Issuu

Fully Authorized By The Kirby Estate

AN IN-DEPTH LO O K AT KIRBY’S TWILIGHT YEARS Featuring:

$5.95 T

ISSUE #30, NOV. 2000

In The US

An unprecedented examination of

Kirby’s 1980s Career including His work on

Captain Victory Silver Star Hunger Dogs Super Powers Animation and more!

Interview With superstar writer

Alan Moore about His Kirby Influences

Jack’s nephew

Robert Katz talks about his duties as co-trustee of the Kirby estate

Kirby As A Genre Fantastic Four Animated Series Unpublished Art including published pages Befo re They Were Inked, And Much Mo re!!

Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Storyboards from the

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMICS STORIES BY THE INDUSTRY’S TOP TALENT. TM

SERGIO ARAGONÉS

PAUL CHADWICK

WALTER SIMONSON

RICK VEITCH

ROY THOMAS & JOHN SEVERIN

JACK KIRBY

BRENT ANDERSON

GRAY MORROW

FEATURING JACK KIRBY’S “STREET CODE” (COMPLETELY REMASTERED), & BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH’S FIRST NEW COMICS STORY SINCE 1997! ALSO FEATURES: 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 #30 Contents Eighties Ups & Downs........................4 (Chris Knowles takes an unprecedented look at Jack’s twilight years) Kirby Animation Portfolio .................8 (some of Kirby’s coolest animation presentation art, still in pencil form) “Get Out Of Comics!”.......................2 8 (Jack’s advice to a fan) Alan Moore Interview ......................3 0 (we watch the fan-favorite writer have his say about the Kirby Influence) CENTERFOLD: Hawkman! ..............3 4 (the winged wonder never looked so good) Kirby As A Genre .............................4 0 (Adam McGovern continues his new regular column about other artists’ comics influenced by the King) Another Marvel Myth ......................4 2 (the story’s sad, but it features lovely FF Animation storyboards!) The Good, Bad, & Unfortunate ........4 4 (a realistic look at Kirby’s later years) Special “Street Code” section............4 8 (two writers examine one of Jack’s last great masterpieces) Still Shining......................................5 0 (Silver Star examined) Amazing Advs. of Michael Chabon..5 2 (the ultra-hot fiction writer talks about things Kirby) Kirby Photo Essay ............................5 4 Robert Katz Interview ......................5 5 (Kirby nephew and co-trustee of the Kirby Estate speaks) “Postcard” ........................................6 3 Special Announcement about TJKC ...6 4 Collector Comments.........................6 5

ISSUE #30, NOV. 2000

THE ONLY ’ ZINE AUTHORIZED BY THE KIRBY ESTATE

Our front cover sports new Paul Smith inks and colors over this 1980s Kirby recreation of the cover of Amazing Fantasy #15, featuring Spidey carrying (we’re told) Steve Ditko (note the pencil)!

Front cover inks & color: Paul Smith Back cover inks: Al Gordon Back 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. Our thanks to both Paul Smith and Al Gordon for their superb work on this issue’s covers! COPYRIGHTS: Animal Hospital, Cary Becomes A Car/ TurboTeen, Harry the Head/Hidden Harry, Heartbreak High, Mighty Misfits, Mr. T, Ookla, Raven, Roxie's Raiders, Skanner, Thundarr, Wonder Boys and all accompanying art is ©RubySpears Productions. • The New Fantastic Four animated series and all accompanying art is ©Depatie-Freleng. • Space Ghost and Super Friends animated series and all accompanying art is ©Hanna-Barbera. • Phantom, Prince Valiant TM & © King Features. • Planet of the Apes TM & ©20th Century Fox. • Captain Victory, Darius Drumm, Insectons, Killer Bee, Lightning Lady, Silver Star, Stereon, Street Code, Valley Girl strip TM & ©the Estate of Jack Kirby. • Destroyer Duck, Medea TM & ©Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby. • Supreme TM & © Awesome Entertainment. • Fighting American, Stuntman TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby. • Devil Dinosaur, Dr. Doom, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Human Torch, Invisible Girl, Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards, Spider-Man, Thing, Thor TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Aquaman, Batman, Darkseid, Demon, First American, Flash, Green Lantern, Guardian, Hawkman, Kalibak, Metron, New Gods, Orion, Robin, Secret Origins, Super Powers, Superman, Uncle Sam, Watchmen, Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics.

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 8, No. 30, Nov. 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.

Eighties Ups & Downs A look at one of Kirby’s most prolific—and least documented—decades, by Chris Knowles staffers who were handling his work. This was also the dawn of a new regime at Marvel and Jack was facing the prospect of greater editorial interference. The House That Jack Built no longer had a place for him. Evanier had gotten wind that Hanna-Barbera was doing presentation art for NBC for the Fantastic Four proposal and called his friend Iwo Takamato, who was in charge of the project. “I said ‘Why don’t you get Jack Kirby to do the presentation art?’” Evanier recalls, “and Iwo said, ‘Well, doesn’t Jack Kirby live in New York?’ and I said ‘No, he lives in Thousand Oaks. Here’s his number.’ They called him and Jack came down the next day and he ended up doing a bunch of big presentation art for Hanna-Barbera, and they loved him.” There was a snag in the works, however. Marvel had made a deal with H-B competitor DePatieFreling for the rights to the FF, as well as other Marvel properties. Thundarr and crew fight an overgrown At the time, comics artist Doug arachnid in a post-apocalyptic subway in Wildey was working at D-P on a this presentation art from the series. Other proposed Godzilla ’toon. In an artists would take these pencil pieces and arrangement reminiscent of “The add polish with inks and airbrush color. Pact,” DePatie-Freling sent Wildey and Godzilla over to HannaBarbera and got Kirby and his cocreation the Fantastic Four in exchange. Jack worked with Stan Lee developing the FF ’toon for DePatie-Freling, which was later bought out by Marvel. Since Marvel’s relations with D-P were already cozy, Jack was able to have the work he did in animation count towards the terms of his Marvel contract. But all did not go smoothly. “DePatie-Freling used him very foolishly,” Evanier recounts. “They had him as a storyboard artist, which he couldn’t do. He simply didn’t have the background in animation to do that.” The Fantastic Four cartoon itself was similarly ill-starred. Remembered principally for the absence of the Human Torch, and the presence of the absurd Herbie the Robot, the series ran for two seasons and had little impact. Jack left the studio at the end of the show’s production run and did some freelance work for HannaBarbera. At the same time, he worked on an abortive line of comics proposed by an entrepreneur, tentatively called “Kirby Comics.” This is where the genesis for such concepts as Captain Victory, Satan’s Six, and Thunderfoot lies. Soon, however, the world of animation beckoned anew. Fellow comics exile Steve Gerber had created a new science-fiction

Chapter 1: Hooray for Hollywood! ack’s career in animation began in the late 1970s. Saturday morning cartoon powerhouse Hanna-Barbera had decided they wanted to do a new version of the Fantastic Four cartoon, which had a successful run in the mid-’60s. At about the same time, Mark Evanier, Kirby’s friend and confidant, had a somewhat disheartening dinner with the Kirbys. Jack had apparently decided that there wasn’t a place left for him in the increasingly constrictive world of comics, and he had decided that he would not renew his contract with Marvel, which was due to expire in 1978. Jack had found that Marvel was a different world now, and he was having difficulty dealing with the disrespectful young

Thundarr and Ookla fight the Hydra in this Kamandi-esque scene.

cartoon with studio honcho Joe Ruby of the house known as RubySpears Productions. STEVE GERBER: “The first time I met Jack was at Ruby-Spears. We had sold a show called Thundarr the Barbarian and the original character designs were done by Alex Toth. At some point or another Mark Evanier suggested to Joe Ruby that we bring Jack Kirby in to design the settings, the characters, the weapons, all of the villains— all the incidental stuff in that show basically. Everything other than the three main characters. I heard about (Evanier’s proposal) and just thought it was a wonderful idea. Joe asked me what I thought and I said it was an incredible idea and that’s how Jack came aboard.” According to Evanier, Thundarr was created and then pitched to NBC. After some hemming and hawing by the network, Ruby-Spears was asked to do more presentation work. Toth was busy so Jack was called in on Mark Evanier’s recommendation. Jack’s presentation was what helped sell the show. “Every time an episode of Thundarr would be written, Jack would be given a list of all the new characters, props, machinery, and he would go home and do sketches which would be adapted into model sheets. He was basically a concept designer, ” Evanier recounts. Unlike Toth, who usually drew the models that the animators used, Jack’s ideas would be further refined by a team of specialists. Ruby-Spears also initially made the same mistake DePatie-Freling had. Comics genius Jim Woodring was working in the storyboard department for Ruby-Spears at the time. “Jack tried his hand at a couple of storyboards, but he couldn’t really do it. He just didn’t understand

the concept,” Jim recalls. “You have to be familiar with cinematic technique and vocabulary, just to know the way scenes have to work off each other. You have to know cutting rhythms and that sort of stuff.” Thundarr went on to be a cult favorite cartoon, and Jack’s ideas found a much larger audience, and subsequently, a whole new generation of young minds to warp. After Thundarr ended its run, Jack was offered a contract with Ruby-Spears. He was paid a weekly salary and was given a host of duties, most in the design and development arena. “Ruby-Spears was kind of a development-happy studio,” Evanier says. “They would spend an awful lot of time and money designing art and doing scripts for dozens and dozens of shows that never made it.” From his vantage-point in the storyboard department, Woodring seemed to notice this process was somewhat troubling to Jack. “As time went on and none of Jack’s (cartoon property) ideas were actually used, I think he began to feel a little desperate about his situation. I think it bothered him that he was giving them all these ideas and they were just ending up in a closet somewhere.” “It depends on what Jim means by that,” Gerber offers. “Jack would come in occasionally with original ideas for series or he would be given ideas by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears or whoever and take those ideas home and develop visuals for them. But most of the stuff that came out of the studio never sold. That’s the case with any animation studio.” But concept creation for new series was only a part of Jack’s duties for Ruby-Spears. Kirby collaborator and historian Greg Theakston observes that “Kirby was an idea guy. So when he went into the animation 5

needed talent. They called Jack Kirby and made their pitch. Kirby rifled through his huge pile of concepts and ideas and offered them Captain Victory. Captain Victory’s genesis preceded its print debut by a few years. As discussed earlier, Jack was approached about the time he had left Steve and Bill Schanes started Pacific Comics when they were in Marvel by a would-be comics entrepreneur, who wanted to start a line high school, selling back issues of old comics they had scoured old book called “Kirby Comics.” Jack was asked to do something like Star Wars stores and garage sales for. By the mid-’70s, Pacific Comics had become for a possible graphic novel and the pages produced for that abortive a mail-order giant, and their ads appeared regularly in the increasingly venture comprised the first two issues of Captain Victory and the Galactic hefty advertising sections of Marvel and DC’s color comics. As the Rangers. What is ironic is that Captain Victory bears little resemblance decade progressed, they began a lucrative trade in “artists’ portfolios.” to Star Wars, and a great deal of resemblance to Star Trek. It could be These portfolios were high quality, suitable-for-framing prints of works argued that Captain Victory himself was none other than Captain James created by fan-favorite comics and fantasy artists. As the ’80s began and Tiberius Kirk reincarnated as the Kirbyean Nordic-hero archetype. the comic book direct market began to explode, the Schanes’ figured Jack was also inspired, albeit not in a positive way, by the success of the time was right to take on the four-color monopoly of the New York Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Jack explicitly stated in interviews based companies. They would produce a line of color comics and disthat Captain Victory was a rejoinder to that enormously successful tribute them exclusively in the burgeoning comic store network. They Steven Spielberg film. Kirby was disgusted by the rosy optimism of the film, and by the portrayal of the aliens visiting Earth as harmless and cute little avatars of universal brotherhood. Jack was a student of history and of nature and he reckoned that the only reason an alien race would cross the vast reaches of space to visit us would be to conquer and subjugate the Earth, not take a few of its inhabitants on an interstellar joyride. In fact, at the end of the original 48-page graphic novel, Jack promised a sequel to be entitled “Encounters of a Savage Kind.” Jack worked with the ever-reliable Mike Royer on the graphic novel. Jack and Mike did some of the best work they’ve ever done together, certainly better than the uninspired and dispirited work they produced at the end of their Marvel run. The Schanes Bros. were hooked, but by the time the title had begun, Royer was otherwise committed, having donned his mouse ears for what became a lengthy tenure for Disney Consumer Products. So Jack offered the inking duties to his young friend Mike Thibodeaux, and by the time Captain Victory hit the stands, Jack’s interests had led him elsewhere. In the course of its run, Captain Victory went from being a relatively straight-forward space opera to a full-blown cosmic freakout unlike anything seen in comics before or since. The narrative seemed to follow Jack’s stream of consciousness and the art was a constantly mutating blend of cubism, Kirby psychedelia, and, buried somewhere beneath, something approximating standard-issue action fare. Kirby’s designs were dense, surreal, almost maddening. Cut loose not only from editorial interference but also from the discipline of the newsstand, Jack’s imagination went places few, if any, have been before. Jim Woodring on Captain Victory: “Jack’s art was psychedelic in the way comics from the ’30s and ’40s were psychedelic. I think that was where he came from. There was something really naive about all of his fantasy scenarios. There wasn’t a lot of the kind of phony, portentous, metaphysicalspiritual qualities that have crept into comics. It always reminded me of Coney Island, just naive and whacked without trying to penetrate beneath your epidermis.” It is this writer’s opinion that Captain Victory This is what they mean by “Kirbyesque.” Pencils from Captain Victory #1, page 7. is overdue for reevaluation. Taken as a Marvel14

Chapter 2: Captain Victory (or, “Take That, Mr. Spielberg!”)

exploit. To see this process at its purest, at its most undiluted, look at Captain Victory. Kirby seemed to jettison narrative and coherence and all the other niceties of storytelling in relentless pursuit of his own personal revelation. The void of space became even more Kirbyesque in Victory’s pages. Space pulsed and throbbed. Stars, even galaxies were constantly birthing on the page. In a startling anticipation of one of the most stunning photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, a giant eye opened in the universe on the title’s pages (CV #7). The most fearsome, the most destructive villain the Rangers ever faced hadn’t even been born yet (CV #10). Aliens of every imaginable variety stalked the books panels, including one whose very presence in our space-time continuum altered the fabric of reality itself, and one who was a big as four galaxies. (A personal sidenote: My first Kirby comic was Kamandi #30 (“U.F.O. The Wildest Ride Ever”). I cannot begin to describe the impact this comic had on my imagination. My first impression of Jack was formed by this comic, and that impression was “Kirby = mind-blowing, freaked-out, hyper-imaginative comics.” Bruce Berry’s obtuse inking only served to heighten this effect. I know some TJKC readers don’t care for Kamandi, D.Bruce Berry’s inking, or Captain Victory, for that matter, but this is the reason that Captain Victory dug itself so deeply into my addled cranium.) How many fans were fully appreciating this unprecedented phantasmagoria is hard to say. Apparently, the first couple of issues sold well, but as the artwork and storyline got weirder and weirder, the sales apparently began to drop. “I think it was the wrong book for the time,” Mark Evanier says. “ I don’t think it’s a book that Jack would have chosen to do had he not had that book already on the shelf. It was too much like a traditional super-hero comic to appeal to people who were sick of traditional superhero comics, but it wasn’t enough like traditional super-hero comics to appeal to people who wanted such a thing.” If their interest stopped with the first few issues, casual readers might also have felt that they’d seen Lightning Lady gets ready to kick some Galactic Ranger butt in these pencils from Captain Victory #2, page 25. it all before. The Insectons looked like they styled action comic, it doesn’t quite cut the mustard. Taken as a manic, were ripped out of the New Gods’ pages, CV’s sidekicks Orca and Tarin mind-bending fever dream, it puts any of Grant Morrison’s attempts looked like leftovers from the Inhumans and Kamandi, respectively, and at such to shame. It is my pet thesis that Jack’s relentless strip-mining Captain Victory’s name and appearance seemed like yesterday’s news. of his subconscious creativity caused him somehow to break through To make matters worse, the last two issues of the book were printed to some Jungian layer of our collective mind. The constant hours at on Baxter stock with the hand-painted color that Pacific never seemed the desk, the constant need to hold the attention of the American to get a handle on. Pacific’s switch over to full-color printing on Baxter adolescent, the constant demands by editors to top himself by coming stock (and the concurrent 50-cent price rise) was a disaster and probably up with new ideas caused him to open a door, somewhere deep in his helped bring about the company’s demise. Nowhere was this disaster mind or deep in our mind. This is why a relatively unschooled son of uglier and less appropriate than it was on Jack’s books. The modeled immigrant squalor, an unquestioning foot soldier in history’s greatest (muddled?) coloring didn’t accentuate the art, it simply made it look calamity, a man who seemed untroubled by neurotic self-reflection but cruder. The muddled pinks and ocres that Pacific’s production department was overly concerned with the whims of the marketplace, could give was so fond of destroyed pictorial separation and depth of field. The birth to so many mind-blowing concepts. This is why he could bring into cover to the last issue of Captain Victory is a particularly egregious the world so many ideas that comics and even Hollywood continue to example of this. The coloring reduces the entire image into a brown 15

The Supreme Writer: Alan Moore Interviewed by George Khoury (Interviewer’s note: Lately I’m finding that the more interviews I do, the more difficult it becomes to write these introductions. Maybe it’s because you never want to overlook the accomplishments of the subject, but when the subject is Alan Moore it literally becomes impossible and nerve wrecking. No matter what dictionary you look in, there are no words that can capture either who Alan Moore is or what he means to comics. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to give this the old college try. Alan Moore did something to comic books that was wonderful, magical and beautiful. He brought a renaissance—a revolution to the art form, armed only with his vision and his pen. Moore brought a cerebral edge to comics, the likes of which have never been seen, making innovations and bringing back imagination. He expanded the boundaries and destroyed any limitations with his storytelling. His writing gained the love of the fanboys and the respect of the mainstream because he is a great writer in any medium. The British six-foot-two resident of Northampton has earned a welldeserved place in comics folklore alongside Jack Kirby and Harvey Kurtzman. His work on Swamp Thing, Watchmen, From Hell and other classics will forever stand as a testimony to the kind of greatness comics

can achieve. And every month, a whole new generation of readers continue to get dazzled by his work on America’s Best Comics. Moore like Kirby is a pioneer and a gentleman. And like the King, we are all better for having known him and his work. This interview was conducted in two sessions during a rainy November in 1999.) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: How powerful an influence was Jack Kirby for you? ALAN MOORE: Well, I’ll have to go all the way back to my very early childhood for that. I first discovered comics when I was about seven; this would have been around 1959 or 1960. When I said “comics” I meant American comics; I had read the homegrown British fare before that, but when I first came across the Superman and Batman comics of the time, the first couple of appearances of the Flash, things like that, these were a revelation. I became completely addicted to American comics, or specifically to the DC Comics that were available at the time. I can remember that I’d seen this peculiar-looking comic that I knew wasn’t DC hanging around on the newsstand and it looked too alien. I didn’t want to risk spending money upon it when it wasn’t stuff that I was already familiar with. And then I can recall on one day, I think I was ill in bed—I’d been seven or eight at the time—and my mother said that’d she get me a comic to cheer me up while I was confined to the bed. I knew that the only comic that I could think of that I hadn’t actually bought was a Blackhawk comic that I’d seen around. So I was trying to convince her to sort of pick up this Blackhawk comic, kind of explaining to her what it was and that it was a bunch of people in blue uniforms. Much to my initial disappointment she brought back Fantastic Four #3, which I read. It did something to me. It was the artwork mainly. It was a kind of texture and style that I’ve just never seen before. The DC artists at the time, I didn’t really know their names, but their style was the one I was accustomed to: Very clean, very wholesome looking, and here was something with craggy shadows with almost a kind of rundown look to a lot of it. It was immediate; literally, from that moment I became a devoted fan of the Fantastic Four and the other Marvel books when they came out—particularly those by Kirby. I mean, it was Kirby’s work that I followed more than anybody else as I was growing up. Just the work in Thor and “Tales of Asgard,” the Fantastic Four during that long classic stretch in the middle, and then when Kirby went over to DC and the Fourth World books. This was around the time that I was approaching my psychedelic teenage years and the subject matter of these books seems to be changing along with me. I absorbed actively every line he drew in those years, or at least the ones that I was able to lay my hands on. There’s something about the dynamism of Kirby’s storytelling. You never even think of it as an influence. It’s something that you grew up with, kind of understanding that this is just the way that comics were done. So I’d say yeah, that I would account for the influence of Jack Kirby upon my own work. It’s almost like a default setting for my own storytelling. It’s sort of like if you can tell a story the way Kirby would have, then at least that’s proper comics; you’re doing your job okay. TJKC: Had you read Challengers of the Unknown prior to Fantastic Four? ALAN: I’d seen the Challengers of the Unknown but I don’t think I’d seen the Kirby issues, I’d only seen a couple of the later ones. If it had been the Kirby issues for some reason they haven’t clicked with me, but I rather think they were some of his lighter stuff. I saw the Kirby Challengers stuff later and loved it, but I think the only Challengers of the Unknown that I had seen at that point was by the later artist that took over after Kirby moved on from the book.

Alan Moore & Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen. This Gibbons image was adapted from DC’s Who’s Who #5 to be used as a t-shirt design.

TJKC: What exactly made those classic Marvel stories so revolutionary? Was it that the storytelling was more mature than DC? ALAN: An extra dimension had been added to both the storytelling and the art. In a sense the DC characters at the time were archetypes to a certain degree. Archetype means they are one-dimensional. Stan Lee and his collaborators in terms of the story overlaid a second dimension of character. He gave them a few human problems. These weren’t three-dimensional characters but they were of a dimension more than what we’d been used to, and something about the art kind of corresponded with that. With Kirby there was a level of attention to detail and texture and intensity about the art that seemed to give another dimension to the super-hero—to the comic book—than what was used at the time. It just seemed to be much more visceral, much more real. The Human Torch finding the SubMariner in a bowery slum; that kind of had a visceral reality to it that was much more engaging.

(above) The first appearance of that spoof of a spoof, First American from Tomorrow Stories #1. Art by Jim Baikie. (below) The spoofee, Simon & Kirby’s Fighting American, showing his stuff.

TJKC: It seems that everyone at the beginning finds Kirby’s artwork a bit awkward. Did it take you a while to get used to it? ALAN: Well for a while, probably seven or eight pages, but yes there was that kind of shock of something unfamiliar. But then again, in my life that’s generally been a sign; something I’m almost repulsed by to start with will be something I’ll be enduringly fascinated by later. Some of the underground artists, the first time I saw their work, genuinely repulsed me, but later I became addicted to them and the same is true to a different degree with Kirby. Yeah, looking at his art for the first time there is that shock of something that is unfamiliar, and at first the shock might feel unpleasant, but pretty soon it’s a strong acquired taste and you have to have more of that.

TJKC: You used to draw more often when you were younger? ALAN: Yeah, I used to sort of draw. I did my share of Kirby swipes and sort of old exercise books and that sort of stuff. Yeah, I had delusions of adequacy as an artist right until the start of my comic book career. It was only then I realized that I could never draw quickly enough or well enough to actually make a living on that so I switched over to being a writer. TJKC: Do you think your style of comics writing is a natural progression to what Lee and Kirby did in the Sixties? ALAN: I guess it must be to a degree. That’s some of the early stuff that I saw, so like I said, that’s almost a kind of default setting. TJKC: But namely with your super-hero work.... ALAN: Yeah, but there again that was the only kind of comic I’d seen at the time: Super-hero comics, really. Even war and western comics were super-hero comics in drag, so basically that is almost a default storytelling style. Lee and Kirby: It’s just basic. It’s something that’s omnipresent—you don’t even think about it. You don’t even notice it. It’s there like air is there. TJKC: Have you ever tried writing in the Marvel style? Scripting to already plotted and illustrated artwork? ALAN: The nearest I ever got to that is when we were doing 1963; partly that was a matter of expediency. We needed to be able to do these things quite fast, without a huge amount of extra typing work for me. Also, it was appropriate that we did them in a Marvel style. I’d layout a page with, say, six panels in it. I did two or three pages like that. I phoned them through to Rick Veitch or Steve Bissette. So what we did was I’d read them the panel descriptions over the phone like there’s somebody in the left foreground, or there’s somebody in the right background. We’re in this kind of setting. These are who the characters are. This is kind of roughly what they’re saying to each other. One of them looks angry. The other one looks impassive. Then I go through that bit and they send the artwork. Probably before I’d even seen the artwork, I’d touch up the dialogue and send that over to them. So I’d get the dialogue done and they’d have to work from that 31

The Good, The Bad, & The Unfortunate My View of Kirby After ’78, by Shane Foley very few were actually picked up and produced—and Jack knew it.2 Then came Pacific Comics. Captain Victory evidently began strongly, but folded due to lack of sales.3 In 1984, DC agreed to let Jack finish his New Gods storyline, which Jack said he was very happy about,4 but the limitations, editorial demands and final product were not what either party had expected or really wanted.5 Evidently, Jack had long wanted to act in a more advisory/creative-only capacity for other writers and artists. It seems he enjoyed his input into Mike Thibodeaux’s Phantom Force concepts6 and at least his career ended on a relatively high note, for at the time of his passing, his creations for Topps (his old Secret City Saga ideas) were reportedly selling well.7 But how great it would have been if more of his creativity had been able to be harnessed and marketed as he had wished.

es, “The Good, the Bad and the Unfortunate” is an extremely weak title, but Jack liked using movie titles—even those that were overused to death like this one—and he used a similar version of this one himself (next issue blurb in Silver Star #4). Because it sums up the three very different points that come to my mind about this period of Jack Kirby’s career, I thought I’d use it. I hate to end negatively, so let’s turn the order around a bit:

The Bad Whereas Jack had difficulty having commercially successful work after leaving Marvel in 1970, it seemed things got even worse after he left them for the second time in ’78. Initially, there evidently was talk of a “Kirby Comics” line. Jack proposed Captain Victory, Thunderfoot, and Satan’s Six, but the money was never forthcoming and the comics never happened.1 Then Jack’s career as a conceptualizer for an animation company began well, with him happily producing drawings and ideas with an imaginative flair that was usually missing from his last DC and Marvel work. (Just look at the difference between his vehicles in OMAC and Captain America and those seen in TJKC #21.) But as time went on,

The Unfortunate

I know others I’ve spoken to don’t quite see things my way here—and all this has no bearing on the quality of Jack’s comics or animation work—but for years I have felt uncomfortable with two characteristics that permeated his interviews in his later years. To me it seems that, from the ’80s onwards, Jack allowed some of the injustices and disappointments that had happened to him to color what he thought and said (and I’m in no way trying to minimize or trivialize those injustices). I find it terribly frustrating when reading in many of those interviews that the great man was incapable of admitting, or at least extremely reluctant to admit, that this work may not always be the fan-favorites that he would like them to be. Jack has always maintained (and rightly so) that he did much more writing at Marvel (in particular) than was usually admitted. As he says, of course ‘plotting’ is ‘writing’, and plotting involves, at the very least, a suggested script; but as the years went by, it seems to me, Jack lost perspective. In 1970, he talked in one interview about his huge creative role at Marvel, but added, “I’m not saying Stan had nothing to do with it. Of course he did. We talked things out.” 8 In later interviews—mostly after the legal hassles with Marvel were in full swing—he seems less and less willing to give Stan any credit. “I was penciler and a storyteller and I insisted on doing my own writing. I always wrote my own story, no matter what it was. Nobody ever wrote a story for me.”9 In the same piece there were lines like “Nobody’s ever seen Stan Lee write a story” which he goes on to qualify a little, but the intention is clear. Even Joe Simon, for whom Jack always seemed to have the highest regard, felt that some of Jack’s comments in reference to his co-writers was “a little crazy”.10 He seemed to talk like he was the editor making the decisions Amazing Heroes #47 cover. That stick of dynamite confused many a reader when it was colored pink at publication. (“I came in with presentations. I’m not 44

gonna wait around for conferences. I said ‘This is what you have to do.’);9 certainly largely true, but equally certainly, a one-sided, not altogether fair account of what really happened. Again and again we read Jack talking of history as he probably wished it were. (Gil Kane gave a great comment on the way Jack really talked with Stan in Comic Book Artist.)11 The hurt from Marvel ran really deep, we know that; but how I wish he’d been able to prevent that coloring of so many things he said. The second area I don’t like hearing from Jack in his later years was his inability or unwillingness to accept that his later work was not as universally popular as earlier in his career. Yet time and again in interviews, he justifies his work by saying, “It sold very well.” In the ’50s and ’60s, that is true. But his ’70s work simply did not catch on as well. Why couldn’t he admit it? Even if his Fourth World sales were far better than DC thought and it shouldn’t have been cancelled, there’s no way he could have known that. Why did he say (for instance) in one interview, “I assure you it (New Gods) was in DC’s top 10”?12 He wanted it to be. He desperately wished it were, and maybe in reality, it nearly was, or would soon have gotten there; but from his vantage point, he could not have known it. I wonder why he felt compelled to say such a thing—and apart from Kamandi, it seems all his other ’70s work was the same. Why couldn’t he admit sales were lower than he’d hoped? Insecurity? Was it because as yet, there was no flood of acknowledgement that he was a far bigger factor in Marvel’s triumph and continued success than was generally stated? (I remember someone—Mark Evanier maybe—saying that at one point, Jack was afraid of being forgotten, since his name wasn’t attached to his major Marvel creations.) Whatever his reasons, I long to read an interview with Jack where he could be really honest and admit that, love it as he might, his later work was (or certainly appeared to be) accepted and loved by a smaller section of the general readership. Other artists—actors, singers, cartoonists—have a major success or two in their careers, then go on to be able to do the things they enjoy more, but can quite easily admit that what they do now is not as universally popular, even though in their minds, it is actually better—but it seems Jack couldn’t. Why did he feel that, even in his fifties, he had to be on the cutting edge of what readers wanted? I guess Jack really hated the fact that his most successful work sales-wise was with Joe Simon and, more to the point, Stan Lee—not his solo work—especially since he felt the Marvel corporate line was that Stan was the Father/creator at Marvel. Finally, when Jack got free of being in a partnership, his work, sales-wise, seemed to falter. Maybe, to him, he was afraid that lack of high sales on his solo work seemed to cry out to the comics world: “See! You do need Stan!” How I wish he’d been able to graciously accept that, apparently, his solo work appealed to a smaller readership base. This is what I find ‘unfortunate’. Why? Because it reveals to me a man who ought to be content after such a magnificent career, yet was unable to be so. In no way am I trying to say Jack deliberately didn’t tell the truth. We know that truth and fairness were of paramount importance to him, and I mean no disrespect or malignment to the Master; just the desire that the fact he’d given so much to so many and that he’d “done it all and done it fairly” (to paraphrase him) was enough, and that he felt at peace with God and himself as a result—but the hurt and disappointment often got on top of him. At least that’s how it seems to me; but then there’s the ‘good’— and there’s lots of it:

The Good Good—because much of the output I’ve seen by Jack in this period was as magnificent and inspiring as ever. His ability to maintain his drawing quality for a 20-page feature had severely diminished by the early ’80s, but to a huge degree, the vision, imagination and inspiring thought were all still there. The creativity in some of his animation pieces is just amazing. In his vehicle and weaponry designs shown in the Jack Kirby: The Unpublished Archives card series and TJKC is an outlandish imagination which seems to take the simplest idea and make it work. Not since the Fourth World was Jack putting so much into his mechanical representations. His characters were just as good. I can easily imagine “Power Planet” as a fully-developed and much-loved series of Jack’s, had it been produced under different circumstances. Along similar lines, the strength of Jack’s imagination and drawing ability was proven again when he was asked by DC to produce new or updated New Gods character sketches and designs. Part of the deal with DC, around the time Hunger Dogs was produced, was to get Jack to do these so that he could share in the profits when some of the New Gods characters were marketed as toy figures. Most importantly, this was an excellent gesture on DC’s part, and in-keeping with the growing attitude amongst fans and pros regarding Jack’s contribution towards the entire comics industry. But it also gave Jack the opportunity to produce some tremendous new New Gods art pieces. As far as his comic work goes, to me, Captain Victory had all the promise of a classic series. It was an open ended series—a ‘super Star Trek’ if you like—unlike New Gods or Eternals or Silver Star which had a particular theme; but this sort of thing is exactly what Jack was great at. What were the Fantastic Four, or the Challengers or Kamandi but openended vehicles for Jack to go places? Some complained that Captain Victory was just Jack rehashing old themes, but even if it was, so what? So was the FF when it comes down to it—a combination of Challengers, Sky Masters and Monster stories with plots developed from earlier Lee and/or Kirby stories. It felt new though. Nearly all of Jack’s stories or concepts had forerunners, often in his own work (I remember a letter in FF #55, which said Galactus was a “run-of-the-mill space villain”). Part of Jack’s genius was in looking original, even when he wasn’t. Who was the High Evolutionary but Frankenstein in space-age dress? It was what he actually did with the concept that was always important. (Besides if Kirby wanted to revisit his own themes that he no longer owned, who could deny him? I’d rather see Kirby do his own sub-version of his own creation any day than see someone else muddle around with the ‘real thing’.) Captain Victory, to my mind, had potential oozing out of every pore. What was going on with Major Klavus? Who was Paranex? I asked in the last TJKC “where had all the villains gone”, referring to a part of Jack’s ’70s work. The answer could be “they went into the ’80s”, because Jack’s ability to create them was well and truly intact when we look at the Wonder Warriors, as well as Thunder Hunter, Marauder, and others

Which “Harry” came first? Either way, this has to be one of Jack’s strangest animation concepts ever.

Meet Jack Kirby A photo-essay by Cindy Bruns n Jack’s later years, he made numerous appearances at comics shops in the Los Angeles area as well as conventions. On Saturday November 7th, 1992, he made a visit to 20th Century Comics in order to meet some of his fans and promote his then-new book, The Art of Jack Kirby. As part of the day’s events, Jack and store owner Barry Short raffled off a few comics and a pencil drawing of Captain America. These photos were taken that day and used for a photography class project by Cindy Bruns, and we’ve excerpted a few here. Our thanks to Cindy and her husband, Scott, for this submission.

(above) Roz and Jack enjoying a break. (top right) Jack mugs for the camera. (middle right) Jack mingles with the fans, including store owner Barry Short (far right) (bottom left) And the winner is... (bottom right) ...Scott Bruns, displaying his prize alongside Jack and Barry Short.

Robert Katz Interview Conducted by John Morrow, transcribed by Eric Nolen-Weathington (Jack and Roz Kirby’s nephew, Robert Katz, was born December 10, 1953 in the small town of Liberty, NY, about 100 miles from New York City. Soon to be 47 years old, Robert has been the Kirby Estate’s co-trustee—along with Kirby daughter Lisa—since Roz’s death in 1997. Our thanks go out to Robert for all his help with this magazine, and for taking time out for this interview, which was conducted by telephone on September 7, 2000, and was copyedited by him.)

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: So in terms of the Kirby family tree, you mom was Roz’s sister, Anita Katz? ROBERT KATZ: Right. Anita Katz, who’s maiden name was Anita Goldstein; of course, Aunt Rosalind was also a Goldstein. TJKC: You grew up in New York. Were you near the Kirbys? ROBERT: It was a long drive back then, before the Interstate system. It was a good half day to drive to the Kirbys, who were living on Long Island when I was a kid. They lived in a town called East Williston, and we would drive there a few times a year, and they would drive up to visit us a few times a year. So we did see each other semi-often. TJKC: As a child, did you read comics at all? Were you aware of what your uncle did? ROBERT: Yeah. I was very lucky as a kid, ’cause I was just at the right age, and Uncle Jack put me on the Marvel mailing list. So I got every title from Avengers to X-Men. I got ’em all. TJKC: Wow! From the very early issues, then? ROBERT: From the very early issues—and I not only got Uncle Jack’s comics; I got Spider-Man, I got all the cowboy stuff. If Marvel put it out, I got it. TJKC: Did you keep them, by any chance? Do you still have some of the original ones? ROBERT: Some. Yeah, certainly. Absolutely. TJKC: So you read pretty avidly? ROBERT: Yes, I read everything. There wasn’t a comic that came through the door that I didn’t read. So I was quite the big man on the block, and that’s where a lot of them went. I was very free about giving them away when I was real young. It was only later that I started hanging on to them, and when I got to college, even then I continued to—at that point I wasn’t on the DC mailing list, but I was buying his DC stuff, so I still read Kamandi, Demon, and his Fourth World stuff. TJKC: So obviously you were very aware of his career and into what he was doing. ROBERT: Very much so. I was definitely. I’m sure, as far as the family goes, I’m the only one in the family who can truly say that I was a fan. I would read everything, even the Jimmy Olsens. I didn’t read the later stuff. I never read Captain Victory, Silver Star, the Topps stuff; that’s stuff that I did not read. After his DC career, I pretty much stopped reading comics. TJKC: So you’re not an avid comic book afficionado today? ROBERT: No, I don’t read any today at all. What I read today is—I still subscribe to comics for my son, who’s nine years old, just so he can stay involved in that; and I do have a lot of the Marvel Masterworks. I’ll pull those out and we’ll read those together, which is fun for me to go back and reread the old comics and read them with him, and explain to him a lot of the stuff that went on then.

A 1983 Hulk drawn done as a fan commission.

Jack Kirby Collector #30