first drawing was called Terminal Of The Gods. You’ll notice it of, and I gave it to him as a present. For that one, I asked for an idea has a more Mayan feel. That was done just as he was finishing Eternals. of what the streets of Heaven looked like. That’s all I said to him. He At the end, you’ll see he got much more Hinduistic and Eastern, based colored it in later and called it The Angel. It’s called Streets Of Heaven. on our discussions and a giant picture book on India that I gave him, (A color reproduction of this piece can be found in The Art Of Jack Kirby.) which helped us communicate. That book is still there on his bookshelf. TJKC: How many drawings were there in all? BARRY: Thirteen. One is a double-spread. TJKC: Did you have black-and-white line art in mind from the beginning? And who picked Mike Royer as inker? BARRY: Both were Jack’s choice, and I agreed. The two pieces entitled The Royal Chambers Of Brahma are good examples of how I said, “Jack, I want to have something with 100-200 feet of revolving virtual image holograms of all the different people on the planet, and states of consciousness, and energies and emotions.” Then I said, “Let’s try it with just the revolving gardens,” which is more like the novel. The novel doesn’t really say where anything is, so I took artistic license with it. TJKC: But in terms of who decided which scenes to depict, that was your decision? BARRY: Oh yes. I had very distinct ideas of different ones I wanted. TJKC: Have they all been published anywhere? BARRY: There was a Media Kit, but they weren’t published, per se. Roz and I have plates of everything, and at some point we may 23
© DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, Inc. Doctor doom is in sanctum-laboratory (small figures on table and model of baxter building)
Toys with chess-type figures
The Animated Life Of Jack Kirby by Jon B. Cooke H-B hired Jack to do presentation boards—large renderings of concepts, characters and storyboards outlining typical episodes to pitch show ideas—and on the strength of those NBC bought The New Fantastic Four for the 1978-79 season. “At that point Marvel decided they wanted to do the show at DePatie-Freleng instead,” Evanier said. Ultimately a deal was reached, where D-F traded off their Godzilla show (with comic great Doug Wildey, to boot!) and got Reed Richards & Co. in return. And they got Jack writing and drawing storyboards. (For their second cartoon outing, Kirby’s super-hero team was a little different. “At the time, the Human Torch had been optioned to Universal for a TV movie,” Evanier said. “Everyone thinks that Torch was left out because they didn’t want a character on fire, but actually it was a legal problem.” So in place of Johnny Storm, kids got the next best thing (?): wise-cracking H.E.R.B. — Humanoid Electronic Robot “B” model, or Herbie for short.) One would imagine that Jack’s mastery of sequential art would make him ideal to panel out cartoon adventures. But storyboarding limited, low budget animation was a different and difficult task. “If you could do one show in five or six weeks, you’re really fast,” said John Dorman, who started at D-P and went on to become Jack’s art director at Ruby-Spears. “My first encounter with Jack was when he would turn in a finished half-hour storyboard every week that he wrote while he was drawing it. It was alarming!” What D-P tried with Jack was an experiment to introduce the Lee & Kirby style of comics production to cartoons. “Usually in animation, you write a script and a storyboard artist turns it into a series of panels,” Evanier explains. “What they tried with Jack was having him storyboard first and then dialogue, imitating the Marvel method of doing a comic book. It didn’t really work.” Evanier cited two reasons: Jack’s lack of experience in storyboarding and the necessity of sparse action and frequent dialogue in limited animation. “You have to cut off a lot of times during the speech to make up for the fact that the characters aren’t moving very much. You can’t really storyboard and figure out later how much dialogue there’s going to be. It has to be the other way
hen his comic book output declined to a handful of issues in the ’80s, many Jack Kirby fans assumed the artist was taking a well-deserved retirement. But if you turned on Saturday morning TV during those years, you’d have seen the Kirby magic all over the airwaves, often in some pretty weird shows. In a few his influence is obvious, especially The New Fantastic Four and Thundarr the Barbarian. But in a number of unkirby-like vehicles like Mr. T, Rambo, and Turbo Teen, his contributions were also significant. In some shows, including Super Friends, Sectaurs, and Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, he designed vehicle, villain, or maybe background details to certain episodes. Instead of enjoying a respite after an incredible career in comics, Jack was creating a huge body of work in an entirely new medium, his imagination still blazing to express new ideas. He became a master of presentation art, inventing unusual, innovative concepts and characters which became, as in his previous job, his forte. Jack’s precise contributions to the ’toon biz are still mostly uncharted and the facts are confined to aging files in studio storage rooms, but his influence to those he worked with is still vibrant in their memories and it is a story well worth telling.
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The New Fantastic Four By 1978 the future must have looked anxious for Jack. He was on a leave of absence from his latest employer, Marvel Comics (where he was suffering increasing and arbitrary staff interference), when Jack confided over dinner to one-time assistant and longtime friend, Mark Evanier. He admitted that he didn’t have the stomach to return to the field he helped mature into an art form, and said he was leaving Marvel—and comics—possibly for good. “He didn’t feel that he had much of a future in comics,” Evanier said, “and felt that he had gone backwards in his career.” After forty years, 21,000 pages of art, and the creation of innumerable concepts and characters that enrich the copyright owners to this day, Jack needed to try something new. Evanier was at Hanna-Barbera Studios as staff writer for their comics line when he heard a rumor. The art department was trying to imitate Kirby in preparation for a Fantastic Four cartoon series. The writer went to Iwao Takamoto, the studio art director, and asked, “Why not get the real thing?” The creator of the very concept might be available. A phone call and car ride with Roz later, Jack had found that something new: a career as designer for the animation studios of Hollywood, U.S.A.
(center) Jack’s original design for Herbie The Robot. (above and right) A beautiful storyboard sequence from “The F.F. Meet Doctor Doom” episode of The New Fantastic Four. The storyboards for the entire episode consist of 126 of these 3-panel drawings. The lettering under each panel is what Jack wrote to describe the action in each scene. 28
Figures are F.F.
Doom is cooking up some kind of plot
Doom is through with game
He raises arm
Knocks down figurines
Presses button
His intentions are ominous...
door slides open
takes off in private jet for new york
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doom walks down ramp to hangar
fallen figures still lie on castle floor...