BATHRO BE GROWING BACK?” “JUMPING JARS OF JELLIED JAGUARS!!!” “GET YOURSELF A BIKINI, AND STAR
A CHAIN OF HEART ATTACKS AT A GARDEN PARTY.” “SEE HIS ARMS CRUSH THE STONES LIKE BISCUITS
$5.95
T H NUCLEAR E “GODS, DEVILS, OR SPACE GIANTS... THIS TACTICAL DEVICE WILL DECIDE WHAT THEY “I In TheARE.” US
THERE A GO O ZLEBO BBER SOMEWHERE IN MID-FLIGHT ABOVE YOUR AREA?? YOU WON’T KNOW UNTIL HI
CREW CONTRACTS THE DREAD GALACTIC CO NDITIO N KNOWN AS CO SMIC DIARRHEA!” “THAT ALIEN PARIA
CAN GIVE ONE A MENTAL HERNIA! WARTS! CLO SURE O FTHE PO RES! AND AN INSATIABLE DESIRE FOR ACUT
DEPRESSIO N!” “WELL, WELL! SHRED MY BRITCHES AND MELT MY BO O TS!” “MY BACKSIDE... IT’S REALLY TO O
WELL PADDED TO SUFFER BADLY IN A FALL.” “I-IF STEVE ROGERS WOULD TRADE HIS MASK AND SHIELD FO
OCT.GIR 1998 C “ITOISN’TLBLACK L , IT E ISN’C O IT’LL R LO O A PICKAAND SHO V EL... I’D BEISSUE THE H#21, APPIEST L ON EARTH.” T WHT ITE, BUT 68-PAGE ISSUE
KIRBY’S GREAT O ON NP ANTS!” “MAN BUILT THEM. MO NKEYS CAN’T DO IT. ARMADILLO S CAN’T DO IT.” “TELL ME WHY YO WACKIEST WO RK!!
BLEW YO UR NO SE!” “NATURE GAVE ME A SMALL LIVER--BUT A BIG, BIG HEART!” “WHAT? WHAT? I SAY “BULL
CHIPS”AN IN UNPUBLISHED YOUR CEREAL, SIR!” “BLAZING BULLFRO GS!” “AM I DREAMING... OR IS MY BATHRO BE GROWING
BACK?” “JUMPING JARS OF JELLIED JAGUARS!!!” “GET YOURSELF A BIKINI, AND START A CHAIN OF HEAR
Kirby Interview
ATTACKS AT A GARDEN PARTY.” “SEE HIS ARMS CRUSH THE STONES LIKE BISCUITS.” “GODS, DEVILS, O SPACE
GIANTS...
THIS
INTERVIEWS WITH
TACTICAL
NUCLEAR DEVICE
WILL
DECIDE
WHAT
THEY
ARE.”
“IS
THERE
GO O ZLEBO BBER SOMEWHERE IN MID-FLIGHT ABOVE YOUR AREA?? YOU WON’T KNOW UNTIL HIS CREW CON
Gil Kane & Bruce Timm
TRACTS THE DREAD GALACTIC CO NDITIO N KNOWN AS CO SMIC DIARRHEA!” “THAT ALIEN PARIAH CAN GIV
ONE A MENTAL HERNIA! WARTS! CLO SURE O FTHE PO RES! AND AN INSATIABLE DESIRE FOR ACUTE DEPRES
SIO N!” “WELL, WELL! SHRED MY BRITCHES AND MELT MY BO O TS!” “MY BACKSIDE... IT’S REALLY TO O WEL COMPARING KIRBY’S PADDED TO SUFFER BADLY IN A FALL.” “I-IF STEVE ROGERS WOULD TRADE HIS MASK AND SHIELD FOR MARGIN NO TES TO
PICK AND SHO VEL... I’D BE THE HAPPIEST GIRL ON EARTH.” “IN OTHER WORDS, IT ISN’T BLACK, IT ISN’T WHITE
Stan Lee’s Words
BUT IT’LL LO O K GREAT O N PANTS!” “MAN BUILT THEM. MO NKEYS CAN’T DO IT. ARMADILLO S CAN’T DO IT
“TELL ME WHY YOU BLEW YO UR NO SE!” “NATURE GAVE ME A SMALL LIVER--BUT A BIG, BIG HEART!” “WHAT
AT WHAT?KIRBY’S I SAY WORK “BULLCHIPS” IN YOUR CEREAL, SIR!” “BLAZING BULLFRO GS!” “AM I DREAMING... OR IS M
Topps Comics
BATHRO BE GROWING BACK?” “JUMPING JARS OF JELLIED JAGUARS!!!” “GET YOURSELF A BIKINI, AND STAR
A CHAIN OF HEART ATTACKS AT A GARDEN PARTY.” “SEE HIS ARMS CRUSH THE STONES LIKE BISCUITS
WACK IEST “GODS,JACK’S DEVILS, OR SPACE GIANTS... THIS TACTICAL NUCLEAR DEVICE WILL DECIDE WHAT THEY ARE.” “I DIALO GUE AND
THERE A GO O ZLEBO BBER SOMEWHERE IN MID-FLIGHT ABOVE YOUR AREA?? YOU WON’T KNOW UNTIL HI
Bloopers
CREW CONTRACTS THE DREAD GALACTIC CO NDITIO N KNOWN AS CO SMIC DIARRHEA!” “THAT ALIEN PARIA
CAN GIVE ONE A MENTAL HERNIA! WARTS! CLO SURE O FTHE PO RES! AND AN INSATIABLE DESIRE FOR ACUT SPECIAL FEATURES:
DEPRESSIO N!” “WELL, WELL! SHRED MY BRITCHES AND MELT MY BO O TS!” “MY BACKSIDE... IT’S REALLY TO O
Silver Surfer, Black Racer, OMAC, & Goody Rickels
WELL PADDED TO SUFFER BADLY IN A FALL.” “I-IF STEVE ROGERS WOULD TRADE HIS MASK AND SHIELD FO
A PICK AND SHO VEL... I’D BE THE HAPPIEST GIRL ON EARTH.” “IN OTHER WORDS, IT ISN’T BLACK, IT ISN’T WHITE
BUT IT’LL LO O K GREAT O N PANTS!” “MAN BUILT THEM. MO NKEYS CAN’T DO IT. ARMADILLO S CAN’T DO IT
“TELL ME WHY YOU BLEW YO UR NO SE!” “NATURE GAVE ME A SMALL LIVER--BUT A BIG, BIG HEART!” “WHAT
WHAT? I SAY “BULL-CHIPS” IN YOUR CEREAL, SIR!” “BLAZING BULLFRO GS!” “AM I DREAMING... OR IS M
BATHRO BE GROWING BACK?” “JUMPING JARS OF JELLIED JAGUARS!!!” “GET YOURSELF A BIKINI, AND STAR
A CHAIN OF HUNSEEN EART ATTACKS AT A GARDEN PARTY.” “SEE HIS ARMS CRUSH THE STONES LIKE BISCUITS KIRBY’S SCREENPLAY FOR
“GODS, DEVILS, OR SPACE GIANTS... THIS TACTICAL NUCLEAR DEVICE WILL DECIDE WHAT THEY ARE.” “I
Silver Star
THERE A GO O ZLEBO BBER SOMEWHERE IN MID-FLIGHT ABOVE YOUR AREA?? YOU WON’T KNOW UNTIL HI
CREW CONTRACTS THE DREAD GALACTIC CO NDITIO N KNOWN AS CO SMIC DIARRHEA!” “THAT ALIEN PARIA
Unpublished Art
CAN GIVE ONE A MENTAL HERNIA! WARTS! CLO SURE O FTHE PO RES! AND AN INSATIABLE DESIRE FOR ACUT Mister Miracle, Oberon TM & © DC Comics, Inc.
DEPRESSIO N!” “WELL, INCLUDING PENCILWELL! SHRED MY BRITCHES AND MELT MY BO O TS!” “MY BACKSIDE... IT’S REALLY TO O
PAGES EFO SUFFER RE WELL P ADDEDBTO BADLY IN A FALL.” “I-IF STEVE ROGERS WOULD TRADE HIS MASK AND SHIELD FO THEY WERE INKED,
A PICK AND SHO MO VEL... I’D PIEST GIRL ON EARTH.” “IN OTHER WORDS, IT ISN’T BLACK, IT ISN’T WHITE AND MUCH RE! ! BE THE HAP
BUT IT’LL LO O K GREAT O N PANTS!” “MAN BUILT THEM. MO NKEYS CAN’T DO IT. ARMADILLO S CAN’T DO IT NO MINATED
FO R TWO 19 98 “TELL ME WHY YOU B LEW YO UR NO SE!” “NATURE GAVE ME A SMALL LIVER--BUT A BIG, BIG HEART!” “WHAT EISNER
AWARDS WHAT? I SAY “B ULLCHIPS” IN YOUR CEREAL, SIR!” YOU WON’T KNOW UNTIL HIS CREW CONTRACTS THE DREA INCLUDING “BEST COMICS-RELATED
PUBLICATION” GALACTIC CO NDITIO N KNOWN AS CO SMIC DIARRHEA!” “THAT ALIEN PARIAH CAN GIVE ONE A MENTAL HER
1998 HARVEY AWARDS NO MINEE
NIA! WAR CLOHISTORICAL SURE O FTHE PO RES! AND AN INSATIABLE DESIRE FOR ACUTE DEPRESSIO N!” “WELL, WELL “BESTTS! BIOGRAPHICAL, OR JOURNALISTIC PRESENTATION”
SHRED MY BRITCHES AND MELT MY BO O TS!” “MY BACKSIDE... IT’S REALLY TO O WELL PADDED TO SUFFE
BADLY IN A FALL.” “I-IF STEVE ROGERS WOULD TRADE HIS MASK AND SHIELD FOR A PICK AND SHO VEL... I’
KIRBY
COLLECTOR
BULLETINS
•
KIRBY
COLLECTOR
BULLETINS
•
KIRBY
COLLECTOR
BULLETINS
A WONDROUS WHIRLWIND OF WONKY, WHACKED-OUT WORDS! itEM! To make subscription and back issue orders easier for our readers (especially those overseas), we now accept VISA and MASTERCARD! See the TwoMorrows house ad on page 67 of this issue for a list of available issues. itEM! TJKC just got back from another whirlwind trip to San Diego, CA to attend COMIC CON INTERNATIONAl, and what a trip it was! Besides the usual array of comics fans and pros, Jack and Roz’s granddaughter TRACY KIRBY was in attendance, as were brothers STEVE & GARY SHERMAN, MARK EVANIER, JIM STERANKO, plus extra special guest JOE SIMON (look for the transcript of Joe’s San Diego Con Panel in the upcoming SIMON & KIRBY THEME ISSUE of TJKC)! Just when we thought things couldn’t get any better, we discovered the TwoMorrows booth was right next to the one for NEAl ADAMS (talk about your dream convention)! Issues of TJKC and COMIC BOOK ARTIST were flying off our table as quickly as we could stack them, and the wealth of new, unpublished Kirby art we tracked down (which you’ll see in upcoming issues) certainly made the week all that much nicer! Our thanks to all our friends who stopped by; we’ll see you again next year! (And look for this year’s KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEl, featuring JOE SIMON, STEVE SHERMAN, TRACY KIRBY, and MARK EVANIER next issue!) itEM! Our colossal 160-page COllECTED JACK KIRBY COllECTOR, VOlUME 2 (our new TRADE PAPERBACK collection reprinting TJKC #10-12 plus over 30 NEW pieces of Jack’s art) is now shipping! It’s only $14.95 postpaid in the US ($16.95 Canada, $24.95 elsewhere), and includes a new guided tour of Jack and Roz’s home (complete with photos and art) by a British fan who visited them in the 1980s. If you never had the honor of visiting the Kirby house, you’ll love this one! itEM! The updated JACK KIRBY CHECKlIST ships in December! It’s the most thorough listing of Kirby’s work ever published, and is produced with the approval of Ray Wyman (who did the initial version of the list in his book THE ART OF JACK KIRBY, and retains the copyright on it), with proceeds going to the Kirby Estate. This fullyupdated, definitive edition took over two years to complete, and lists in exacting detail EVERY PUBlISHED COMIC featuring Jack’s work, including story titles, page counts, and inkers. It even cross-references reprints, to help collectors locate less-expensive versions of key Kirby issues, and includes an extensive bibliography listing BOOKS, PERIODICAlS, PORTFOlIOS, FANZINES, POSTERS, and other obscure pieces with Kirby’s art, plus a detailed list of Jack’s UNPUBlISHED WORK as well. The updated version is regular comic book size, 100 pages, and costs $5 postpaid ($5.50 Canada, $7.50 outside North America). (look for it in the October PREVIEWS in the “Comic Magazine” section, next to TJKC #22—the Villains issue!) It’s a must for the serious collector of Kirby’s work!
itEM! COMIC BOOK ARTIST #3 will spotlight NEAl ADAMS & THE AGE OF MARVEl, featuring a new wrap-around, full-color Adams cover! From AVENGERS to X-MEN, Neal talks about his work at Marvel Comics, and we show unpublished covers, published pages BEFORE they were inked, and unused pages from his never-completed X-MEN GRAPHIC NOVEl! Plus there’s rare and unpublished art and new interviews with JOHN ROMITA SR., MARIE SEVERIN, DAVE COCKRUM, DON McGREGOR, a behind-the-scenes look at the Kree/Skrull War with ROY THOMAS, and more! Also, Roy has contributed another new installment of AlTER EGO (the greatest fanzine of all
JOHN’S JUKEBOX “THAT, sir, is PARANEX, THE FIGHTING FETUS!!” “Well, WEll! Shred my britches and melt my boots!” Captain ViCtory #7, page 9, oct. 1982 Just what qualifies as Jack’s Wackiest Work? The above gets my vote, but with a mind as imaginative and creative as Kirby’s, nearly everything he created fits the bill, depending on its historical context. Before Jack did it, who would’ve proposed the idea of a chrome-plated guy that soars through the cosmos on a surfboard? Who but Kirby could’ve sold readers on the idea of a long-haired Norse god who throws his hammer so hard it pulls him through the air? Who else would’ve dreamed up a Black Vietnam vet on flying skis, going around claiming souls for the hereafter? For 50 years, Jack broke with convention and made his wacky ideas so believable, they’ve become the accepted conventions of the comics industry. As his outlandish concepts became the norm, he had to reach even further, giving us oddities like Arnim Zola, Devil Dinosaur, Destroyer Duck, the Fighting Fetus, and the unforgettable lady lumberjack Heidi Hogan (from the totally “out-there” Ruby-Spears card set)! Was Jack nuts, or just pushing the envelope as he’d always done? Time will tell—but from teleportational bulldogs with tuning forks on their foreheads, to an overzealous twin (or was he a clone?) of Don Rickles, this issue is devoted to all those Kirby concepts that left someone, somewhere, scratching their heads and saying, “Huh?!” 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 #14 and #15 are now SOlD OUT! Our first Trade Paperback is still available from BUD PlANT COMIC ART (phone 800-242-6642 or 530-273-2166)! And due to popular demand, TJKC now accepts VISA and MASTERCARD for subscriptions and back issues! time) to CBA’s pages, featuring the art of WAllY WOOD, GIl KANE, and others! #3 ships in November, while CBA #1 and #2 are still available for $5.95, or subscribe for four issues for only $20 in the US! If you want to get involved, submit copies of art from your collection and articles about your favorite comics artists to JON B. COOKE, PO Box 204, W. Kingston, RI 02892-0204. itEM! Get connected! The TJKC Web Site (maintained by RANDY HOPPE) is at www.fantasty.com/kirby And be sure to join the KIRBY MAIlING lIST by sending an e-mail request to kirby-l@fantasty.com. Start typing! itEM! If you enjoyed Jack’s autobiographical STREET CODE story, check out Josh Shepherd’s JUNKYARD ENFORCER, the story of a tough, Kirby-like kid who lives by his wits (and knuckles) in the seedy world of an urban junkyard, with more than a passing nod to Jack. For mature readers, this is a kid gang book with an edge, and one we wholeheartedly recommend. #1 is now shipping, and #2 will be available in December. Available for $2.95 at finer comics shops everywhere, or directly from Boxcar Productions, PO Box 50641, Pasadena, CA 91115. itEM! Apologies to our illustrious proofreader RICHARD HOWEll (that’s with TWO ’l’s)! In our TJKC TRADE PAPERBACK, Vol. 2, we accidentally misspelled his name (in the one section he didn’t get to proofread!). OOPS!!!
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itEM! DC’s recent NEW GODS trade paperback won an Eisner award to go along with the Harvey award it won this Spring. DC is about to release a MISTER MIRAClE volume (reprinting #1-10), and if it sells well, that could be followed by a FOREVER PEOPlE volume, and then another volume to be called THE FOURTH WORlD which will print the remaining issues of MISTER MIRAClE, plus the unaltered, Mike Royer-inked version of Jack’s original HUNGER DOGS story! itEM! MARK EVANIER reports negotiations are still ongoing with Marvel Comics about putting a permanent credit line for Jack on the Marvel books he was involved with. Things have been a been hectic at Marvel lately, with their attempt to come out of bankruptcy, but hopes are high this will be finalized soon. itEM! The KIRBY TRIBUTE BOOK that FRANK MIllER and MARK EVANIER have been talking about doing for a while now (the one where hundreds of artists would do their own interpretations of Jack’s characters) looks like it’s not going to happen, at least not at this time. Marvel Comics has some legal concerns over it, and rather than take the chance that it might jeopardize the current negotiations over giving Jack a credit line, the book is on hold for the present. We’ll keep you posted on any future developments. itEM! Jack and Roz’s granddaughter TRACY KIRBY has founded a film production company, and among their proposed projects are some Kirby-related treatments they’re hoping get made into feature films, including BOY COMMANDOS and CHAllENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN. Comics are big business in Hollywood these days, so with a little luck, we may yet see Jack’s name on the big screen! itEM! The August 17 edition of THE DENVER BUSINESS JOURNAl featured an article on Jack’s nephew ROBERT KATZ’s work as trustee of the Kirby Estate, building a Trust for Jack and Roz’s children and grandchildren. The piece included a nice biography of Jack, with quotes by MARK EVANIER, KEVIN EASTMAN, and TJKC’s own JOHN MORROW. Robert’s juggling a lot, from trying to get Jack’s name on his creations at Marvel Comics, to overseeing future uses of Jack’s concepts. Take a bow, Robert!
KIRBY COLLECTOR CHECKLIST For full descriptions of each issue, see page 67 Sorry, tJKC #1-6, 8-12, 14, 15, and our first traDE papErBaCK collection arE SoLD oUt!! tHE CoLLECtED tJKC, VoLUME tWo: (nEW!) 160page trade paperback, reprinting TJKC #10-12, plus new Kirby art! $14.95 ($16.95 Canada, $24.95 elsewhere) tHE JaCK KirBy CHECKLiSt: (nEW!) 100 pages! $5.00 ($5.50 Canada, $7.50 elsewhere) Ships in Dec.! tJKC #7: We found extras of our 36-page KID GANG theme issue! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) tJKC #13: 52-page SUPERNATURAl theme issue! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) tJKC #16: 52-page TOUGH GUYS theme issue! $4.95 ($5.40 Canada, $7.40 elsewhere) tJKC #17: 68-page DC theme issue! $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 elsewhere) tJKC #18: 68-page MARVEl theme issue! $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 elsewhere) tJKC #19: 56-page ART theme issue! $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 elsewhere) tJKC #20: 68-page WOMEN theme issue! $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 elsewhere) tJKC poStEr: See pg. 64. $7 ($8 Can., $10 elsewhere) anD Don’t ForGEt: CoMiC BooK artiSt #1 & 2 (see page 67!)
Issue #21 Contents: The Wacky DC Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (from Manhunters to Kung-Fu Fighters) Jurassic Spark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 (Kirby did it twenty years earlier) Mondo Kirby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 (a previously-unpublished interview) Are You Ready for OMAC? . . . . . . . .14 The World That’s Coming? . . . . . . . .15 (are Build-A-Friends a reality?) Oh, Goody! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 (you just knew he’d be in this issue!) Bruce Timm Interviewed . . . . . . . . . .17 How I Caught The Mythology Bug . . .23 (Bacchus’ Eddie Campbell explains) Top Ten Kirby Bloopers . . . . . . . . . .27 “Fixing” Kirby’s Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 (observant readers spot some changes) Jack Meets Millie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 (a wacky Kirby cameo) Black Men Can Ski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 (don’t mess with the Black Racer) Jack’s Wackiest Dialogue . . . . . . . . . .32 Audio Meets Visual/A.W.O.L. . . . . .33 (how Kirby met Frank Zappa, & more!) Centerfold: FF Annual #5 pencils . . .34 A Failure To Communicate . . . . . . . .36 (Jack’s margin notes vs. Stan’s words) Kirby Gets Cracked . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 (his one shot at the humor magazine) Gil Kane on Jack Kirby . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Kirby Fans’ Wackiest Causes? . . . . . .48 Silver Star Screenplay . . . . . . . . . . . .49 Art As Therapy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 (how Silver Surfer #18 helped a fan) Twilight At Topps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 (a look at Kirby’s final series) Collector Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . .65
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Front cover inks: Bob Wiacek Front cover color: Tom Ziuko Back cover inks: Chic Stone Back cover color: Jack Kirby Photocopies of Jack’s uninked pencils from published comics are reproduced here courtesy of the Kirby Estate, which has our thanks for their continued support. COPYRIGHTS: Alicia Masters, Ant-Man, Baron Zemo, Black Panther, Bucky, Captain America, Chili, Crystal, Destroyer, Devil Dinosaur, Dr. Doom, Dr. Faustus, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Giant-Man, Hercules, Hulk, Human Torch, Iceman, Ikaris, Inhumans (Triton, Black Bolt, Crystal, Medusa, Karnak, Gorgon, Lockjaw), Invisible Girl, Iron Man, Loki, Magneto, Millie the Model, Miracle Man, Mole Man, Moonboy, Mr. Fantastic, Odin, Randac, Ronan, Sentry, Sersi, Sharon Carter/Agent 13, Silver Surfer, Skrulls, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Thing, Thor, Ulik, Volstagg, Wasp, X-Men TM & © Marvel Entertainment, Inc. • Black Racer, Darkseid, Demon, Goody Rickels, Grandmaster, Guardian, Hairies, Jimmy Olsen, Lightray, Manhunter, Mr. Miracle, Oberon, OMAC, Orion, Professor Brainwave, Richard Dragon, Superman, Willie Walker, Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics, Inc. • Captain Nice TM NBC-TV. • Hidden Harry © Ruby-Spears Productions. • The Prisoner © ITV. • Blackmark TM & © Gil Kane. • Accompanying illustrations are © Cracked Magazine. • Dark Horse Presents is TM Dark Horse Comics. • Bacchus and associated characters are TM & © Eddie Campbell. • Fighting American, Speedboy, Stuntman TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby. • Bazooka Boots, Big Ugly, Bombast, Cal Cutta, Capt. Glory, Clayton March, Darius Drumm, Eyes of March, Freeze Pellets, Glida, Indestructible Jayne Davidson, Rahmin the Invader, The Exploder, Jason Blanchard, Mekani-King, Jet Rider, Labor Launch, Marauder, Ordiz, Roag, Robot, Schizoid Helmet, Silver Star, Stand Glider, Thunder Foot, Topps Villains, Whiz Kid TM & © Jack Kirby.
This Mister Miracle drawing was part of the Kirby Unleashed portfolio. Our thanks to Bob Wiacek for inking it for this issue’s front cover! Our back cover is Jack’s poster art for the 1960s Captain Nice TV show, inked by Chic Stone and colored by Kirby! Bob Latimer is selling the original and is accepting offers on it; call him at (305)759-4991. The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 5, No. 21, Oct. 1998. Published bi-monthly by & © TwoMorrows Advertising & Design, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor. Jon B. Cooke, Assoc. Editor. Single issues: $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $24.00 US, $32.00 Canada and Mexico, $44.00 outside North America. First printing. All characters are trademarks of 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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Evil Factory goes up in a blaze of glory. Like all good SF writers, Kirby never judges the technology involved here—only the uses to which it is put. The Project churns out copies of Golden Age heroes and legions of Mattel-sized Scrapper soldiers; therefore it’s benign. The Evil Factory breeds sea monsters, Kryptonite-flavored giant Jimmys and grunting, yellow-skinned, fourarmed horrors; therefore it’s malign. Kirby’s real achievement here, I think, is that he builds a logical framework in which these creatures can exist, just as Crichton does in Jurassic Park. And he makes it clear that the same DNA that can build, say, a Golden Guardian can also build a monstrosity—that everyone shares the same basic building blocks, and that science can exploit this for good or ill. But despite his cautionary message of technology gone wild, you can sense Kirby’s simple wonder and excitement at the prospect of all this. Even today, these genes are still a good fit. ★
Jurassic Spark by Robert L. Bryant Jr.
he plotline from Michael Crichton’s 1990 mega-novel Jurassic Park: Scientists in an isolated super-lab tinker with DNA to produce monsters, and all hell breaks loose when the beasts burst out of their pens. Yawn. For Jack Kirby fans, this was old hat. Twenty years before Crichton dreamed up the book that would become the world’s most successful movie, Kirby had tinkered with his own DNA ideas to remake DC’s moribund Jimmy Olsen series into a dazzling science-fiction extravaganza. In two story arcs during 1970-72, Kirby beat Crichton to the genetic punch by decades, and introduced a generation of readers to the power and potential of DNA engineering. In a six-issue series of cliffhangers starting with JO #133 (1970), Kirby postulated two super-labs tinkering with the human (and inhuman) DNA molecule—the US government’s DNA Project, a huge underground complex oddly close to Metropolis, and Darkseid’s Evil Factory, later revealed to be a miniaturized city hidden under a rock somewhere in Scotland. (Leave no stone unturned...?) The DNA Project had Superman’s blessing— he donated cell samples—but had little use for ethics, apparently. Olsen is shocked to discover that they’ve been running off Olsen copies, without his knowledge or permission, from cell samples taken during a “simple, painless procedure” at the Daily Planet infirmary. (This won’t hurt a bit, Jim!) Likewise, the Project has resurrected the Golden Guardian of the 1940s and the fathers of the new Newsboy Legion. (If you’re dead, you’re fair game.) The rival Evil Factory uses the same methods, only to breed monsters and manual laborers; there is one telling panel showing human slaves carting around equipment. “Even as the A-bomb began a new era for man, this Project may begin a new history!” Superman proclaims. “...The genetic code has been broken, Jimmy! The DNA molecule has given up its secret!— The secret of life itself! ...Human beings like yourself can now be produced from an individual cell!” The Evil Factory hurls an army of multi-armed “D.N.Aliens” at the Project; Superman lures them to their deaths in the nuclear explosion of the Project’s reactor. (Technology vs. technology.) The second DNA story arc plays out from JO #144-146 (late 1971 to early 1972): Sent to Scotland to investigate a Loch Ness-like monster, Olsen and his Newsboy Legion pals find that the hidden Evil Factory has been leaking creatures all over the Gaelic countryside. (“Monsters are all we’ve seen of late!” a police inspector cries. “...Every day the woods yield some new wonder!”) It turns out the Evil Factory has been experimenting with “gene regression” to produce prehistoric animals caged in electric pens; everything is in stock, it seems, but Crichton’s velociraptors. Darkseid’s experimenters quickly regress Olsen to a ferocious, freckled caveman who wrecks the place, and the Jack’s pencils for the first page of the DNAlien back-up story in Jimmy Olsen #142.
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RANDY HOPPE: Sure. Surprints.
Mondo Kirby
KIRBY: Right. So if you wanted a halftone, it was just a series of dots. Really. If you analyze it and put it under a microscope, you’ve got these dots spread all the way out. Put ’em together and you get a nice halftone. In other words, it isn’t black, it isn’t white, but it’ll look great on pants! (laughter) So yes, I believe we had our own technology, but it was a simple technology.
A previously-unpublished interview with Jack Kirby, by Randy Hoppe and Andrew Mayer Randy Hoppe explains: “In the early Nineties I was an avid consumer of Mondo 2000, a wildly glossy magazine filled with digital eye-candy, day-glo tressed and tattooed models draped in computer gear, and techno-hippie political screeds. The folks who published Mondo 2000 from their communal home in the San Francisco Bay area were inspired by the science-fiction novels of Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, the punk DIY ethic, and the seemingly non-stop advances in computer graphics, virtual reality, and smart drug technology. These people seemed to me, at the time, to be the embodiment of some of the future people I’d read about in comic books. “I was also beginning my travels in cyberspace and became a member of a San Francisco-based conferencing system called The Well, run by the folks who published the Whole Earth Review. Mondo 2000 soon had its own forum on The Well, and one Well-ite made mention of some of the concepts in The Eternals. Our discussion of Kirby’s work went on—his use of Virtual Reality in OMAC, the bio-engineering of Arnim Zola and the High Evolutionary—and one of the editors posted that his interest was piqued and that perhaps there was an article in it. Eventually Andrew Mayer, a writer and programmer, pitched the article to the editorial tribunal and got an OK. Andrew and I felt this was a great opportunity to meet and interview Kirby, so Andrew made arrangements with the Kirbys to meet at that Summer’s San Diego Comic-Con. It was my first San Diego Con, and I was going to interview the King! Life was good! “Once the interview started, I didn’t really get a word in edgewise, but Andrew asked the right Mondo-like questions, and Jack took it from there! We submitted the article, including some quotes, but it wasn’t published. We were told one of the editorial tribunal didn’t really like comics. Go figure—Neil Gaiman and Dave Sim were later featured in the mag.”
MAYER: For instance, the Micro-Mark you were talking about in the Hunger Dogs book; Darkseid had come up with this new technology that was going to change...! KIRBY: Yes, I was trying to stay 30 years ahead. I always try to stay about 30 years ahead doing my stories. In other words, I wouldn’t write a story about things people already knew. MAYER: I came across something that blew my mind in OMAC where
14 August 1992: The Kirbys’ hotel room ANDREW MAYER: I was reading the Hunger Dogs last night and I was really blown away with the way in that book that you were dealing with issues. You were taking some of the issues you were dealt with earlier and then saying what’s happening now—what’s changed now. JACK KIRBY: What’s changed now is that storytelling has changed. Like you said, you talk about technology—we don’t write on pads anymore. We write on computers, we write on word processors. Actually, our language may be crisper and maybe a little more urgent. Maybe we’re just not as leisurely as we used to be. MAYER: Have you noticed a change in the way people...? KIRBY: No, it’s not a great change. People remain people through all kinds of technologies. Sure, we had technology, too. We called ’em pencils, and we tried for effects, even with pencils. We tried for halftones. Didn’t we have Ben-day?
Original pencils from the Fighting American poster sold with the Kirby Masterworks portfolio. 7
away by the concepts presented in each issue and in its corresponding titles. Then came Jimmy Olsen #139, featuring a typical Kirby cover— not even counting the required logo, it contained 60 words of hype by Michal Jacot and dialogue, as though the story inside was bursting from the inside pages. But what was going on here? In the midst of awesome, starou want to know what my favorite Jack Kirby story of all time is? spanning tales of grandeur, here was a Kirby rendering of Don Rickles With a history of work spanning decades in comics, creating some holding a caricature of Don Rickles. This issue got my 15¢ just for the of the most incredible and enduring characters ever seen, I’m bizarreness of this scene, and I don’t even like Don Rickles. ashamed to admit it. The story centered around a race-against-time to find an antidote Yes, I am the guy who likes the “Goody Rickels” story. for a poison Jimmy and the gang had ingested. Jack did this type of The two-parter from Jimmy Olsen #139 and #141 (sliced neatly in story wonderfully, pacing it just right to give a sense of urgency akin half by a Giant issue in #140) took me by surprise. I’d had about six to the old movie serials and action flicks. However, this story had months to acclimate myself to Jack’s work on this series, being blown something in it that I hadn’t seen in others: A lot of really weird humor. Goody Rickels, a Don Rickles lookalike, talks to Morgan Edge and the two have some of the goofiest lines I’ve ever read in comics. When Goody is told he has a big heart, he responds with: “Nature gave me a small liver—but a big, big heart!” Edge, after being in the same room with Rickels for only moments, thinks, “The solution is obvious! This man must be killed!” The fast-paced story is laced with humor, and it’s not just funny humor. It’s bizarre, strange, offbeat humor. The second part in #141 was cool because it helped me lord something over a friend of mine. I had mentioned to him that my two favorite comics artists were Jack Kirby and Neal Adams, and that I’d love to see what Adams’ inks would look like on Kirby’s pencils. He sniffed, “That’ll never happen. Their styles don’t mesh. It would look horrible.” Well, #141’s cover gave me just that combination, and it looked pretty damn good—not that I would have ever expected to see a dramatic picture of Superman and the Guardian rushing towards me carrying a large photograph of Don Rickles, but the cover only served to keep the eccentric quality of the story going full steam. Besides, it said, “Don’t ask, just buy it.” It’s bad luck to ignore warnings on comic books, you know. And that’s why it’s my favorite story. It was as though Jack was weaving this wonderful intergalactic tale full of awesome characters, and then right in the middle of it he said, “Okay folks, we’re going to put a hold on all the awesomeness for a couple of issues here and I’m going to have some real weird, lighthearted fun.” It was like watching a Shakespearean play and being shown a Three Stooges video during intermission. I’d almost bet Jack chuckled to himself as he wrote and drew this stuff. Then, after this strange interlude, he went back to the cosmic saga. Okay, so now it’s out. I am the guy who got a kick out of Goody Rickels’ fifteen minutes of fame. It just makes me wonder what Jack would have done with Jim Carrey.★ Don’t worry, Michal; we like him too! Pencils from Jimmy Olsen #139.
Oh, Goody!
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TJKC: Did you own any Kirby comics? BRUCE: When I was a kid, I probably didn’t own a single Kirby comic— there’s not one that I can remember. When I was thirteen, there was this guy on the street that had a drawer full of comics his cousin had given him and he said, “You want ’em?” I said, “Sure!” He had just a little bit of everything: Kirby reprints, the legendary Silver Surfer #6, and a whole bunch of other stuff—mostly Marvel from around 1972. One of them was a Marvel’s Greatest Comics reprint with the first Black Panther story. That probably was actually the first Kirby comic I ever got. Actually in the same drawer full of comics there were a couple of Mister Miracles and the Demon, so that kinda put the zap on my head.
Bruce Timm Interviewed by George Khoury with Pedro Khoury III (He is the backbone of The Batman and Superman Adventures and the new animated show Batman: Beyond. His long Emmy award-winning animation career began somewhat by accident; what he really wanted to be was a comic book artist. So this man, along with his partner-in-crime Paul Dini, created the Eisner and Harvey award-winning comic book, The Batman Adventures: Mad Love. If you’ve enjoyed his work, you would have long noted the Kirby influence within him and how he’s kept the King’s memory alive on the small screen. From Jack’s in-your-face action in Batman to Kirby’s massive armory collection in Superman—it’s all so very Jack Kirby, yet so very much a part of Bruce Timm.)
TJKC: Is there any artistic image that comes to you when you think of Kirby? BRUCE: Not really. I don’t know how he did so many things and did them all so well. He did stuff that nobody would have considered doing, especially at Marvel in the Sixties.
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What are your artistic influences? BRUCE TIMM: Well, mostly comic book guys. (laughter) Obviously Kirby is a huge influence on me, but I’ve gone through phases where I was really into one artist or another at a different time. Frazetta, Toth, Kurtzman, and a lot of Marvel guys—John Buscema was my god for the longest time. Silver Surfer #6 was my bible; I used to trace the whole book over and over again.
TJKC: What do you think made his art so unique? BRUCE: Well again, you could really focus on the action and the fantastic elements that stick out: The zig-zaggy lines, the fantastic machinery, and everything else. A lot of that is wonderful stuff—it’s stuff that I kinda appropriated into my own comic book work—but the wonderful thing about Kirby is he was a born storyteller; he could make anything look interesting even if he didn’t have super-heroes to play with. It’s funny; one of the guys and I just the other day were looking at an issue of Justice Inc. he did. You could tell it was at the end of his tenure at DC and he didn’t really give a sh*t about it. The Fourth World had already gone away and Kamandi was about the only thing
TJKC: Alex Ross described your style as part Alex Toth, part Jack Kirby. BRUCE: Yeah, I guess that’s true. It’s a funny thing about Alex Toth; I never really tried to sit down and copy what he did—never sat down and learned to draw from looking at his stuff. To this day, I’ve never understood the key that makes his stuff so wonderful. Everyone thinks his stuff is just really simple, but it isn’t. He’s one of the finest draftsman to ever work in the business. If you really look at his drawing, they’re photographically sound—very realistic—but somehow when he does the ink and the cleanup, he puts this thin cartoony line on it that kinda reduces everything to a real simplistic formula; but the underlying drawing is really complex. So when people say they see a lot of Toth in my work, I don’t really know what they are responding to; maybe it’s just the simplicity of it.
Bruce’s inks of a Kirby pencil drawing.
TJKC: Which art school did you attend? BRUCE: I never went to art school. I’m completely self-taught. I learned how to draw from drawing Silver Surfer #6 over and over again. (laughter) Basically I learned how to draw from copying comic books, literally. My parents were always very supportive of me. They said, “Well, if you wanna be an artist that’s fine, but we understand that it’s kind of a risky business, and maybe you should have something to fall back on.” When I went to college, I foolishly didn’t go to art school; I just went to regular college. Fortunately college gave up on me about the same time I gave up on college. TJKC: When was the first time you saw Kirby’s artwork? BRUCE: It had to have been in the Sixties, without knowing who Jack Kirby was or anything. I was too young to really appreciate it. I was born in ’61; you can do the math. When I was younger, we didn’t really have a lot of comic books in the house; we weren’t poor, but we weren’t well-to-do. I would only get comics occasionally when I was sick. My mom would get me some comics to get my mind off being sick and things like that. My allowance was only twenty five cents a week (laughter), so I really couldn’t afford comic books. But I’d see all the super-hero shows on TV like Batman and Space Ghost, and the Marvel cartoons. The very first time I saw Jack Kirby was probably the Marvel Super-Heroes Show: An adaptation of the first Sleeper story they did in Captain America. They just took still images from the comics and put them on cels and just kinda pulled the background. Occasionally, they’d animate an arm; but I loved those films when I was a kid. 17
An unfinished drawing—possibly an animation piece—done by Jack. This original was approximately 20" x 15".
and do them properly in a mass medium for them to have a super-huge popularity. Even Captain America is a fiftyyear-old property, but I think that if it was done well—it could totally kick butt. He’s timeless.
TJKC: He’s sort of like Batman but he represents “hope.” BRUCE: Yeah, he’s actually 180 degrees away from Batman. What’s cool about Captain America is that he’s the living symbol of America, so he can be kind of “gosh,” “wow,” and pure and innocent, without being corny. Superman’s kinda corny if you treat him too much like a boy scout, but Captain America—not only is he the embodiment of America but he’s also a soldier. So he’s polite but he’s a killer fighter too. Captain America is a great, great character; no doubt.
just gravitated to when I was a kid. The first comics that I ever had were Superman and Batman comics and I liked them, but then my brother brought home a Ditko Spider-Man and it totally put a zap on me. I saw this Spider-Man cover— it was Spider-Man and the Lizard—and the colors were really dark and even Spider-Man was dark and creepy. I immediately knew that these characters had more of an edge to them than the Superman characters. All the DC characters are brightly colorful and really polite to each other and they like solving nice little mysteries, and the Marvel characters just have this zing to them that the DC characters didn’t have. If I had my way, I’d be doing cartoons of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and all that stuff that I grew up on. That’s the stuff I love the most. But unfortunately, the people who are doing the Marvel cartoons—I don’t think they’d let me make the cartoons the way I would want to do them. The beautiful thing about Warner Brothers is that they hire us to do these shows and then they back off and let us do it. They have faith in our abilities and they literally don’t give us any trouble. Also they spend money to do the show correctly; that’s another problem with the Marvel cartoons. They just do it too cheap. They don’t spend the money that we do here at Warner Brothers, so the animation quality is not as good.
TJKC: And finally, what’s your beef with Thor? On your website, you’ve done drawings of Thor getting the daylights kicked out of him by virtually every super-hero in existence. BRUCE: Here’s how that came about. At the time of the Batman show, we’d often have a discussion—Who’s your favorite Kirby inker? Who’s your favorite Kirby character?—which is a typical fanboyish thing. Kevin Alteri, the director, was going on at one point saying how he thought that Thor was the peak of Jack’s career. I was like, “Yeah, Thor is really, really good, but there’s something really great about those New Gods comics.” Kevin was like, “New Gods is nothing compared to Thor. They’re not really as good.” On one hand, yeah, they’re not quite as perfect as the Thor comics but they’re great to look at. You can’t beat that Royer inking! He’s like, “Nah, the Colletta stuff is the best.” He was actually saying that. So I did this one drawing of Orion beating up on Thor, and I inked Thor “Colletta style” and I inked Orion “Royer style,” and that was the first drawing I did. I basically ended up doing a whole series of all these other Kirby characters beating up on Thor because that was Kevin’s favorite character. That’s all it was about; I have nothing against Thor. I love the Thor comics.★
TJKC: So how long do you think the Kirby mystique will be around? BRUCE: I don’t know. It’s kind of sad to me that kids nowadays think Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and all these guys are the top of the form. You show them a Kirby comic and Kirby looks old-fashioned to them, which is weird to me ’cause I love those primo Fantastic Fours and Thors. I think, “My God, this stuff is totally state-of-the-art!” Nobody had ever done anything like this and they still haven’t! But I don’t know. I wish I could say that Kirby’s gonna be around forever; I don’t know if he will. TJKC: Yet it surely seems that with the Fourth World and everything else, he’s created a mythology that could stand for a while. BRUCE: Well yeah, just look at all the stuff he created for Marvel, too. The Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and all that stuff; those are still some excellent concepts. It basically just takes somebody to come along
Apokolips and New Genesis soldiers do battle, by Bruce Timm. 22
How I Caught The Mythology Bug From Thor By Eddie Campbell, award-winning artist of Bacchus and From Hell ’ve been drawing Bacchus, my irreverent take on Greek mythology, for some ten years now but have never had the opportunity to recognize, for the record, the source of my inspiration for it—namely a run of half a dozen issues of Thor: #124-130. This was the unforgettable meeting of Thor and Hercules in the first half of 1966. I was ten years old. I would have first come across the story in Fantastic, one of five weekly comics published by Odhams Press re-packaging Marvel material in black-&-white for British readers. Most of my generation discovered Marvel this way (ask Moore, Gibbons, etc.) between ’63 and ’69, and we were able to familiarize ourselves with the black-&-white inking techniques of the likes of Colletta at a time when you guys in the US were not able to. (I’ve never understood the volume of dislike for Colletta’s inking. For me he was the only inker for Thor. Where Sinnott created a surface that was glossy and futuristic, Colletta’s work—equally individualistic and accomplished in its own way— was matte and rustic, the perfect complement to the Thor style with all its lovable cockeyed antiquities. Moreover, Sinnott has his stylistic descendants— Royer, etc.—while Colletta’s style defies analysis. The brush and pen lines themselves do not add up to that particular matte look. For comparison, see Kubert’s deliberate rendering of a coarse surface in DC’s Firehair, with his use of drybrush and crayon.) Lee and Kirby were just getting into those everyday-life touches that make their work from this period so special. Thus #124 kicks off with a big splash of Thor stopping to pick up a newspaper on a New York street corner. We talk about ‘storyarcs’ nowadays, but back then I think the model was the TV soap opera, with a whole bunch of story-threads interweaving, phasing in and out. Thor goes off to the Far East to tie up a loose end regarding a lost Nornstone, while on Mount Olympus a new thread is introduced when Zeus sends his son Hercules to Earth. While the Far East plot gives us the monthly dose of action, the scenes of Hercules just being hedonistic are a thrill to see. Hercules is a delightful Lee-Kirby character interpretation; a big, bluff, lovable hunk of granite who makes Thor a tight-assed prima donna.
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Hercules: “Though the words be strange, the tone is unmistakable! And worse, they interrupt my madrigal.” Another great thing about the Lee-Kirby style, which I find joyously funny now, is the way the battle of 1966 is set up. In one of their typical oddball coincidences, Hercules is wooing Jane Foster. JANE: “That large, powerful figure in the center of the crowd! It can only be Thor! I must get to him...” right at the point where Thor returns to Earth. THOR: “Jane! I have returned” JANE: “Really? I forgot you had been away!” THOR: “How came you to be here with HIM?” The crucial thing I learned from these guys is that you can be funny
COP: “Let’s see your license to give a public demonstration in the street.” THOR: “License? I have no license. I am THOR.” COP: “I don’t care if you’re Mother Hubbard,” etc. What confidence, eh?—to make your title character come off second-best to another hero. While Hercules wows the girls in a restaurant (#125), the plot is set in motion by a Hollywood movie scout. “Now, get this, J.B. I spotted just the one we’re looking for! He’ll make the greatest Hercules ever filmed.” When hold-up men bust into the restaurant, Stan Lee’s daft anachronisms can only add to the charm of the scene.
Volstagg debuts in this back-up story from Journey Into Mystery #119; the humor was pure Kirby. 23
his started out simply enough; I was reading FF Annual #3 when I noticed on page 2 that Doctor Doom wasn’t using his hands to operate his machine. The owner of the original art was nice enough to send me a copy and upon viewing, my suspicions were confirmed. Kirby’s margin notes had Doom still recovering from his battle with the Thing in FF #40, so he couldn’t fully use his hands yet. To Kirby, this was the reason Doom used a machine to attempt to ruin the wedding. Lee, however, ignored this totally in favor of high drama, thereby changing Kirby’s reasoning for Doom’s motive. Thus Lee has Doom using the machine as a grand gesture of revenge and contempt; Kirby had him use it because he couldn’t attack the FF personally. There are many examples of art and dialogue not meshing correctly in the Kirby/Lee books. Some may cite the “Marvel Method” of producing the books as the reason. There are small examples in the early years, becoming more noticeable in the books produced between ’64-’70, books where Kirby was pretty much plotting the stories on his own. This also helps to explain why there are so many more Kirby margin notes on the art from this period. Once Kirby had his story established on paper, he sent it to Lee, who as editor and dialogue writer would keep what he considered essential (or couldn’t change because the accompanying visuals were too obvious to alter through dialogue) and change what he wished for reasons of drama, continuity, or whatever his intention was at the time. With this in mind, we begin a series of articles showcasing stories and/or separate examples of art and words not mixing correctly; or one man’s view of the story differing from the other’s. We are not attempting to prove that either man was right or wrong, or deserved more credit than the other; it is simply an ongoing dissertation of facts that will be presented for you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions from. Of course, we hope you enjoy it as well. Before going further, I would advise you to read the accompanying story of the origin of the Inhumans by Kirby/Lee. First read it using Jack’s margin notes only, as this is how Kirby intended the story to go and how Lee received it before making changes. Then go over the story again, this time reading Lee’s dialogue. Then if you wish, go back to this article where my opinions are. I want the reader to draw their own conclusions before reading mine. (continued on third page following)
A Failure To Communicate: Part One T by Mike Gartland
The five-page origin of the Inhumans, from Thor #147. Read it first using only Jack’s margin notes, then again using Stan’s dialogue, and you’ll see the difference. 36
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magazine started to get very popular and it began to come out every two weeks. In 1938, I started to read it and I read every issue back to 1932. In those days they had a million stores that did nothing except sell back issues. I read most of Doc Savage, some of Operator 5 (but I wasn’t terribly interested), some of the Spider, G-8. That was when I was twelve years old.
Gil Kane on Jack Kirby Interviewed by Jon B. Cooke (Gil Kane is, along with Joe Kubert, Will Eisner, and Alex Toth, one of the grand old masters of comics, having started in the early years of the industry. Born Eli Katz, he worked as a “mediocre” artist (his words) until virtually reinventing himself in dynamic fashion in the mid-1950s. He is best known for his work on DC’s Green Lantern, but has drawn remarkable stints on Spider-Man, Superman, Warlock, and his own creations, Blackmark and His Name Is… Savage. After nearly 60 years in the business(!), Gil continues to be a notable creative force in the field—and a frank and passionate commentator on the history of the art form. This interview, which occasionally switches subjects in midstream, was conducted via telephone on August 24 and 29, 1998.)
TJKC: Did you immediately recognize the potential of “Superman”? GIL: Sure. I was very excited about “Superman.” And it wasn’t just “Superman”; Siegel & Shuster were my favorite creative team in comics. There was “Slam Bradley,” “Spy,” and “Radio Squad.” In 1937, they did “Dr. Occult.” I followed them but didn’t realize that what I liked about them was that Shuster was a very watered-down version of Roy Crane and that “Superman” was influenced by Captain Easy. TJKC: When did you first recognize Jack Kirby’s work? GIL: The first time I saw his stuff was the third issue of Blue Bolt. He did the Red Raven cover for Joe Simon. Bits and pieces of Jack and Joe appeared in different things; and, of course, when they started Captain America and settled in at Marvel. TJKC: When did you realize that Jack had a unique style? GIL: Right from the first. In fact, the early stuff (as raw as it was) was even better than his last stuff because later he became so mannered and abstract. The figures became bigger and bigger, and they couldn’t be contained by a single panel or even a single page—eventually he had to have two pages and still he could barely get a picture in!
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Did Jack change over the years Gil circa 1975. that you knew him? GIL KANE: It was the same Jack thirty years later at Marvel as when he started. At Marvel, he was more refined but it was essentially the same thing. He had the same basic approaches to machinery, to action, and to the figure. Actually to tell you the truth, he lost a little when he got more and more into it. When he was doing the early Captain Americas, “Hurricane,” and Blue Bolt, he was doing figures that were the envy of everybody. The figures had a great spontaneity and naturalism, but years later he got it to the point that it became just the idea of a figure. Time gave him more power but it also took away from the meaningful quality of his work, as far as I was concerned. But none of us were geniuses and he held forth for 30 or 40 years as one of the ranking guys. He made some money and now he’s seen as practically a religious figure. What else can you want?
TJKC: Do you think there was a change in his psyche as he got older? GIL: Sure. He used to do many panels to a page with everything proportionate—there was a lot of air around the figures. Then, when he really started getting out there in the ’70s, the amount of space around the figures became less and less until finally each head would fill up a panel. He would do only four panels to a page. This is nothing against Jack; first of all, Jack was getting older and second, he was enjoying a degree of fame that was unusual for a comic book artist. I felt that he thought what he put
TJKC: In many ways, for me, you come closest in your sense of action and your figures. GIL: There were many others. I always liked two things: Power and grace. I couldn’t think of one without the other. When I was a kid, I loved gymnastics (even though I was too big for it—but I was a good track man), and I loved ballet and dancing. I used to go to the ballet regularly from the time I was in my early twenties, and I loved Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire—that was my whole world. If I went to a Broadway musical, I would light up like a bulb! I was living at the height of my pleasure and satisfaction. So that’s what I would try to bring to the material. I was always fair at horses even when I couldn’t draw them; but I could feel horses. I had to learn how to draw them so I could put my feeling into them. There are a lot of guys who can draw a horse but they don’t have any life or vitality. TJKC: You’ve mentioned to me that you read AmazingMan Comics as a kid. Were you reading comics for entertainment when you were in your teens? GIL: I don’t think that kids have a concept of entertainment; they read for pleasure. I would read comic strips as a kid; in school I read Dr. Doolittle, Tom Sawyer—that was good—and I also started reading pulps. The Shadow came out in 1932 as a monthly, heavily promoted by a radio program starring Orson Welles. The
A recent Kane drawing of a Kirby classic, Captain America.
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sort of low key, understated. When a person would come out to greet you, they spoke in understated tones. You took your hat off before you went in there. That’s where I first met Joe Kubert. TJKC: What was Tudor City like? GIL: It was a luxury apartment building that must have been hot stuff in the late ’20s. It just absolutely screams Art Deco. There was a special entrance: You had to drive in on a special street, and if you walked, you had to go over a foot bridge. It was almost like a walk across a moat just to get there. It was right where the United Nations building is today. Jack and Joe took an apartment that had one large room, bathroom, and a small kitchen behind some closet doors. It couldn’t have cost too much to rent; the building was coming out of the Depression. (But when I came out of the Army, you couldn’t get in there for the love of money! It became one of the tightest places in the world to get into.) TJKC: Letterer Howard Ferguson was there? GIL: Howard and a guy named Charles Nicholas who was a penciler for Fox (I think he did the Blue Beetle). He and Jack and Joe had some arrangement that wherever Simon & Kirby went, there was Charlie Nicholas inking their stuff. Jack would turn out so much work! TJKC: What were your job duties with S&K? GIL: Mine was penciling. I would try to turn out a job every week or so. [They were] 12-page stories. I was copying—tracing—Jack’s work.
Page one of Jack’s Prisoner adaptation, inked by Royer. Gil did his own rejected version of the series.
TJKC: What was the relationship between Joe and Jack at the time? GIL: Joe was involved in the creative process and he was the one who made all the deals. Joe would ink all the splashes and occasionally he would pencil a job and ink it. He didn’t write—it was Jack who wrote. Jack would either write a script or get one and adjust it as he saw fit.
TJKC: Was [writer France] Ed Herron up there much? GIL: I never saw Ed but they had a whole bunch of writers. They had four strips they had to do—“Manhunter,” “Boy Commandos,” the Guardian [“The Newsboy Legion”], and “Sandman.”
down on paper would do. I saw it in the animation presentations and his comic book work. Ultimately his stuff was so uneven that I felt it was not something he was deliberately doing, but just something that was happening to him. There was the decline that happens to most artists sooner or later. Age usually neutralizes most people.
TJKC: What was Jack like? GIL: We were friendly but not intimates. He may have been more open with others. He was like an accountant: Always chewing on his cigar and always working. When you looked at his taboret, it was just littered with dozens of No. 2 pencil stubs. He would just wear them down, put ’em aside, until ultimately there was a logjam on top of his board! They would build up so quickly. It was a soft pencil and I never knew the guy to use up less than five pencils a day. Very often he would go through one an hour! He would just wear the pencils down, talking while he was working. He would talk everyday stuff, nothing of consequence—I came away with no bits of wisdom. Mostly Jack saw himself as the star of his own work. When guys came along like Frank Frazetta or Neal Adams, he’d never say what was obvious: That both of those guys, in different ways, were sensational.
TJKC: Your first professional job was with MLJ [later Archie Comics]. Editor John Beardsley recommended you as an art assistant to Joe Simon? GIL: After I was with MLJ for about six months and out of work for awhile, Beardsley recommended me to Joe. He was close to Joe. TJKC: Do you remember going down to Simon & Kirby’s Tudor City art studio? Did you bring a portfolio? GIL: Of course. You always had a portfolio because that was the only way to get work. I can’t tell you how many times, from fifteen onward, when I would end up in DC’s waiting room with my portfolio. Murray Boltinoff usually came out. It was like a cathedral. TJKC: Who did that legendary six-foot-tall painting of Superman [which hung in the waiting room]? GIL: I never knew. Even though it wasn’t the biggest room at DC, it was the most impressive because it was simple. You walked in and saw this six-foot portrait of Superman (I don’t think they lighted it in any special way—it just looked that way). There was a little window with a receptionist behind it. There were couches and everything was
TJKC: So he saw them as competition? GIL: I think that he saw everybody as competition; that was the thing that finally dawned on me. It was Jack against the world. TJKC: Was Jack one to ever look back at the printed comics? GIL: I don’t know, but I know one thing: He had practically everything 41
makes the Surfer’s (re)turn to humanism in defying Galactus look somewhat arbitrary. To be sure, Kirby’s idea of the character is intriguing and novel in its implications: On a metaphorical level it appears to heroicize generational rebellion and disobedience of deities (the former an interesting inversion of what many people Kirby’s age were then feeling; the latter a compelling contradiction of the Genesis story all Westerners are taught). But there is little reason to assume that he would have emphasized or expanded upon these themes had he been at the helm of a Surfer series, while in fact the generational perspective was well explored in his Fourth World books, and the theological one in The Eternals’ Forgotten One character. So the re-creation of the Surfer in Lee’s image is another Kirby reversal not to mourn. Both this and the Prisoner affair should rather be appreciated as two of the few exceptions proving the rule of a career with a remarkable percentage of right moves.★
Kirby Fans’ Wackiest Causes? by Adam McGovern
his issue’s affectionate look at Kirby’s “warts and all”—regardless of his oeuvre’s vast disproportion of “all” to “warts”—is a suitable occasion for remembering not to let our acknowledgment of his general genius cloud our recognition of his occasional fallibility. Specifically, higher-ups’ reversals of Kirby were almost always folly, but two of the ones most hotly contested by Kirby fans were actually well-advised. They involve those two legends of Kirby’s canon, the beloved Silver Surfer character and the aborted Prisoner adaptation. First of all, though I love The Prisoner and I love Kirby’s work, he was not the right artist for the comic book version. Kirby’s known pencils for the book look stiff and un-nuanced, as if he’s struggling with material all too unidealized for the artist he had long since become. (This is an assessment which Stan Lee accurately made as early as Spider-Man’s debut— from which Kirby was legendarily pulled for too heroic a portrayal of Lee’s envisioned “super schnook”—though not years later with The Prisoner.) The starkness and surrealism of which a Jim Steranko or Paul Gulacy was capable (literally, in the case of Gulacy’s visuals for Don McGregor’s Prisoner-esque Sabre graphic novel) would have been most suitable (even though Steranko himself championed Kirby’s cause at the time). The book’s shelving was not the misfortune many see it as. Secondly, whatever frustration we all may feel over the disproportionate credit Lee has gotten for characters and stories co-created with the King, not nearly enough appreciation is given to a Lee-devised conception of the Silver Surfer character which is frankly superior to Kirby’s. Lee’s admission that Kirby solely created the character is axiomatic, and no doubt a reason for Fox TV’s Surfer cartoon series being the first Marvel product to bear a “Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby” line in quite some time. But the two men’s conflict of ideas for the character’s development is equally well known. Lee, of course, saw the Surfer as a restless soul who bargains his freedom for his own planet’s survival; Kirby saw him as a full-blown creation of the planet-threatening Galactus, against whom he eventually rebels. Lee’s version had epic pathos in its tale of Norrin Radd’s sacrifice, tragic symmetry in the would-be adventurer’s getting what he wished for while losing all he had, and narrative tension in the trials that followed. Though perhaps melodramatic to contemporary eyes, it set the standard for the “serious” superhero comics which would follow from the likes of McGregor, Steve Gerber and Jim Starlin—and arguably Kirby himself. In comparison, Kirby’s version seems a facile, fairy tale-like contrivance, and Without dialogue, we see Jack’s version of the Surfer as a creation wholly of Galactus, in the SS Graphic Novel.
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face barely seen above its ground shelter. And each time this happens, the view of that helmeted head grows larger in the field of view, so that the rise of some terrible emotion can be registered in reaction to what is taking place. The audience is watching young MORGAN MILLER, twenty-five years of age and in sudden confrontation with the outrage of war. He is our principal character. And, he carries within his gene structure an extraordinary biological scenario. Like information fed to a computer, violent emotion initiates the activation of this strange process, which must run its course, comparable to a natural reflex. MORGAN MILLER is not an ordinary guy. His is not an ordinary anger. When his emotions peak, they trigger a white flash in his brain which spreads like an electrical storm to the other parts of his body. White flashes erupt in dramatic succession in his vital centers until the interior of his body seethes with pyrotechnic effect. This is the moment when MORGAN MILLER earns his Silver Star, a military decoration won by many men before him, but never in the manner peculiar to MORGAN MILLER alone. He is suddenly galvanized into action. His entire body glows like a newly-stoked furnace and a radiating nimbus effect has outlined him in motion. MORGAN looks like a comet gone berserk. In the face of devastating cannon fire, he flings his rifle away and races directly at the enemy. Morgan’s squad looks on in disbelief as he suffers two hits with heavy caliber stuff which ricochets off his body. MORGAN is staggered but seemingly unhurt. He resumes his run and reaches the closest tank. MORGAN seizes the steel monster with one hand and throws it at the tanks behind it. The camera catches it arching through the air as it lands upon another tank in an explosive gush of sound and flame and twisted metal. The last we see of MORGAN in this scene is his attempt to smother the flames from his burning clothes. He writhes and rolls in a paroxysm generated by the war and his own maturing body. The scene dissolves as he lies panting on the ground, face up, eyes closed, mouth open; the charred, smoking fabric of his clothes has peeled away from his heaving chest to reveal not a wound suffered in this astounding action. ★★★★★ The film’s storyline officially begins at this point. The logo and list of credits pass across a large dramatic shot of MORGAN MILLER, positioned to be fitted with the silver suit and helmet he will wear throughout the film. (See accompanying drawings for design.) MORGAN is given the unique outfit by people off-screen. Represented by their hands alone, these helpers aid him in this dressing ritual, tugging, tightening, running fingers expertly to mold fabric to contour, and finally bringing the gleaming silver helmet into view. As it is placed and secured to MORGAN’s head, the credits have run their course and the scene is enlarged to reveal MORGAN’s immediate surroundings. He is the lone occupant of an isolation ward supervised by COLONEL WALTER HAMMER, M.D., who stands by as ward men complete the job on MORGAN. The medics are in a jovial mood. They treat MORGAN as if he was some awesome company mascot. They call him SILVER STAR and make reference to the symbol of that decoration which has been embossed on the suit. They also indicate that MORGAN is the subject
Silver Star, Super-Hero! The Original Screenplay © Jack Kirby and Steve Sherman (Like Captain Victory, the concept of Silver Star began in the mid-1970s as a movie screenplay by Jack and Steve Sherman. This first draft story treatment was initially submitted on March 11, 1977 (WGAW Reg. #166408). As you’ll see, the final comics series was based on it, but this original version helps to flesh out some of the characterizations that were missing from the comic. Our thanks to Steve Sherman for sharing this with us.) he film opens with a small, bright spot on an empty screen. It is the image of a pretty girl, which is enlarged with a smooth rapidity in view of the audience, until it attains a reasonable level of clarity. She’s a lovely brunette, with a round, serene face which bears slight traces of concern. She is young (no more than 20 or 22 years of age). She looks at the audience, searchingly—seeking but not finding. Her face is beautiful in sadness, but even more so, as she hides it with a cool grace. This is KATHY LORRAINE, who shares the love of the film’s principal character, MORGAN MILLER. KATHY is a special person who has the ability to transmit her image via mental projection. This ability is as natural to her as flexing a limb. And, in the uncanny refinements of this facility, there are spin-offs which provide an ample variety of effects, both spectacular and innovative. (Girl faces audience in entire cameo) KATHY says, “I don’t know where you are, Morgan. I’ve been reaching out to you, but you haven’t responded.” She lowers her eyes as the sadness returns. When it’s been replaced by some sort of resolve, she again raises her head. “But, I understand, Morgan,” she continues. “I-I just hope—well—” she pauses, trying to maintain her composure. “Well—as soon as you can, Morgan, please reach out to me. I’ve written a song for your birthday, and I’m projecting it on the slim chance that you may hear it—I love you, Morgan...” The girl begins to fade in a sort of electrical display as the music starts. And, as she dissolves to make way for the succeeding scene, the music remains to flow across the action which follows. The song should be synchronized to end when the action is over. ★★★★★ This scene follows, with the view of a beleaguered American position on a chewed-up landscape in Vietnam. The camera sweeps the field like a swiveling cannon (which it is) and catches the reaction of the dug-in riflemen to the intensity of action during the height of a tank attack. Some of the men cower in their holes, others fire; a few break cover and leap into the open to escape the murderous cannon fire. Attention is drawn to the lead tank—the bouncing, crunching, relentless forward movement of its treads—the crusty, primeval effect of its armor—and above all, its coughing cannon which seeks out its victims and blasts them out of the soil. Each time the gun spits, a man dies. Bodies take aimless flight, performing crazy acrobatics in the light of cruel, red flashes which dissolve in oily smoke. And each time this happens, the camera quickly shifts to one
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