$4.95
Fully Authorized By The Kirby Estate
In The US
CELEBRATING THE LIFE & CAREER OF THE KING!
A 52-p age Theme ISSUE featuring Jack’s Hard-Boiled To ughGu ys!! An Ultra-Rare
Kirby Interview Interview With Sin City’s
Frank Miller
Issue #16, July 1997
it took a simple, evil, brutal act to generate the sparks from which a Monster Sprang!! It was a fast-gro wing, vo racio us monster!! -- frustrated, angry, murderous, and surprised by sudden po wer!!!! The Cries of a yo ung girl were its birth-pangs! She had been criminally assaulted and thro wn from a car! But she was only a pawn in the larger, deadlier game -- that would become “MURDER Inc.!”
G’Wan! Squeal Yer Head O ff!!
The Legendary
Will Eisner Discusses Kirby An Examination Of
In The Days Of The Mob A Look At Jack’s
Tough Childhood Special Features:
Bullseye, Link Thorne, War & Western Comics, ’50s Strip Ideas And Others
Unpublished Art including Pencil Pages Befo re They Were Inked, And Much Mo re!! 1996 & 1997 Eisner Awards Nominee Best Comics-Related Publication
1997 Harve y Awards Nominee Best Biographical, Historical or Journalistic Presentation
Yo u Rat! Yo u Dirty Rat! Yo u Won’t Get Away With This!!
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TOPICS TILTED TOWARD A TREMENDOUSLY TALENTED TALESPINNER! ITEM! TJKC has a new address! Jot this down: TwoMorrows Advertising, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605. Same phone number and fax number. Don’t forget! ITEM! Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice? We were pleased as punch to learn that TJKC has been nominated again this year for an EISNER AWARD for BEST COMICS-RELATED PERIODICAL! The awards recognize outstanding achievements in comics, as voted on by industry professionals and retailers. They’re given out at COMIC CON INTERNATIONAL in San Diego, CA in July, and we want to thank the Eisner Awards selection committee for this honor, and every one of our readers for helping TJKC achieve this industry recognition. (Y’know, TJKC was also nominated for an EISNER AWARD last year, and for a HARVEY AWARD earlier this year... gee, we must be doing something right!) ITEM! We hope you Kirbyheads have been saving your sheckels, because there’s plenty of Kirby-related stuff coming out this Summer! First is the colossal, 240-page COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR, VOLUME 1, our new TRADE PAPERBACK COLLECTION reprinting TJKC #1-9, plus over thirty NEW pieces of Kirby art, including Jack’s pencils from THE PRISONER, THOR, NEW GODS, HUNGER DOGS, CAPTAIN AMERICA, FANTASTIC FOUR, JIMMY OLSEN, CAPTAIN VICTORY, and more! The art from early issues has been re-scanned for better reproduction, and there’s a new introduction by Marvelous MARK EVANIER! It’s shipping now, and is only $21.95 postpaid in the US ($24.95 Canada, $34.95 elsewhere). Then there’s Pure Imagination’s COMPLETE KIRBY (mentioned elsewhere on this page), plus a DC NEW GODS reprint volume, and a Fantagraphics book reprinting Jack’s various interviews from THE COMICS JOURNAL over the years (including a reprint of Jack’s hard-to-find “Street Code” story from ARGOSY).
Now Shipping! The Complete Kirby Vol. 1 is now shipping! Volume 1 includes early work from Blue Bolt, Red Raven, Crash Comics, Jumbo Comics, plus other early comic book and strip work. It’s 164pages in black-&-white with color cover for $25. Send check or money order for $25 payable to Pure Imagination, Box 669902, Marietta, GA 30066. NOTE: If you committed to purchasing a copy directly from Pure Imagination, please do so now! If you don’t (or if you get your copy from your local comics shop instead), it greatly hurts the chances of future volumes being published. ITEM! The TJKC Web Site (maintained by Rascally RANDY HOPPE) is at http://www.fantasty.com/kirby (and our e-mail address is twomorrow@aol.com) so you can reach us via computer. And you can join the KIRBY MAILING LIST by sending an e-mail request to Randy at kirby-l@fantasty.com (please note that it’s “fanTASTY”, NOT “fanTASY”). Start typing, Kirbyheads! ITEM! We’re pleased to add the name of Jovial JON B. COOKE to our credits box as ASSOCIATE EDITOR of TJKC! Ol’ Jon’s been donating his services to TJKC for a long time, becoming increasingly responsible for the content of each issue, and is always there to take up the slack when we need help with the Kirby workload. For constantly going above-and-beyond, we decided it was time to give him an official title. Thanks for all the help, Jon (but don’t expect a pay raise)!
JOHN’S JUKEBOX In Comics Interview #41, Jack commented about Frank Miller: “He’s gonna experiment, he’s gonna dare, he’s a guy with a lot of guts...” To me, that’s the essence of a “Tough Guy,” and Jack may as well have been talking about himself. From his rough upbringing in New York’s Lower East Side of the 1920s, on through his 50+-year career in comics, Jack always had the guts to do things his way. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he didn’t, but he always gave it his best shot. So this issue we’re exploring some of the roughest, toughest characters Jack worked on over the years. Enjoy! On a personal note: As I write this, things are pretty frantic here. We’re preparing to move to our new address, while trying to get this issue wrapped up, get the TJKC Trade Paperback to the printer, prepare for the Summer comic con circuit, and keep our clients happy at work. Sometimes getting everything done on time is really “tough,” and as much as I hate it, there just aren’t always enough hours in the day to respond to every letter or phone call. But rest assured I relish them all. TJKC couldn’t continue without you! So let me just say: THANKS, EVERYONE! You’re the greatest! Long Live The King!
John Morrow, Editor • 1812 Park Dr. • Raleigh, NC 27605 • (919) 833-8092 • FAX (919) 833-8023 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com P.S. TJKC #8, 9, and 10 are all sold out now, and supplies on other issues are starting to get low, so don’t delay! And don’t forget that #8 and #9 are both reprinted in our new Trade Paperback. ITEM! The aforementioned JON B. COOKE was kind enough to manage the TJKC Booth at this year’s RAMAPO COMIC CON when we weren’t able to attend. And Magnificent MIKE GARTLAND generously agreed to handle the TJKC Booth for the first two days of HEROES CON in Charlotte, NC this June. Thanks, guys! ITEM! Would you like to see THE NEAL ADAMS COLLECTOR? How about THE WILL EISNER COLLECTOR? We’re considering publishing a new TJKC-style ’zine, with each issue devoted to different comics greats! It’d be spearheaded by TJKC’s new Associate Editor JON B. COOKE, so it wouldn’t take away from our time on TJKC. If you’re interested in more info or want to get involved, send a letter (including your top ten choices for writers / artists / editors you’d like to see featured) to Jovial Jon at PO Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204. ITEM! The January 26th PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER reports NEW GODS is headed for a Japanese-style animated feature, slated for a 1999 release. Insiders tell us it won’t bear a lot of resemblance to Jack’s original comics, but we’ll keep you posted as things proceed. ITEM! QUEEN CITY BOOKSTORE in Buffalo, NY gathered a bunch of signatures on a petition to get Marvel Comics to put “Created by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby” on books they co-created. We’re forwarding their petition to Marvel, but you can still participate yourself by sending letters to: Mr. Terry Stewart, Marvel Comics, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016. (This is in conjunction with MARK MILLER’s ongoing letter-writing campaign.) So write already! (Way to go, Queen City!) ITEM! Keep Jack’s memory alive – send a donation to the educational fund that was set up in his name, to benefit children in his community through his synagogue. The address is: 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 50 TJKC TRADE PAPERBACK: (NEW!) This colossal 240page volume reprints issues #1-9 of TJKC, including the low-distribution first issues, the FOURTH WORLD issue (#6), the KID GANG issue (#7), and the out-of-print CONVENTION and FANTASTIC FOUR issues (#8 and #9)! It also includes a NEW special section with over 30 pieces of Kirby art never before published in TJKC, including Jack’s uninked pencils from THE PRISONER, THOR, NEW GODS, FANTASTIC FOUR, CAPTAIN AMERICA, HUNGER DOGS, JIMMY OLSEN, SHIELD, CAPTAIN VICTORY, and more! Art from the early issues has been re-scanned for better reproduction! Learn the secrets behind Jack’s work through interviews with KIRBY, JOE SIMON, MIKE ROYER, MARK EVANIER, STEVE SHERMAN, JOE SINNOTT, and other Kirby collaborators. Features an essay by JIM STERANKO, a new introduction by MARK EVANIER, and page after page of RARE KIRBY ART! $21.95 postpaid ($24.95 Canada, $34.95 elsewhere) TJKC #1-5: 16-page issues! $2.50 each ($2.70 Canada, $3.70 elsewhere) TJKC #6: 36-page FOURTH WORLD theme issue! Interviews with MARK EVANIER, STEVE SHERMAN and MIKE ROYER, story behind HUNGER DOGS and Jack’s original ending to NEW GODS, NEW GODS portfolio, unpublished art, and FOURTH WORLD pencils before inking! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #7: 36-page KID GANG theme issue! Unpublished interview with Kirby, overview of S&K KID GANGS, unpublished art from BOYS’ RANCH, BOY EXPLORERS, JIMMY OLSEN, DINGBATS, X-MEN, & more! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #8 & 9 ARE SOLD OUT!! But they’re reprinted in the new TJKC TRADE PAPERBACK! (see above) TJKC #10: SORRY, THIS ISSUE IS SOLD OUT!! TJKC #11: 44-page HOLLYWOOD theme issue! STUNTMAN, unused movie ideas, BLACK HOLE, LORD OF LIGHT, THE PRISONER adaptation, Jack’s career in ANIMATION, NEW GODS vs. STAR WARS, unpublished art, and more! New Kirby/Steranko and Kirby/Ordway covers. $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #12: 44-page INTERNATIONAL theme issue! Two KIRBY interviews, JOHN BYRNE interview, Kirby around the world, SAN DIEGO CON ’96 Kirby Panel (with EVANIER, WOLFMAN & STERN), CAPT. AMERICA pencils before inking, and more! New Kirby/Windsor-Smith cover. $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #13: 52-page SUPERNATURAL theme issue! An interview with Jack and Walter Gibson (creator of The Shadow), unpublished 7-page mystery story, DICK AYERS interview, THE DEMON, BLACK MAGIC, SPIRIT WORLD, ATLAS MONSTERS, published pages before inking, and more! New Kirby/Ayers and Kirby/Bissette covers. $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #14: 52-page THOR theme issue! Everything you wanted to know about Jack’s THOR work, plus interviews with CHIC STONE and WALT SIMONSON! Also, Jack’s uninked pencils to JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #101 and others, unused THOR #169 art, pros and cons of Vince Colletta, and more! New Kirby/Stone and Kirby/Simonson covers. $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC #15: 52-page SCI-FI theme issue! A rare interview with Jack by SHEL DORF, interviews with AL WILLIAMSON and MIKE THIBODEAUX, the story behind SKY MASTERS, features on THE ETERNALS, MACHINE MAN, CAPTAIN VICTORY, 2001, STARMAN ZERO, the SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, Jack’s uninked pencils from these books and others, and more! New Kirby/Williamson and Kirby/Austin covers. $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) TJKC POSTER: See pg. 50. $7 ($8 Canada, $10 elsewhere)
What girl could resist a (slightly modified) offer like this one from Justice Traps The Guilty #2? A custom drawing, circa 1967, that Jack did for his personal bound volume of S&K crime comics.
Issue #16 Contents: Kirby’s Mean Streets . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (a look at Jacob Kurtzberg’s childhood) Tough Times, Hard Guys, & Gun Molls/ A “Glass World” Full of Criminals . . .6 (S&K’s crime comics explored) Kirby’s Gangsters Never Get Their Day In Court . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 (In The Days Of The Mob examined) Kid Gang Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Will Eisner Speaks! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 (the Spirit’s father talks about Jack) NEW! Inking Contest . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Jack Kirby Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 (an ultra-rare, ultra-deep discussion) Kirby’s Rock ’n Roll Connections . . .24 Centerfold: The Astrals . . . . . . . . . . .26 (an unpublished Kirby four-pager) Franky ’n Jacky (’n Me) . . . . . . . . . . .28 (Jack meets Frank Zappa!) S&K’s Flying Fool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 (Link Thorne was a fool for love...) King Of The West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 (Jack could draw, pardner) The King & The Kid . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 (appreciating the Rawhide Kid) Welcome To Dead Center! . . . . . . . .35 (Bullseye hit the mark) Kirby’s War Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Kirby’s Nightmare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 (background on The Horde) NYPD Black & Blue . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 (does “Terrible” Turpin eat quiche?) Frank Miller Interview . . . . . . . . . . . .42 (a hard-boiled discussion)
COPYRIGHTS: Thing, Ka-Zar, Zabu, Thor, Rawhide Kid, Hammer Hogan, Rock Rorick, Captain America, Silver Surfer, Ikaris © Marvel Entertainment, Inc. • Demon, Mr. Miracle, Orion, Newsboy Legion (Scrapper, Gabby, Tommy, Big Words, Flip), Guardian, In The Days Of The Mob, Terrible Turpin, Kalibak, Lightray, New Gods, Losers, Boy Commandos © DC Comics, Inc. • Street Code, King Masters, Captain Victory, Montrose, Master Jeremy, Ferple, Rip, Gabriel Body Glows, Valley Girl, Chip Hardy, Surf Hunter © Jack Kirby • Bullseye, Red Hot Rowe, Boy Explorers, Link Thorne © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby • Destroyer Duck © Steve Gerber & Jack Kirby • Sin City and all associated characters © Frank Miller • Astrals and all associated characters © Glenn Kammen • Conan © Robert E. Howard Inc.
Collector Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Front cover inks: Frank Miller Back cover inks: Karl Kesel Cover color: Tom Ziuko
The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 4, No. 16, July 1997. Published bi-monthly by and © TwoMorrows Advertising & Design, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Assistant Editor. Single issues: $4.95 US, $5.40 Canada, $7.40 outside North America. Six-issue subscriptions: $24.00 US, $32.00 Canada and Mexico, $44.00 outside North America. First printing. All characters are © their respective companies. All artwork is © Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. PRINTED IN CANADA.
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Tough Times, Hard Guys, & Gun Molls! A look at Simon & Kirby’s Golden Age Crime Comics, by R.J. Vitone “In a word, it was tough!”
John Garfield and Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice.
A few months later, Crestwood (under a “Prize Publication” slug) issued Headline Comics #23 and Prize Comics #63, both with new S&K crime stories. Almost simultaneously in early 1947, Hillman revamped Clue Comics. The stage was set. A new era in Jack Kirby’s career had begun. Headline #23 is notable for its content: Over forty pages (including cover) of top-notch S&K that paves the way for future issues. “The Last Bloody Days of Babyface Nelson” follows the gun-crazy last blasts of a doomed killer – seven dynamic pages full of tommy guns and car chases. “The Doctor Is Missing” is a period piece set in Boston during the 1800s. Done up in fine style with some slick visual touches (one panel shows the reflection of three men talking in a mirror), it ends on the gallows. “The Bear Skull Trail to Death” is a tale recounted by (occasional) narrator “Red Hot” Blaze to the editor of Headline Comics. Billed as “A True Tale of Double-Murder in the Okefenokee Swamplands,” the story builds to an obvious end. A trademark double-paged spread opens the next story, a featured “Crime Thru The Ages” novelette – the career of Guy Fawkes, whose crime against the King of England resulted in conspiracy, torture, and death, as well as a national British holiday. Every year, poor Guy Fawkes is burned in effigy! The issue closes with a Kirby classic. “To My Valentine” is bylined by “Red Hot” Blaze, and opens with this caption: “In the Roaring Twenties, guns, bullets, and thugs ruled Chicago with a grip of steel...” From there we follow the trail of a thug on his way to an infamous event. We watch the St. Valentine’s Day massacre occur, shown in a dramatic two-thirds-page panel, then wrap up the saga with some swift revenge, and a moral message from “Red Hot” Blaze (whose hair color changes from story to story): “The mad days of the St. Valentine Massacre are gone! It is up to all of us to be ever vigilant. To keep that bloody chapter closed!” Finally, a 5-page filler, “Killer in the Kitchen,” invites the readers to match wits with a Scotland Yard inspector and prove the guilt of a murderous couple. Do you get an idea of the overall sweep of that great package of material? Can you imagine how many directions this series could go
Jack Kirby, from Greg Theakston’s The Jack Kirby Treasury Vol. 1, when asked about his childhood
OUGH! That was Jack’s simple way of describing his youth. The simplicity belies the harsh reality. He was born August 28, 1917, amid the teeming cultural melting pot of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. “It wasn’t a pleasant place to live; crowded, no place to play...” he said in Mike Benton’s Masters of Imagination. To escape, he read classics of literature from the local library. Tarzan of the Apes, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Treasure Island, The Three Musketeers, Robin Hood; all these and others like them helped his mind to soar over the slum’s rooftops. His imagination was fired by the grind-em-out pulp magazines of the era as well: Colorful covers, a handful of spot illustrations, and endless lines of words that ran page-to-page, issue-toissue, month-to-month. These were the paperbacks of the time, and even at ten, fifteen, and twenty cents each (which must have been a small fortune to a Depression-era teenager), Jack managed to amass a stack that he kept most of his life. Movies provided more escapist fare. Just going to the theater with family and friends was fun. But on the screen, a whole new wonderful universe of imagery unfolded: War movies, westerns, musicals, horror films, and more each week! “The Warner Brothers brought me up!” Jack told Theakston, and he was only half-kidding! The hard-edged studio look that Warners’ pictures employed must have appealed to the street kid in Jack. There was plenty of “New York” there, too. Stars like Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, and Humphrey Bogart snarled their way to the top in dozens of melodramas. Often their characters came from the streets. Often they died in the gutter. The message was clear: Crime may pay for a while, but in the end, look out! The cliché in most of these films went that, in order to get out of the ghetto, most kids had to pick up a pair of boxing gloves, or a gun, or a crucifix. Kirby picked up a pencil and started drawing. He got out. Years later – a war later, hundreds of published comics pages later – Kirby “returned” to those streets. Late in 1946, with the abortive Boy Explorers and Stuntman behind them, the Simon & Kirby team had moved to Crestwood Publishers with what Joe Simon called “...the best deal we ever had!” They began a variety of projects there, including their first fullyblown crime strips. (While crooks and thugs had been comics story staples since the start, few titles had been built around the crime theme. Book-length Dick Tracy newspaper strip reprints and publisher Lev Gleason’s excellent Crime Does Not Pay comics, which began in 1942, were some of the few to fill the void.) With new pages to fill, Jack and Joe turned to crime. Treasure Comics #10 (Dec. ’46) contained a sixPrize Comics #63 and Headline #23; Simon & Kirby’s initial forays on each title. page Kirby crime tale called “Tomorrow’s Murder.”
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A spectacular two-page splash from Headline #23. These “Crime Through The Ages” stories helped keep S&K from running out of criminals to write about. in from this early point? Instead of following a standard “booze-andbroads, shoot-’em-up” modern-day-gangster style, Simon & Kirby produced an anthology of crime through the ages. By broadening the scope of subjects, they not only would be able to present fresh, interesting settings for their stories, they would also avoid running out of ideas in a short time. It worked. In the years to come, the team produced a widely-varied slew of strips for the crime titles. Sure, all the usual suspects were on display. Tales of alibis, arson, and black-market medicine were common. Crooked insurance scams, extortion, counterfeiters, and pick-pockets were covered. Political corruption, fake spiritualists, and fight fixing were not ignored. Murder, drugs, and crooked gambling seemed almost tame amid the carnage. And as expected, the range of stories did provide Kirby with the opportunity to again display his virtuosity. From the Old West to 1800s London, from Chicago in the Roaring ’20s to the Florida swamps, Jack opened up his visuals to match the material. His pages became more miniature movies than ever before. The flow of the narrative was punctuated by dramatic closeups and frozen action. The violence, usually necessary in crime stories, became almost secondary, a part of the overall framework. Without a doubt, gunplay and fistfights were as explosive as ever, but the storytelling page structure led up to the outbursts. In most cases, the story would continue, exploring reaction or results of the activity. The wrap up would usually show the capture or death of the offenders, with a “Crime Never Pays!” banner prominently displayed. As in many of those Warner Brothers films, redemption for the guilty was a bullet wound! Headline steered a steady course over the next couple of years. S&K supplied most of the covers and a story or more per issue. (Headline also ran a short series of photo covers starting with issue #36. These are so stiff, forced, and stereotypical that they are true
classics. Headline #37 shows sneak-thief Jack Kirby caught in the act by very tall cop Joe Simon.) John Dillinger also got the Kirby treatment. “Public Enemy #1” (Headline #26) is born crying, grows to head a ruthless gang, then dies in a dark Chicago alley. “The Kansas City Massacre” in that same issue was based on actual events (and was “updated” in the 1971 DC magazine In The Days Of The Mob), but there were only so many well-known criminals to draw subject matter from. As mentioned earlier, the themes and situations in the S&K crime books broadened in scope. This variety kept the books fresh. Women became more important than ever as characters – they were cover-featured and used inside as central story focal points. It became common to see a Kirby cover with a hard-bitten blonde holding a .38 on a hostage, or standing lookout during a crime. Stories like “I Was the Front For the Merciless Spirit Swindlers,” “The Bobby Sox Bandit Queen” (both in Headline #27), “I Worked For The Fence” (#28), “I Was An Unwitting Accomplice to a Numbers Racket” (#30), and “I Was a Shop-Lifter in a Pick-Pocket Gang” (#31), all thrust women of varied degrees of morality into a life of crime. Sometimes they escaped. Sometimes they went to jail, even more determined to return to crime when they got out. The amount of work Kirby produced for Headline decreased as time passed. Some issues featured a S&K cover, some a single story, or just loose layouts. After #37 (Sept. 1949), although a handful of issues would contain Jack’s work, Headline was mostly left in the hands of artist/editor Mort Meskin. It continued on a successful run until 1956. With the Headline formula set for the Prize line, Clue Comics at Hillman’s was next up. Although S&K’s main efforts were directed at the Prize packages, the team produced an impressive body of crime strips here as well. Overall, the material was interchangeable with their Crestwood output. In short order, Kirby covers blanketed the re7
America, and these are all characters that have had a dramatic in their own way... they didn’t arise out of sources... out of sources that were awesome. They arose out of sources that were just dramatic, and perhaps mundane compared to, say, people like Hercules or Atlas or Samson. Tarzan, of course, was an update on all these things, but Tarzan was completely American. He wasn’t really English, because although, you know, he has an English background, he’s an American in nature. Superman, of course, is all-American. He’s a classic. He’s an institution, and he’s timeless. The hero is always timeless, but he always reflects the character of the culture he springs from. If you have a culture where weather is a prime consideration, you’ll find that the hero is a natural force. He’s a natural elemental force, probably very mystic. But in America he’s not mystic at all; he’s got a family, he has a mother and a father, and he’s the guy next door who suddenly acquires superpowers. And he skates, and he swims, and he surfs, and he does everything that every American boy does. Actually, he’s an all-American character. And of course the people overseas won’t see him that way. They don’t see heroes in the light of the ordinary average Joe. So they’ll see him in some overall overpowering image, where we have no need of that kind of thing. The American guy is selfsufficient; and he’s got flaws, he’s got virtues. He’s very, very human. But of course, you give him a few super-powers... you’re dealing with a really wonderful guy. So I pattern my heroes in that kind of way because I’m an American. It’s just second nature to me, like any other guy. If you were doing a hero, if you were creating your own hero, well, she’d probably be an all-American girl, or an allAmerican young man; but with special characteristics. We all think of ourselves in that vein. When we go over to a video game, we go with the notion that we’re going to beat this game, okay? And that’s inherent in all of us. And we do beat the game. I think Americans are winners. And I think those who think they’re not underrate themselves. So my heroes are winners. And of course the evil people represent something with a flaw; something with a conflicting need. My villains are not specifically downright evil; I feel that they’re people with (next page) Jack’s uninked pencils problems who inflict these to Fantastic Four #91, page 16. problems on others. And of Look, more gangsters! course, if you do that, you come in contention with these others; and so you’ve got a story. Sometimes there are no villains at all.
Jack Kirby Interview by Juanie Lane and Britt Wisenbaker, conducted on September 15, 1984 with Jack and Roz Kirby at their home, for the Pepperdine University student publications magazine Oasis JUANIE LANE: Well first off, just in terms of the hero... if you can just kind of give me your personal feelings in terms of the way that the hero has developed through America just in the past few decades. JACK KIRBY: Well, the hero in America is very unique, because he’s unlike heroes that have developed in the past elsewhere. The American has a distinct character. It’s developed certainly over these hundreds of years, and of course, he’s also unique abroad; you’ll find that people abroad love American heroes... they love American comics and American movies, because of the kind of forthright characters we are. Of course, speaking about myself I say this reservedly, but the American hero is a guy that comes to the point... a guy that’s not afraid to go over the line... he doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t hesitate to help people, or to save people, or to avert some kind of danger. He’s not afraid of confrontation. And that’s the character of the American hero. He’s a kind of a spontaneous character. A hero somewhere else might be a little more subtle. He might be a little more... well, maybe suave, see? Or maybe debonair. Using corny words of course. But the American hero isn’t like that at all. He’s just a guy... like Indiana Jones maybe, or Captain America, or like my own characters, the New Gods, which are coming out now, and they’re being publicized. It’s the first novel that’s ever been done in comics and I’ve just finished it. And so, it’s kind of a great thing for myself because I’ve done some experimenting in areas... in fact I’ve always done experimenting in areas that I felt were blank pages in comics and should be filled in. I felt that comics as a medium is a kind of visual literary medium – a kind of bridge between a novel and a film. It’s a kind of visual art. So I did the first comic novel, called the New Gods. And of course, I did that back in the early seventies, but now it’s being reissued and republicized. And the characters are also being publicized, and you’ll see them on Saturday morning TV; all my villains are being used in them. Of course, they’re... the villains are like the heroes. They’re also aggressive, and they’re forthright in their own views. And of course they come in contention with the heroes, and the clashes are spontaneous, yet the effect of these clashes is powerful. And of course the issues are very dramatic. I think that Americans are a lot more dramatic than people elsewhere. They’re a lot more, of course, spontaneous. So we see issues in a very dramatic way. We see ourselves in a very dramatic way. I don’t think there’s such a thing as an invisible American. I think that every American has a good image of themselves, because, possibly, he’s had a lot of heroes to look up to. Remember that Tarzan came from America, Superman came from
ROZ: On to her next question... (laughter all around) JUANIE: No, that’s great. But one thing that I was going to ask is, you know you talked about the American hero as being the normal person in the basic context, with differences. Would you say that’s always been true, pretty much throughout time, or is that just more so today? JACK: No, that’s always been true, specifically in Americans. You’ll find that the Boston Tea Party was initiated by teenagers, who had never seen George the Third, who had only seen Englishmen as an occupying force, see. So, in order to show their own independence, they indulge in acts in which they risked their lives. That’s history. And it’s true. And so we developed this specific characteristic, and it 16
could be found in our origins. And so it’s always been that way. You’ll find that all our heroes are real people... all American heroes are real people. We go on in that vein because that’s the way we are.
But there’s always been a hero to contend with these people. There’s always been a hero to contend with problems on a national scale. There’s Horatio at the bridge, right? There was El Cid in Spain. And there was King Arthur in England, who actually had a void to fill. Of course they say King Arthur is mythical; he might have been. But there’s a gap in English history where the Romans left, and there was no law and order. England was like the Old West in the United States. Who was going to fill that gap? And they say that a character named King Arthur filled that gap, by creating a society with law and order. So King Arthur became a hero of sorts. Of course, he’s a mythological hero, but I believe that somewhere there was a real person who helped create law and order in England, where there was none. The Romans
JUANIE: How are the heroes affected by time, in terms of the society of the day? For example, it’s such a complex society that we have today; how does that affect the normal qualities of a hero? JACK: All right... the hero is, of course, a product of his own time, but he will continue in the context of being a hero in contending with the problems of his own time. ROZ: Like Captain America during World War II fought the Nazis. JACK: Well, Captain America in World War II fought the Nazis, [but] we have different problems now; we have more dangerous problems, I think. And a hero today has to contend with these particular problems; he has to contend with people who don’t... who might misuse things today that might affect everybody. It’s the hero’s job – at least it’s my hero’s job – to see that things continue. Not that they will never change, but that people are able to continue, and possibly improve themselves. JUANIE: So what kinds of conflicts would you say we have today? I mean that are common to everybody. JACK: Well, we have personality conflicts, we have national-international conflicts, we have high-tech conflicts. JUANIE: So you’re saying the hero, then, kind of enters into all levels of life. JACK: Yes he does. In family life, in his individual family life, he won’t hesitate to alleviate a problem... for his own people and, of course, his neighbors. He won’t denigrate or back away from... ROZ: I think she’s trying to get like, exactly what are they fighting out here? Is that what you’re trying to get? JUANIE: Well, I’m just wondering the kinds of forces, you know; are these forces people or are they institutions, or... JACK: They’re all kinds of stories. ROZ: Well, now they’re worrying about the atomic bombs, and aliens. JACK: All right? They’re all kinds of stories. But the hero has to fight them on all kinds of levels. He fights them on a family level, he fights them on the international level. The atom bomb is a consideration. There are people who will tamper with it. And there are people who... we have toxic problems. Toxic waste problems. We have toxic waste that gives off radiation. We have to be careful with this kind of thing. That’s a problem we haven’t even solved yet. Of course, it’s something the hero might tackle. JUANIE: Would you say that the hero had to contend with all of these things on different levels before? You know what I’m saying? JACK: Always. Always. We’ve had commoners and kings. We’ve had good ones and bad ones. 17
Kirby’s Rock ’n Roll Connections by John Morrow, with help from Patrick Hilger, Carl Taylor, and Bill Wray ex, drugs, & rock ’n roll... and Kirby? It seems strange to add Jack’s name to that expression; after all, he was approaching middle age when another “King” was helping to launch rock music by swiveling his hips and singing Jailhouse Rock. But although Jack’s musical tastes probably leaned more toward Jimmy Dorsey than Jimi Hendrix, an entire rock generation grew up reading his comics. Since the “tough guy” image applies to many of the rock stars of the past few decades, I thought I’d document a few of Kirby’s rock connections. Back in TJKC #5 and #8, we published stories about Jack meeting Paul McCartney in the 1970s. Coincidentally, The Thing (who is perhaps the original “rock” star of comics) had a couple of earlier crossovers with The Beatles, compliments of Jack. On the cover of Strange Tales #130, he and the Human Torch meet the Beatles, and in Fantastic Four #34, a member of the Yancy Street Gang sends him a Beatle wig. Many popular rock stars over the years have been Kirby fans. Graham Nash (of Crosby, Stills & Nash) has a huge collection of original comic book art, including Jack’s work. Gene Simmons (of KISS fame) is a well-known comics fan – back in Comics Interview #2, he curiously mentioned Kirby having drawn a couple of old issues of Superboy. (Was he mistaken, or are these undocumented Kirby stories?) And the manager of the 1970s R&B group The Silvers was a big Kirby fan, so the entire group ended up visiting the Kirby home for an afternoon. There are many other media celebrities who may be closet Kirby fans (a recent comment about Black Bolt by Tom Hanks on The Tonight Show sparked some interesting commentary on the Internet), but they seem to be especially plentiful in the music industry. Jack once had dinner with Frank Zappa, and I’ve even heard that Sting is a fan of Jack’s work, but have been unable to substantiate this. If you know of any other Kirby rock connections, let us know! ❍
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Here are some characters from one of Jack’s unused animation ideas: A futuristic rock band.
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interesting was when Neal Adams was taking off, with all his wild stuff – and when Jack came to DC.
Frank Miller Interview
TJKC: Were you disappointed with the books’ cancellation? What was your reaction? FRANK: Furious, but what could I do?
by Jon B. Cooke (One of the leading creators in mainstream comics, Frank Miller was outspoken in his support for Jack Kirby in the King’s fight to get his art from Marvel Comics during the 1980s, and was given the honor of delivering a eulogy for Jack at the funeral. Miller’s creative achievements are widely celebrated, from the revitalization of Daredevil, Ronin, the radical updating of the Batman mythos in The Dark Knight Returns, and memorable collaborations with David Mazzuchelli (Daredevil: Born Again, Batman: Year One), Geof Darrow (Hard Boiled, Big Guy), and Bill Sienkiewicz (Daredevil: Love & War, Elektra). Frank has, since 1992, devoted much of his writing and drawing energies to the series Sin City, a crime comic published under the Legend imprint by Dark Horse. He was interviewed via telephone on April 25, 1997.)
TJKC: Did you stick around for Kamandi? FRANK: Oh, I stuck around for the works. TJKC: To me, I see a Gil Kane influence in your figure work, and increasingly a lot of Eisner and Krigstein. But only with Dark Knight Returns do I see an overt Kirby influence. Did you think about Kirby at that time? What was his influence on your work? FRANK: That’s kind of like asking a musician if he’s influenced by Beethoven. The work is so seminal that I think it affects everybody who has come along since. I think that Sin City owes more to Kirby than Dark Knight does because the use of shape is much bolder. But I can see what you mean, because the figure work was much more Kirbyesque in Dark Knight – so blocky and chunky. To me, he’s just a constant influence – always has been. He had a rather manic, citizen-on-the-street view of what was going on with all these grand characters that brought an immediacy that really hadn’t existed ever before. It’s easy to talk about his explosive power because that’s what people understand most about Kirby, but his virtues went far beyond that – into the concepts, into the various genre he either reflected or brought about himself; so many more subtle values he brought to storytelling. He had a way of drawing things wrong that looked so right. Reality didn’t look right anymore. When you see a drawing by Jack Kirby of someone holding a pipe, it looks like the way someone should hold a pipe, even though it isn’t a way someone holds a pipe! It’s fascinating!
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: When did you first get exposed to Kirby’s work? FRANK MILLER: I first saw Kirby’s stuff when I was probably about nine years old. I’d been reading comics since I was six, which was when I decided I wanted to do them. Then one day one of my brothers showed me X-Men and a Kirby Fantastic Four, and I entered a whole new dimension. TJKC: So you really witnessed Kirby at his height in ’65. FRANK: Well, I place Kirby’s height in the ’70s. He had so many heights, it’s like talking about the Alps! I remember seeing Fantastic Four and the X-Men, first through friends passing them around, and finally going out and haunting the drugstores myself – of course, back then, there weren’t any comic book shops. TJKC: So what were your favorite Kirby comics? FRANK: Jeez, there were so many. I loved the general sense of weirdness and alienation in the X-Men. But I suspect that for me, the transforming stuff – the stuff that showed me that comics could go much further than I thought they could go – was everything from the Galactus Trilogy onward in the Fantastic Four.
Some of Frank’s gritty, black-&-white crime work from Sin City.
TJKC: Increasingly, you were looking at the work of Hugo Pratt and Alex Toth? FRANK: Hugo Pratt, Vereccia, Muñoz, all kinds of folks – I love to drop names, it makes me sound really smart – and, of course, Eisner and Johnny Craig – my two huge, most abiding influences. I looked at everything I could get my hands on.
TJKC: When you first came to New York, you first sought the advice of Neal Adams? FRANK: Neal ran almost a halfway house for comic book artists; an advertising studio where people would do commercial work. He would offer advice, counsel, instruction and work for people. Back then in the late ’70s, it was very, very difficult to make a living doing comic books. The page rates were so low, there were no royalties, and it really was pretty dreary pay. Neal helped a lot of us get along by providing us with work that would pay better, even though it was less than creatively satisfying. He also was very generous of his time with me. I would come in every few months with another stack of pages, and he would tell me one more time to give up for all time because I had no prayer, and he would do the same thing again the next time!
TJKC: Did you follow his work over to DC? FRANK: Oh, yes. As a matter of fact that was about the time I was losing interest in comics, and when I saw a cover of Jimmy Olsen by Jack Kirby, I said, “This I gotta see.” For me, I have to say, the Fourth World stuff is my favorite. TJKC: So you followed the Fourth World even as you were dropping other comics? FRANK: Comics go through periods where they grow stale and then they get interesting again, and it seems that when they got interesting decade after decade was usually because Jack was around. TJKC: Why were you losing interest in comics? General adolescence? FRANK: There was always the discovery of girls. (laughter) Various social things like that, but also comics come and go as being interesting or not; fallow periods and very rich periods. In the ’70s, what became
TJKC: And yet you persisted and finally even moved to New York. FRANK: Yeah. Well, it was either that or going back to driving trucks, which I wasn’t very good at. 42
TJKC: Did you consider going to Joe Kubert’s school? FRANK: I’ve never been a good student. Sometimes I wish I had gone to art school and stuff, but I barely got out of high school. I was so eager to become a professional, so I had to learn on the job. It’s been the only way to make a living.
that. Different venues attract different people. I’ve always had a violent imagination and it’s kind of like asking Stephen King why there are so many monsters in his stories. His answer is the perfect one: “That’s the kind of stories I come up with.” Also, I can now say, after living twenty years in the two biggest cities in the country: I know whereof I speak.
TJKC: Jack pretty much drew what was asked of him for a number of years. If super-heroes sold, he drew super-heroes. If love comics were in order, well, he invented them. He did westerns, war, etc. You seem very enamored with crime stories. What keeps you in the crime genre? FRANK: I have to answer that at two different directions at once, if you don’t mind. First, I grew up reading crime stories, everything from Mickey Spillane to Raymond Chandler to Dashiell Hammett. It’s always been my favorite kind of fiction. So naturally, I wanted to do comic books that were like that. I grew up not knowing the wealth of great crime comics that had been done in the past. But I loved comic books, and I loved crime stories, so the next logical thing was to do comic books about tough guys, beautiful women, and great cars. I got more encouraged when Warren Publications started rereleasing The Spirit, which I had never seen. This was just before I became a professional. They were just mindexpanding. The brilliance of that work is still staggering. Eisner’s gone on to bigger and better things since, but still, even that young, he was producing stuff of extraordinary depth and quality. And as time passed, I got to study Johnny Craig and, in particular, his Crime SuspenStories for EC Comics. I became more and more convinced that crime comics were what I most wanted to do. Jumping back in time, when I first showed up in the late ’70s at Marvel Comics, DC, and Gold Key, I waltzed in, not having read any comic books in years, and showed them all my samples. My samples were all stuff like Sin City, and they all looked at me like I was completely insane because they didn’t publish anything like that. A nineteenyear-old’s arrogance. It took me a while before I got the freedom to do what I really wanted to do.
TJKC: You say that Sin City owes a lot to Kirby in its approach. FRANK: You don’t look into the eye of the sun and forget it. He really is the most profound genius to ever work in the field. There’s Before Kirby and there’s After Kirby, and the two eras are just not the same. Everyone since Kirby has had to absorb and interpret his work. He was that good. You mentioned Gil Kane earlier, whom I did study to beat the band. He helped me understand dynamic anatomy by his example. Gil has often remarked that much of what he did was to intellectualize and analyze Kirby, to take what Kirby had done – by seeming intuition or by divine gift, whatever it was – and turn it into something that
TJKC: You’re from Vermont – the country – and yet you tell stories about dark, urban violence; this film noir kind of setting? Why? FRANK: (laughter) You know the old phrase “Write what you know”? I don’t entirely agree with it. I think you should write where your mind takes you. I can testify that I never shot anybody. I’ve been through some things but certainly not as extraordinary as my characters have been through. But I was always compelled by stories of the city where people are pressed close together, and tested by one another constantly. Someone else might want to do stories about something like, say, marriage, which is another case where people are packed together and tested by each other. Any romance story is essentially Jack’s splash page from In The Days Of The Mob #2, which Frank was kind enough to ink for this issue’s cover. 43