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68-PAGE ISSUE SPOTLIGHTING KIRBY’S 1970S MARVEL WO RK!
ISSUE #29, AUG. 2000 Feature-Length Unpublished Interview with
Jack and Roz Kirby As they discuss their early years together
Keith Giffen & Rich Buckler Talk about the Kirby influence on their 1970s work
Mike Gartland’s
A Failure To Communicate 1970s Marvel
Cover Gallery showing Jack’s uninked pencils
Kirby’s trials & Tribulations At
1970s Marvel Art From
Machine Man Black Panther Capt. America Devil Dinosaur Eternals And others
The Debut Of A
New Regular Column examining Comics influenced by The King
Unpublished Art including published pages Befo re They Were Inked, And Much Mo re!! Avengers and related characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.
C o l l e c t o r
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS STORIES BY THE INDUSTRY’S TOP TALENT. TM
SERGIO ARAGONÉS
PAUL CHADWICK
WALTER SIMONSON
RICK VEITCH
ROY THOMAS & JOHN SEVERIN
©2000 Barr y Windsor-S mith
JACK KIRBY
BRENT ANDERSON
GRAY MORROW
FEATURING “UFO POV”, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH’S FIRST NEW COMICS STORY SINCE 1997! ALSO FEATURES: JACK KIRBY’S CLASSIC “STREET CODE” COMPLETELY REMASTERED, ART SPIEGELMAN’S ORIGINAL SHORT STORY “MAUS”, & MORE! JOE KUBERT • EVAN DORKIN • BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH
NICK CARDY
160-PAGE TRADE PAPERBACK NOW SHIPPING • PAINTED COVER BY STEVE RUDE FOREWORD BY WILL EISNER • $19.95 ($23 CANADA, $30 ELSEWHERE)
TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom. TwoMorrows Publishing • 1812 Park Dr. • Raleigh, NC 27605 USA • 919-833-8092 • FAX: 919-833-8023 • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com
Issue #29 Contents You Can’t Go Home Again .................4 (a look inside 1970s Marvel) Captain, My Captain ..........................7 (the best Cap tale Jack ever did?) Conversations With Jack ..................1 2 (Ray Wyman shares a delightful chat with Jack and Roz Kirby) It Started On Yancy Street................2 2 (Alan Kupperberg takes us down his long & winding road of Kirby comics) Keith Giffen Interview......................2 4 (Lobo’s creator talks straight about Kirby & the current comics industry) NEW FEATURE: Kirby As A Genre..3 2 (Adam McGovern begins his new regular column about other artists’ works that are influenced by the King) CENTERFOLD: Devil Dinosaur .......3 4 (this one’s for you, Randy Hoppe!) Jack Who? ........................................3 6 (to put it mildly: they didn’t like Kirby) Rich Buckler Interview .....................3 8 (the self-described “chameleon” talks about his Kirby influences) Where Have All The Villains Gone?...4 3 (was Arnim Zola the best Kirby could come up with?) 1970s Cover Gallery .........................4 6 (gobs of Kirby’s 1970s Marvel covers, still in their original pencil form!) Tips for Frugal Kirby Collectors.......5 3 (you don’t have to spend a fortune to read Kirby’s best) The Return of the King.....................5 4 (did Jack make a difference at Marvel in the 1970s?) A Failure To Communicate: Part 6 ...5 5 (Mike Gartland examines Kirby’s layout work for other Marvel artists) Collector Comments.........................6 5
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Our front cover is a new Klaus Janson reinking of these back cover pencils from Marvel Treasury Edition #7, featuring the Avengers. Our back cover is inked by Joe Rubinstein, from a Kirby convention drawing of Thena of the Eternals. Our thanks to both Klaus and Joe for their superb work.
Front cover inks: Klaus Janson Back cover inks: Joe Rubinstein Cover color: Tom Ziuko 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: Abomination, Angel, Arnim Zola, Attuma, Avengers, Baron Blood, Beast, Black Bolt, Black Knight, Black Panther, Bobby Drake, Bucky, Captain America, Crusaders, Cyclops, Daredevil, Defenders, Destroyer, Devil Dinosaur, Donna Maria, Dr. Druid, Dr. Strange, Eternals, Falcon, Fantastic Four (Thing, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch, Invisible Girl), Ghost Rider, Giant-Man, Hawkeye, Hellcat, High Evolutionary, Hulk, Iceman, Iron Man, Juggernaut, Karkas, Leader, Liberty Legion, Machine Man, Mad Thinker, Magneto, Marvel Girl, Master Man, Miss America, Moon Knight, Moonboy, Moondragon, Mr. Little, Night Flyer, Nighthawk, Nova, Patriot, Power Man, Prof. Xavier, Quicksilver, Red Guardian, Red Rajah, Red Raven, Red Skull, Red Wolf, Reject, Rhino, Scarlet Witch, Sentinels, Spitfire, SubMariner, Super-Skrull, Swine, Thena, Thor, Tigra, Toad, Tony Stark, Toro, Triton, Ultimo, Union Jack, Valkyrie, Vision, Warren Worthington III, Wasp, Watcher, Water Wizard, Whizzer, Wonder Man, X-Men, Yellowjacket TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Darkseid, Orion, The Losers TM & © DC Comics • Tiger 21, Victory characters TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • The Shield/Pvt. Strong TM & © Archie Publications.
The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 8, No. 29, Aug. 2000. Published bi-monthly by & © TwoMorrows Publishing, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor. Eric Nolen-Weathington, Production Assistant. Single issues: $5.95 ($7 Canada, $9 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $24.00 US, $32.00 Canada and Mexico, $44.00 outside North America. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is © Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.
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work in collaboration with anyone, some shrugged and went on with their already hectic schedules; some would try and “help” Jack’s books for the sake of quality control; while others... well, there are jerks in every workplace. To state that Jack’s writing (dialogue) was an acquired taste is not insulting, but some of the young writers and editors, who thought themselves better, couldn’t stand it. When Jack’s books came into the offices, these people began doing rewrites; even though Jack was credited as editor, his books would go through another in-office editor before publication. This was standard procedure for the majority of books being done by Marvel at that time; Marvel had grown considerably since the 1960s, so it wasn’t possible for one editor to oversee so many books (Marvel’s revolving door of Editors-In-Chief didn’t help, either). Almost everyone had an associate editor, so in this respect Jack was not being singled out, but his dialogue was being altered to his chagrin, nonetheless. (It should be noted that Archie Goodwin ended up overseeing the majority of Jack’s books, during which time Jack had few complaints.) Stan Lee was still around, but only barely, as he was immersed in other Marvel-related media business. Once Jack discovered that the editorial staff was tampering with his work, he asked Lee to intervene, which he did. Stan even went so far as to review the “before” and “after” on one of Jack’s stories and agreed with Jack that the changes were arbitrary and not beneficial. It wasn’t long after that when, as one Marvel staffer put it, “The spite work began.” The letters pages of Jack’s books began to have more negative mail than positive, which would have been acceptable except that it appeared to be being done intentionally, and some of the negative letters weren’t genuine, but contrived by the staff. Other Marvel books of the time got equal or greater numbers of negative letters, but they weren’t published. Around this time, Jack began to receive hate mail on Marvel interoffice stationery; he even got phone calls suggesting that someone else should write for him. Ex-staffers recall seeing copies of his work hanging in the Marvel offices with derogatory comments and insults written on them. It all just added to Jack’s disillusionment and disgust with the industry altogether. On the letters page of Captain America #214—the last issue Jack worked on—was a sidebar noting Jack’s leaving the series and moving on to other things. Of his ’70s tenure on Cap it was written: “The two years since the return of the celebrated Mr. K have been one big roller coaster ride of incredible encounters and fantastic folks.” Do tell!! Unfortunately, in hindsight, this could be accepted as a reflection on not only what Jack’s characters were going through, but Jack as well! Jack, after spending three years at Marvel, had had it. He was 60 years old at the time and felt burned out (and burned). He felt he had done all he could, and knew he wouldn’t be renewing his contract with Marvel. Upon leaving, he likened it to a pit of snakes that eventually turn on each other. Although there were many fine and respectable talents at Marvel during Jack’s second tenure, as stated before, every job has its jerks, and Jack had to
deal with more than his share of them. Having made some inroads in the animation industry during his last year at Marvel (through his involvement on the Fantastic Four animated series of the time), Jack went full-time into the field. The pay was much better than comics, and the health insurance he received would be invaluable in dealing with his and Roz’s health problems in later years—insurance he wouldn’t have received had he stayed in comics. He found animation much more rewarding (since he didn’t have to live up to his past work there), and he was treated with more respect. There he produced literally thousands of pieces of presentation art, most of which will never be seen by his fans. That’s the ironic part of it all; because he was treated so shabbily by a few at Marvel in the 1970s—some of whom were his fans in the 1960s—we all were robbed of seeing several more years of comics stories while he was still in his penciling prime.★
Page 6 pencils from Devil Dinosaur #5.
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swap spit with the lovely Latina babe), but does anyone remember the cast of the relatively recent Next Men? My opinion of Jack’s ’70s run on Captain America, even when measured against the fine work of Steve Englehart, J.M. DeMatteis, Mark Waid and others, is it still holds up pretty well both in terms of the Kirby Kanon and Pop entertainment in general. With that having been said, one must bear in mind: All of the aforementioned writers were essentially putting their own spin on someone else’s character. No one (with the exception of his former partner, Joe Simon) has the right to say Jack’s Cap was “wrong.” You could say that it wasn’t your cup of java but you can’t say, “But—Cap wouldn’t...”. That’s like saying Frank Miller was the only one who knew how to write Batman and who the hell were those Bob Kane and Bill Finger guys?
Captain, My Captain by Rex B. Ferrell have read endless reams of praise for Jack Kirby’s legendary Sixties’ tenure at Marvel, to say nothing of the extraordinary “Fourth World Saga” for DC/National. However, amidst all of the praise heaping, the comics that made me a diehard Kirby fan have been maligned, spat upon, and downright dissed! I’m talking about when Jack finally got a chance to fly solo on his own co-creation— Captain America! While I haven’t yet read the seemingly excellent compilation of the first five issues from the ’40s, I have pored over numerous reprints of the Sixties comics and found them to be action-packed episodes of jingoism masquerading as patriotism. Jack’s third tenure on the series was truly a solo effort in the writing department so there is no Joe Simon or Stan Lee to take the credit or the blame. As far as I’m concerned, the phrase “third time’s the charm” really fits in this case. My first exposure to the Kirbyworks was from those 1970s Captain Americas so I am not as enamored with the writing of Stan Lee as are other people. Although witty and melodramatic, I thought Lee’s stuff tended to get a little predictable. (I’m sorry, but Dr. Doom, Doc Ock and Dormammu all sound alike!) I don’t feel there is a way you could confuse the philosophic Darkseid with the deliciously devious Red Skull! Still, I am here to praise Kirby, not bury Stan Lee. (I like ’em both!)
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Cap & The Historical United States With a character named after our country, one is faced with the reality of two Americas: The American Dream and The Historical America, the one run by a government that has not always lived up to
Jack’s Writing Style Some have said, erroneously, that “Jack couldn’t do wordsmithing,” or other such twaddle. True, at times his use of grammar was inaccurate and in other spots, his diction was off (using “destruct” instead of “destroy,” for instance), but how many times has the word “Fortuitous” been misused by some of our Pretentious Purveyors of Puke who call themselves “Writer/Artists”? (“Fortuitous” is not a synonym for “Fortunate”!) One should point out, minus the air of apology, that Jack may not have been formally trained as a writer; still, he was a voracious reader and thus, followed the prime axiom for all aspiring writers: “Duh, learn from example!” Jack had a good ear and since they were his characters, he knew how he wanted them to sound. I find his style unique, vibrant and refreshing as it holds up very nicely, twenty years later. The critically-inclined can have a field day with things such as Jack’s wacky slang or kooky names for some of his characters but they are part of what separates the work of Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Johnny Craig, and others from the Stan Lee “Wish-l-Wuz” crowd. You see, every would-be Tolstoy should remember the first lesson from Creative Writing 101: One must never use “vogue” words. After the unpublished Soul Love fiasco from just a few years before his return to Cap, Jack must have understood this, despite pressure he may have received from the Marvel Editorial Elite. This is why, 20 years later, I can laugh at “Blazing Bullfrogs,” whereas the “Jive Turkeys” and “Sweet Christmases” by supposedly more talented writers of that era make me want to slit my wrists! The highbrows of today’s comic world can chuckle over the names of General Heshin and Donna Maria (personally, I would have loved to have seen Cap
Kirby’s action-packed pencils for Captain America #207, page 8.
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Conversations With Jack: Roz & Jack (Part I) Based on interviews from August 1989 through June 1992 Compiled and edited by Ray Wyman, Jr. Copyright ©1999-2000 by Ray Wyman, Jr. (During my extensive interviews with Jack for The Art of Jack Kirby, every so often Roz would walk into the living room where Jack and I had set up camp and join the conversation. On some of those occasions we would get into a discussion about how they met, their life together, and other family matters. Roz also had a better grasp of dates, so her input had the effect of keeping Jack “honest.” I have taken many of these impromptu moments and treated them as one contiguous interview. The reader will hopefully enjoy the very candid and wonderful examples of their relationship as did I.—Ray Wyman) ROZ KIRBY: How are you guys doing? JACK KIRBY: We are running the range of comics here. RAY WYMAN: You want to stick around? Give us some pointers? ROZ: I’ll keep this guy honest. You never know what will come out of his mouth. RAY: You’re going to keep him honest? ROZ: You know what I mean. He’ll say anything. JACK: I’ll just blab the whole thing. RAY: Okay. Well, I’ll keep it simple today. Let’s start with how you two met. ROZ: You want to know when we met? RAY: How, when, where, you know. For posterity, Roz. I want to know all the sordid details. JACK: Oh, there’s no mystery. ROZ: Well, I’m not telling you everything. RAY: We’ll see. Actually, I’ll just wait until you’re out of the room and ask Jack the juicy stuff. JACK: Oh, there’s plenty of that. ROZ: The first time… well, Jack was living in Brooklyn in this two-
A 1985 shot of Jack in his home studio. Photo by James Van Hise.
story, kind of brownstone house. His family lived downstairs, and we moved upstairs. I was just a little over 17 years old, and Jack was 5 years older. The first time I saw him he was playing ball in the street; he was wearing these little bathing trunks. He was playing ball with his brother who is 6 foot tall and Jack was only about 5 foot 6, and some other guys. My cousin, Pearl, was with me and she was also 5 years older than me. We were watching the boys play. RAY: The cousin that I met? ROZ: Yeah, Pearl. We were laughing and joking around. She says, “I’ll take the older one and you take the younger one.” I says, ‘I don’t want him; you take him. I’ll take the other one.’ We argued who should get Jack and we hadn’t even moved in yet. The furniture was going up and the parents were getting to know each other. In those days, everyone sat on their stoops. That’s where we were sitting when Jack came over—you know how guys come over to the girls—and started talking to me. He was very polite and introduced himself, his brother and his friends. As it turned out, all the other guys were paying attention to Pearl, because she was older. But Jack stayed with me and we got to talking about this and that. Finally he says, “By the way, I’m an artist. You want to come on in and I’ll show you my drawings?” I Examples of Jack’s early comic strip work from the late 1930s, around the time he met Roz. Jack saved stats of these in his files. 12
instantly thought that it was one of these old gags, you know, the ones RAY: A favorite song? that guys use to get the girls into their bedrooms. But I figured that I ROZ: Actually, I never had a real favorite song. It was all good. was pretty safe. My mother and father were right there and his mother JACK: We would go into the Paramount and hear the bobby-soxers and father were right there, so I went in and was very surprised to scream when Frank Sinatra came out. find that he actually had drawings to look at! That was the first time I RAY: So what happened next? Engagement? When did that happen? ever knew anything about comic books—he was working on Captain ROZ: Jack asked me to marry him on my eighteenth birthday. We just America; there were drawings everywhere on the walls and his table. kind of took it for granted that it was going to happen, but he was so RAY: So what was it like living above the Kurtzbergs? cute about it. ROZ: Well, the family was very quiet. The apartments were very simple. RAY: Jack? Cute? What’d he do? JACK: They were railroad apartments. ROZ: He was a gentleman—he was always a gentleman. We were ROZ: Railroad apartments. married on May 23, 1942; I was 19. RAY: Oh, arranged like boxcars? JACK: Yes. ROZ: You go right into the living room, then you have the dining room and then the kitchen, the bedroom. All in one line. JACK: One room succeeded the other, the doors were all in a straight line, no hallway—that was a luxury. And again, the kitchen was somewhere in the middle. You could shoot a cannon through all the doors and never hit any of the walls. ROZ: When we started dating, we would stay downstairs and sit on the couch in the parlor. His mother and father were right behind the glass door in the bedroom, which was the second room. So you had to be very quiet; you couldn’t make any noise. If you fooled around, you had to be pretty quiet about it! RAY: No, you guys didn’t do that? JACK: Yes, we did. ROZ: He put his arm around me occasionally. JACK: We did more than that. ROZ: He doesn’t need to hear all the details. Anyhow, we would be down there for quite a while and then my father was right upstairs, so about 3 o’clock in the morning, he would come down with the garbage, look in and say, “Oh, Roz is still up?” Can you imagine anyone coming down at 3 o’clock in the morning to take the garbage out? That was his excuse for me to get upstairs. RAY: So, did either of you pull that one on any of your daughters? JACK: No. I’d just throw the bums out. RAY: What kind of music did you listen to? JACK: Oh, they had jazz of course, but they had swing. RAY: What was the music that you guys were into? JACK: We loved dancing to swing. ROZ: It was Frank Sinatra’s time. The big bands. JACK: Frank Sinatra was just a young man at the time. He was just emerging into popularity, and the girls loved him. He was at the Paramount Theater, and when I took Roz out on a date, I took her to see Frank Sinatra and whatever else was playing on Broadway. RAY: Bing Crosby? JACK: No. Stunning pencils from the cover of FF Annual #11, featuring a trio of 1940s characters. ROZ: Crosby was more radio at the time. 13
Keith Giffen Interview Interviewed by Jon B. Cooke, transcribed by Eric Nolen-Weathington (Keith Giffen entered the field of comics at Marvel in the ’70s with a very Kirbyesque style. He became a fan-favorite for his work on Marvel’s Defenders (inked by Mike Royer) and DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes, and as writer on Justice League, and went on to make his mark on such characters as Ambush Bug, Lobo, The Heckler, and Trencher. This interview was conducted by phone in February 2000.)
at Marvel or when he was doing his DC war work? KEITH: No, when he was over at Marvel, when he took over Iron Man. Actually my first real solid exposure to him was when Giant-Man, who was my all-time favorite Marvel character, was thrown out of Tales to Astonish and Sub-Mariner came in. TJKC: And this Adam Austin artist shows up? KEITH: Yeah, the Adam Austin stuff. And then Iron Man finally led to Daredevil. But there were always Jack Kirby books. There was always the FF, there was always Thor or Tales of Suspense or some older comics I was always digging out that had the titles torn off. I probably had most of the early FF. It’s just that none of them had the top half of the cover. [laughs] Very strange collection.
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Just to get some background, you’re from New Jersey? KEITH GIFFEN: Yeah, born and bred. I was born back in ’52 in Queens, New York, and my first year my parents moved to New Jersey. Although there was one distinction from Queens, NY, and that is the first person who ever held me besides my parents and various doctors was our downstairs neighbor, Whitey Ford. He wasn’t making money hand over fist way back then. [laughs] TJKC: [laughs] When do you remember your first exposure to comics? KEITH: I remember exactly. My mother used to do tailoring work, sewing work for neighbors and friends. She was really handy and capable of cobbling things together out of patterns. So a lot of the women in the neighborhood would go over there and pay her to do what they couldn’t do. And there was this one woman who worked at one of these—I don’t know what they’re called, but they were these big paper plants where all of the comics came with the titles torn off to be destroyed. And she would just scoop handfuls up and bring them to my mother, and she would pass them on to me. The first comic book I remember, and a fan was kind enough to send me a copy so I’ve actually got it—I don’t remember the number, but it was a World’s Finest issue. It was when Batwoman got Superman’s powers. All I could remember about it for years was that it had this big green monster with Mickey Mouse gloves on the cover and Batwoman zooming down. That was my first exposure to comics. That really stood out among the Archies and the various others. From there it was an easy slide to the Fin Fang Foom and the Goom, Son of Goomba books, which are probably my first exposure to Jack Kirby before I knew who he was. TJKC: Were you attracted to Jack’s work? Was there something in it? KEITH: There was something in it that fascinated me. I don’t know if I’d say ‘attracted’ back then. TJKC: Repelled? [laughs] KEITH: No, no, no. I suppose a perverse fascination. It didn’t look like anything else that was out there. During my early comic book collector days I was a much bigger fan of Gene Colan than of Jack. Jack was something that grew on me, like a taste for martinis. It was only after I began in comics that I realized all the work he had done and all the memories I had that were locked into him. I began to understand how important he was, but it was a gradual process. I was a stupid kid. TJKC: Were you into Gene Colan when he was over
(above) The pencils to the cover of Fantastic Four #172.
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TJKC: [laughs] You knew the title of the book though, right? KEITH: Absolutely, absolutely. They were wonderful, wonderful books back then. TJKC: You were an avid Marvel collector? KEITH: No. I was an avid comic book collector. I tend to go after what I like. For a while there it was almost purely Marvel, because only Marvel was doing anything that was sparking my imagination and getting my attention. There were things—you know, the Neal Adams Deadman stuff, Nick Cardy’s Bat Lash. So there was some DC stuff, but for the most part it was Marvel. I loved the Tower books, as well. Whatever sparked my interest. The first four or five issues of Creepy. TJKC: When did you start drawing? KEITH: When I was eight years old, I decided I wanted to draw these strange things. TJKC: And did you draw your own comic books? KEITH: Oh, yeah, yeah. All sorts of odd little characters that I would farm around to friends and they’d read them and think, “What an odd friend we have.” [laughter] Miserable, wretched little things. I’ve heard Erik Larsen, before he had the fire, held onto everything he did dating back to maybe the first time he held pencil to paper. But I still don’t do that to this day. TJKC: You don’t save anything? KEITH: No, because I put it down and I loathe it. [laughter] And it takes me a long time to make peace with something I’ve drawn. A long time. TJKC: Do you recall any of the names of the characters? Anything you want mentioned for posterity? KEITH: Oh, boy. No, the only one I can remember was when I was in tenth grade goofing around with a character called Lobo who I finally did something with later down the line. Although, I didn’t call him Lobo. I called him Lunatik with a “k.” And then Marvel got the name and at Marvel I went back and revisited the character. But other than that, no, I can’t remember. Probably, these bizarre little things like a rip-off on the Sub-Mariner called Finman. I really have no memory, but then if you asked me what I was working on last week I’d probably have to refer to notes. [laughs] (above) Unpublished 1990s Giffen penciled page from the never-completed Topps Comics Victory series. TJKC: Did you specifically want to be a comic book artist? business next week.” [laughs] I said, ‘That’s interesting,’ and after I KEITH: Yes. Specifically comic book artist. I had no interest in advertising hung up the phone with her I thought maybe I should just take the bit or any of that. It was always geared toward doing comic book work. in my teeth and start at the top and get turned down all the way down. Just wind up someplace. Back then the top was Marvel, so I called up TJKC: Were you known in school as being the artist? Marvel. I don’t know who the secretary was then, but it was not the KEITH: No, no, no. I was just this odd kid. I cut so close to nerd that most positive—“yeah, um, bring your portfolio in and they’ll look at it really didn’t matter. it and you can pick it up tomorrow.” I was stupid enough. I go into TJKC: [laughs] And when did you start developing a portfolio? New York and drop off the portfolio and I go home. Next day I figure KEITH: I didn’t. I broke into comics by doing everything wrong. I was I’ll go get it and I thought, “No that’s not a good idea.” So I let a day working as a hazardous material handler and I took a week off and go by and rather than just go get it, I called. And the woman said, said, ‘Hey, I think I’ll break into comics.’ So I just drew up a bunch of “Get in here now.” So I go in and she’s yelling at me, she’s really pictures and slapped them together. I figured, let me call up the compissed off at me. It took a while for it to sink in that apparently Ed panies and find out how you do this. I didn’t want to start at the top. I Hannigan—prior commitments had forced him off this back-up strip wanted to start at the bottom. I didn’t want Marvel, I didn’t want in a b-&-w magazine called The Sword and the Star. And Bill Mantlo, who Charlton. Atlas was publishing then. So I called up Atlas and the woman was the writer, happened to see my samples laying around and said, was so positive on the phone. “Oh, yes. Bring your portfolio. Absolutely. “I like him; why don’t we get this guy?” And they couldn’t contact me, We’ll take a look at it. Blah, blah, blah. However, we’re going out of 25
Rich Buckler Interview Conducted by Jon B. Cooke, transcribed by John Morrow (Rich Buckler broke into the comics scene in a big way in the early ’70s with his work on The Avengers and other Marvel, DC and Warren titles. An admitted “chameleon,” Rich has worked in a number of distinct styles, including Jack Kirby’s. Though he has worked on several prominent titles during his career, he is probably most remembered as the creator of Deathlok for Marvel. This interview was conducted by phone in February 2000.)
RICH: Yeah, it knocked me out! (laughter) I wasn’t aware of any artist other than Jack Kirby who was that dynamic with the human figure, and could convey such drama and emotion. It grabbed me right away. I’m probably not the first to observe this. (laughter) TJKC: You obviously picked up on his style in paying homage to it when you were doing Fantastic Four to a degree, but especially when you were doing Thor. RICH: It was more like gratitude. I was so grateful for how much his work inspired me. It was as if I wanted to tell everybody, “Hey, look at this guy!” But sometimes people took it wrong, and thought that I was saying, “Hey, look at me, I can draw like this guy.” But it’s very difficult to get all the drawing distortions; you don’t think like he did. But I think I picked up on the emotion and the drama, and that’s what affected my work the most. I wanted to pay back, and say “thanks,” and also to be a fan; to pretend this isn’t comics work, it’s fanzine work. It was probably very immature of me to do that, (laughter) and not every editor went along with that. A lot of times the editors weren’t thrilled with it. They liked the idea that I was bringing back some excitement, and they missed the Kirby work at the time. It seemed like every time I was able to apply it, I was at a company where Kirby wasn’t. He was always five or ten steps ahead of me.
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: When did you first see Kirby’s work? RICH BUCKLER: Probably Fantastic Four. We’re talking #20, or something in that area. TJKC: Was there anything special about it that attracted you?
TJKC: Do you think in retrospect it was artistically successful? Could somebody really pick up on the very idiosyncratic point of view Kirby has? RICH: I think I did it successfully, but I don’t think I’m the only one. If someone comes up to me and says, “You draw the best Jack Kirby take-off I’ve ever seen,” that could be a compliment, but it could also be taken the other way. What does that mean, to be the best imitator? I hope I captured a lot of what he was about, but of course you can’t really do anything that’s so close it’ll be mistaken for the real thing, unless you think like that man did, and he was a genius. While I consider myself any less so, I don’t have the output he had, and I don’t have the energy and dynamics to the extent that he did so. I had to work at it real hard. TJKC: When you were at Marvel in the mid-’70s working on Thor and Fantastic Four, in some ways it was like having Kirby there, when he wasn’t. RICH: Well, I wanted him to be there when he wasn’t. (laughter) So I know what you mean. But I wasn’t the only one imitating him; I was just probably the one most obvious about it.
(above) Jack Kirby pencils for the cover of Fantastic Four #174.
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TJKC: Were you the first professional one to really imitate Jack? RICH: No. Dick Ayers was imitating him, because people wanted the dynamics to be there in the storytelling. I don’t think there was any format edict that was made, “Hey, everybody, you have to draw like Jack.” But Marie Severin worshiped him and wanted to draw like him. Don Heck tried to draw like him, at least from my observations. There were others that were his contemporaries that admired him and
so much fun. TJKC: Is that the first really overt pastiche you did? RICH: That got me in a lot of trouble with people, who went, “What’s the matter with him? He flipped out, he went backwards, he forgot how to draw.” But when you do that style, you do have to forget how to draw to an extent, to do the cartooniness. I think too many artists that really know how to draw well forget that. John Byrne knows how to draw well, and he hasn’t forgotten it. And George Pérez has gotten real good, and his draftsmanship is very good, but he hasn’t forgotten how to exaggerate. TJKC: There was a real transition when you did The Avengers right after #100, with an almost John Buscematype work. Then you did a Giant-Size Avengers with Nuklo that was a very Kirby-pastiche. RICH: That was another giant-size, and I just let loose. I had no editor looking over me saying, “Do this, but don’t do that.” I had Roy Thomas, who was like a guardian angel. He said, “Rich, do your thing. Some people say you’ve got too much Kirby influence, or that you swipe Kirby, or copy him, and it’s a bad thing. I like the Kirby stuff; do whatever you want.” So with those kind of bosses, how could you go wrong, unless you did something phenomenally stupid—which I tried not to. You’re on safe ground, as long as the excitement’s there; as long as it’s good comics. TJKC: So there was no edict that came down for you to draw like Kirby? RICH: No. It was my own crazy idea. I did it strictly to have fun and say, “Hey, Jack, thanks!”
(above) Rich’s splash page for Fantastic Four #150. Inks by Joe Sinnott.
TJKC: Do you recall Jack ever seeing that work or having comment on it? RICH: No. I think I spoke to his wife one time, and she said he took it as a compliment. People’d come up to them and say, “Hey, Buckler’s copying you.” Well, hello! Like I’m the first person who ever copied Kirby? (laughter) I got a lot of attention because I was being the most overt about it, the most blatant. TJKC: Were the comments you received 50/50 positive/ negative? RICH: No, most people were supportive. Most of them loved it. People who tended to get bugged by it were people in the business. I think that just had to do with the nonsense that creeps in with egos and what have you.
wanted to draw like him, and incorporated some of those dynamics. I think George Tuska worked in the Simon & Kirby studio, and at times did work that was trying to pick up on that style. TJKC: But with the approach of storytelling, Marie certainly picked up aspects of it. Actually, all the people who came in after Kirby picked up on it in one way or another. RICH: Marie had her own distinctive style, but she had the same problem I had; she had to work at it really hard. (laughter) After at least ten years of drawing, my draftsmanship got very good. That’s an accomplishment in itself, but anybody can do that with a lot of practice. But to go back to Jack Kirby, you have to draw “badly”; actually, what happens is, you learn realism, and you get to where you can draw so well, you don’t want to exaggerate. Because of the style Jack Kirby was always evolving, it was always exaggerated. It had such cartooniness that allowed for that exaggeration. But when you got really realistic, it didn’t quite work.
TJKC: Do you think part of that could’ve been that you had the technique and facility to expand yourself as an artist unto yourself, and that you were throwing yourself backwards? RICH: There was a period there were it was actually taboo, literally, to swipe. It was supposedly something negative. You weren’t supposed to imitate; you certainly weren’t supposed to copy anything. I think the ones who were the most verbal about criticizing this were the ones most guilty, if they were artists. If they were editors, they were just being hypocrites, because everybody that’s a comic artist has swiped, and is probably still swiping; from photographs, or from other people’s work. Swiping was supposedly a negative thing, and it went around to editors: “This one swipes, don’t give him work.” It got real mean, and it’s ridiculous. The masters from the Renaissance; that’s how they learned. And there’s a tradition of it in comics, and we’re talking commercial art it; it’s not high art. But they took it so serious, it developed into almost a political thing: “Don’t use this guy, he swipes.”
TJKC: I think the first instance where I really noticed it in your work was Giant-Size Super Stars #1. RICH: On that book, they gave me a plot. It looked pretty skimpy, but they said I could do a giant-size. So I sort of really made up the story from a very brief outline, and I drew the entire thing over the weekend. (laughter) I decided I’m going to be a superman, and I’m going to go nuts, and pull out all my Jack Kirby stuff, and that’s what I did. It was 39
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Where Have All The Villains Gone? Remembering Kirby’s return to Marvel in the ’70s, by Shane Foley nowing what we do now about Kirby’s frustrations with the comics industry in the ‘70s, his creativity and output in his postFourth World work is quite remarkable. But as a late teens fan in the mid-’70s, I knew nothing of this and had only the books themselves to judge by. When Kirby’s return to Marvel was announced in Oct. ’75 (cover date—which, in Australia, was the date we bought the books), I was overjoyed. But for me, it took a further 12 months after he arrived in Captain America #193 before the King was really back. In 1975, at the end of his DC run, Kirby seemed to be biding his time. Why all the featureless opponents, I used to think? Kirby villains used to be fabulous! Every issue seemed to have OMAC or Manhunter up against some sort of blob. OMAC himself was great. Manhunter had tons of Kirby potential. The story ideas still had the usual Kirby out-of-this-world flair. But the villains always looked like monsters, or fat gangsters, or—blobs. Look at Sandman #4. Ugh! (Atlas I never saw. First issues of any series were rare in Australia then.) And where were the star’s great supporting cast? His writing was looser than ever. And to make it worse, his art also seemed looser and clunkier than before (although when Mike Royer returned for Kirby’s last few DC issues, the art was better by leaps and bounds. Maybe that looser look of Kirby’s art wasn’t his fault at all—never did like Berry much.) Kamandi was the exception. He still read well—despite light-on scripting and art under Berry—probably because of the miles of untapped potential Kirby had invested into it in its early issues. Unfortunately, the Kirby who returned to Marvel seemed to be the same Kirby who worked for DC in 1975. Where were the great Kirby villains? Or where was the interesting Kirby supporting cast? Captain America strung together a number of movie themes, and fought bland revolutionaries and monsters. The Eternals was great, with Ikaris and the Celestials, etc. and the writing seemed strong and yes, the supporting cast was fine. But who were the main Earth-bound foes? The Deviants, who mostly looked like—featureless blobs. Again! (Years later, the Deviants seem perfect, but at the time, their appearance, which is what I was disappointed with, seemed like yet more in an endless row of featureless foes.) Like OMAC and Manhunter, the stars of the book were great, but there were no villains that grabbed me. (The Celestials, whether villains or supporting cast, were, in a sense, “featureless,” too. None of them is another Galactus.) 2001 was unique, but it also started with forgettable “blobs.” (Barak was okay, though.) At least Mike Royer was back on most books and the art looked better. Twelve months after Kirby returned to
Marvel, his Black Panther arrived. Issue #1 promised well (for those who weren’t in love with the abandoned Don McGregor approach, that is). Mr. Little was typical ’70s Kirby, but at least Zanda looked okay. And there on page 2 was a great looking Kirby armored assassin. But he was soon gone. Instead, by the end of the issue we faced Hatch-22! Again, a fine idea (though Kirby seemed bogged down in sci-fi futuristic stuff, no matter what strip he did), but he looked like a monster-comefeatureless... thing (not quite a blob this time). Oh, well. Next month, the Reject arrived in The Eternals. He looked good and held lots of
K
The Reject and Karkas, from Eternals #12, page 6.
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Cover pencils to Nova #5.
Cover pencils to Weird Wonder Tales #19.
the reprint books, which they used instead of the original covers. When Marvel did use the original covers for a reprint book, they often added word balloons where originally there were none. In the 1970s Marvel was riding high on the foundation that Jack had laid down in the ’60s, but they didn’t seem to value his contributions very much. Having stated my criticism, let me also say that I feel there is a great need for reprint books. As the relatively small pool of surviving Golden Age and Silver Age comics gets more expensive, the chance for new generations of comic lovers to experience these “classics” shrinks. Only by reprinting the classic comics every decade or so will these stories be affordable to the average reader. When Jack was working at DC in the ’70s, that company also put out reprints of his earlier comics. The 1940s Simon & Kirby series “Sandman” from Adventure Comics was reprinted in The Forever People and “The Newsboy Legion” from Star-Spangled Comics was reprinted in Jimmy Olsen. A couple of reprint issues of Simon & Kirby’s Boy Commandos were also published during that decade. One rather obscure series that DC put out in the ’70s consisted of reprints from S&K’s Black Magic. Black Magic was produced by the team for Crestwood in the 1950s. Another bargain for Kirby collectors are the crime comics from the late ’40s and early ’50s. I have in recent years bought copies of Headline Comics and Justice Traps the Guilty in mid-grades for prices between $7 and $15 apiece. These were classic Simon & Kirby works. I don’t know why a comic book which has survived since 1947 would sell for $7. Perhaps collectors are not interested in them, so now’s the perfect time to acquire a few. Happy hunting!★
Tips For Frugal Kirby Collectors by David Penalosa like a lot of other collectors, lost my original comic book collection many years ago. I bought the comics in that original collection from the spinning rack at my neighborhood drug store and at a used book store in the next town. Having originally bought the comics for pennies, it’s hard for me to pay the inflated prices for those comics today. Even if I did purchase a Silver Age comic in NM or VF condition, I’d be afraid to read it for fear of degrading it by creasing the cover. I certainly wouldn’t let a child read it. I prefer to buy well worn comics that I have no hesitation to pick up and read, or let someone else read. I guess you could say I collect “reading copies.” Jack Kirby was responsible for some of the most significant comics in the history of the medium. Collecting the King’s work can be an expensive hobby because many of the comics he did are considered to be “key issues.” What follows are some of the ways I’ve collected a great many of the books Jack drew without spending a fortune in the process. One source of inexpensive Silver Age Kirby can be found in the various reprint series from the 1970s. Marvel’s Greatest Comics reprinted Fantastic Four, Marvel Spectacular reprinted Thor, and Marvel Double Feature and Marvel Super Action reprinted Captain America. There were several monster comics from the ’70s (Where Monsters Dwell, Where Creatures Roam, Monsters on the Prowl, Creatures on the Loose) that carried reprints from the old pre-hero Atlas/Marvel era. Today, all these books can be picked up in the highto mid-grades for about a buck apiece. One drawback of the reprint mags though, was their occasional practice of deleting panels from the story in order to print two to three less pages per book. It’s interesting how one can still follow the stories with these deleted panels. However, it feels to me like the defacing of a work of art. Here’s some examples of panels that were omitted from reprinted stories:
I,
• Fantastic Four #74 (reprinted in Marvel’s Greatest Comics #56) Pages 2 and 3 were condensed to one page Pages 10 and 11 were condensed to one page • Thor #147 (reprinted in Marvel Spectacular #18) Page 5 (a beautiful full-page drawing by Jack) was omitted altogether Pages 9 and 10 were condensed to one page Page 13 was omitted altogether For some reason, some of the best Kirby covers were not used on those reprint magazines. For instance, a mediocre drawing replaced the classic cover Jack did for FF #51 (“This Man... This Monster!”). I wonder what the reason for that was? Perhaps they were trying to keep a consistency in the look of their line. If that’s so, why did they replace some covers and not others, especially some of Jack’s best covers like FF #51? On several of the monster reprint books, Marie Severin re-inked and re-did details on Jack’s covers. Marvel also had Jack draw new covers for some of
Kirby’s 1978 cover pencils for Marvel’s Greatest Comics #77, which reprinted FF #96.
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