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NO. 36 SUMMER

2002 2002

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Number 8, Summer 2002 • Hype and hullabaloo from the publisher determined to bring new life to comics fandom • Edited by Eric Nolen-Weathington

It’s Time to... Last year we brought you DRAW! and received an incredible response. Now we’re turning our attention to all of you writers out there! You know, an artist can show an editor his work and the editor can evaluate it virtually on the spot. But what qualities are necessary to sell writing? What are editors looking for? What skills are needed, and what other media can these skills be used in? This July, find out in WRITE NOW!, a new quarterly magazine edited by veteran Marvel Comics editor and writer DANNY FINGEROTH! It takes you behind the scenes, into both the creative and business processes that go into writing narrative fiction. Hear from pros ON BOTH SIDES OF THE DESK what it takes to write the stories that readers—and editors—want to read!

In the premiere issue, top professional writers discuss the practical aspects of their craft. You'll get tips and insights from interviews with: BRAIN MICHAEL BENDIS, the writer of Ultimate Spider-Man, Alias, Powers and so many more; JOE QUESADA, editor in chief of Marvel Comics, and co-writer of Ash and writer of Iron Man—he's the guy setting the writing standards at the House of Ideas today; JOSS WHEDON, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the comic Fray, and the upcoming Firefly TV series; J.M. DeMATTEIS, writer of SpiderMan, the Spectre, Man-Thing and Moonshadow; and to get an artist’s perspective on comics scripts, MARK BAGLEY, penciler of Ultimate Spider-Man, New Warriors and Amazing Spider-Man. Plus there’s an interview with STAN (THE MAN) LEE! ('Nuff said.)

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The convention season is underway and already we’ve had great shows at the Atlanta s me other ort allow supp and Pittsburgh Comicons. Despite two r free from so R CONSENT, it fonomithanks—your deddidn’t loawe wn WITHOUT OU do If u NE nations (for TJKC and CBA), win a yo DO ad te 0% ins If 10 MATERIAL. D ely lut TE so Can’t find those CBA back issues you’re missing? The GH ab s RI HARVEY but our own ERIC OF OUR COPY that it wa e knowAWARD, G IN ST search is over! In June, simply pick up the COMIC BOOK pleasNOLEN-WEATHINGTON PO L get to be a preld do: was an ILLEGA did u shouby yostopped ARTIST COLLECTION, VOLUME 2! It reprints the sold-outand itsenter! ’s what Thanks to re everyone who think. se, he the ca see what you CBA #5 (’70s DC) and #6 (’70s Marvel) and includes over that’s our booth (especially if you bought someL ISSUE, and ING and purchase a TA GI DI IS 20 NEW PAGES spotlighting STEVE ENGLEHART and ADusTH REfind E RIGHT TH thing)! Next youd can in Charlotte, NC our d an ahea keep it, DO TH rchase the print edition at to (visit MARSHALL ROGERS’ Batman work, plus DC’s ultra-rare 1) Go ough foryoHeroes Conitonen June 14-16 local , or pu enjoy ite ur u bs yo If at we r 2) or ou SENSE OF WONDER ALTER EGO: e) m info), and CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE! Also included are interit fro ition for fre www.heroesonline.com more al download of for the Digital Ed THE leg reader. CBA you to views with and unpublished art by BERNIE WRIGHTSON, paidCOLLECTION Acclaimed historian Bill Schelly gives you les lar tit gu en re the bs biggie—Comicon International: San a h RE A as hic u SH NOTfrom we ite (w to have yo DOflip-sides NEAL ADAMS, JOHN ROMITA SR., and more! andEGO Reprints theRALTER the AN INSIDER’S TOUR of comics fandom of . We’d Diego, August 1-4op (where CBA,lov AE,e and PUTE COM the 1960s & ’70s. The fans, the comicons, comic book sh out-of-print COMIC BOOK ARTIST #1-5, FROM YOUR . TE IT RE KIMOTA! ise are,up forLE EISNER AWARDS)! HE the fanzines—they’re all here!! DE W ANY LEGALLY,

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plus 30 NEW PAGES of features L IL & art: ST IT 3) Otherw R MATERIA IENDS OR PO NG OU • Introduction by ROY THOMAS, cover by e downloadIT WITH FR r freKUBERT! • Special color covers by foJOE DOWNLOADI all ou azine EP ag m KE r DICK GIORDANO! T N’ of u want to • All-new rare and de previously-unpublished y, DO IfFin you to contact the TwoMorrows ue allneed if iss e te cid 4) ple m to GIL KANE,yo • Share Bill’s encounters with FREDERIC u KIRBY, e co yo on r r fo When should you tilt or overlap a comics panel? What’s the fe g art by JACK JOE of nt e din cie W loa editors ofou come. want to send a lettersh suffi wn be do ld for fre(or WERTHAM, STEVE DITKO, BOB KANE, ep ke to ich gh WOOD, FRANK KUBERT, WALLY best way to divide a page to convey motion, time, action, r website, wh ment), blications enou NEALwe JIM SHOOTER, and more! e. ucothers! ing attryoue-mail! prodand ial ADAMS, u enjoy our pu for thROBBINS, er yo at quiet? PANEL DISCUSSIONS (our new trade paperback, If m e rs. • Over 150 photos and illustrations by he ot g ase publisher, JACKpaKIRBY • STEVE DITKO on the creation of purch John Morrow, e m ny by payin esKIRBY, DITKO, NEWTON, EISNER, C.C. shipping in June) is the place to find out! It picks the minds co th r rb ou so t or ab SPIDER-MAN, ROY THOMAS on the n pp , su editor (and the one to go d ca an em s, th et COLLECTOR ck BECK, KALUTA, KRENKEL, COCKRUM, po ep of THE INVADERS, and of the industry’s top storytellers, covering all aspects of the more! th dozensSINNOTT, GIL KANE and others! oration with de birthan op—wi rp sh co p” nt to with subscription problems): po gia d e design of comics! Learn from WILL EISNER, MARK “mom(160-page Trade Paperback) weekonUS We’re not som ht and$20 ny—literally a twomorrow@aol.com (216-page Trade Paperback) $20 US SCHULTZ, MIKE MIGNOLA, WALTER SIMONSON, DICK ay day and nig a small compa ors, slaving aw e for all this work. We love losses. We’re at cre e nc ela GIORDANO, MARK CHIARELLO and others as they share fre BOOK ARTIST ount of incom Jon B.rdCooke, COMIC on g ly kin re or r, -w ne COMIC BOOKS & OTHER ow ha of al am shop their hard-learned lessons about the DESIGN of comics! editor: jonbcooke@aol.com a pretty minim ur local comic of the small OF LIFE b usNECESSITIES ro ends, to make our editors, authors, and yo t n’ do e as y , but EGO editor: to stay in business. Ple RoyatThomas, t be an we doALTER wh collection of MARK EVANIER’s POV COLUMNS, there woA n’ is publication so will ensure roydann@ntinet.com featuring a NEW COVER and ILLUSTRATIONS by income from th nsation we receive. Doing pe SERGIO ARAGONÉS! Includes his best essays and nt of com P.C. Hamerlinck, FCA editor: amou wnload. commentaries, plus many never before published on: In August, we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of THOR in ts like this to do fca2001@yahoo.com oaded at future produc nl w do be • The state of the art form (as only Mark conveys it)! ly THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #36! To start things off, there’s on ld ou sh ns Mike Manley, DRAW! w editor: • The industry’s leading practitioners (including JACK s publicatio two incredible color Kirby Thor covers (inked by MIKE ROYER TwoMorro KIRBY and CARL BARKS)! mike@actionplanet.com

Designing? Buy the book!

Verily, ’tis Thor’s 40th year!

and TREVOR VON EEDEN)! Inside, JOE SINNOTT and JOHN ROMITA JR. weigh in on their Thor work with new interviews, and we present a never-published 1969 interview with JACK KIRBY, conducted by SHEL DORF! Plus, we’re featuring 40 pages of Kirby Thor pencils, including an amazing Kirby Art Gallery at TABLOID SIZE, with pin-ups, covers, and more!

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KIMOTA! THE MIRACLEMAN COMPANION Learn the behind-the-scenes secrets of ALAN MOORE’S MIRACLEMAN, from his beginnings as Marvelman, to the legal and creative hurdles during the 24-issue Eclipse Comics series, and why you never saw the final NEIL GAIMAN-scripted issue!

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Contents OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (all Thor really needed was a pair of ruby slippers)

THE NEW

UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 (Trevor Von Eeden and Mike Royer delineate this issue’s cover inks) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 (regular columnist Mark Evanier answers still more Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby)

#36, SUMMER 2002

INSPIRATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 (would’ja believe Thor got his start at Charlton Comics?) THINKIN’ ’BOUT INKIN’ . . . . . . . . . . . .14 (Joe Sinnott outlines his early Thor contributions) KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 (Adam McGovern looks for humor in Kirby-inspired funny books) YOUNG GUNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 (John Romita Jr. talks about his famous father and his Kirby inspirations) GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 (take a trip to Asgard and back in this whopping compilation of Kirby Thor pencils) RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 (Mark Alexander’s Quest is to document Jack’s “Tales of Asgard”) NEAR MYTHS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 (a quick lesson in Norse Edda-quette) INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 (part one of a never-published 1969 interview with Kirby by Shel Dorf) FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE: PART 7 . . .70 (mighty Mike Gartland is back with his latest installment, looking at Kirby’s long last year at Marvel) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . . . . .78 (no letters on #35, but still fun reading) PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 (Odin, Zeus, Hercules, Thor—Kirby!) Front cover inks: TREVOR VON EEDEN Back cover inks: MIKE ROYER 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: Avengers, Balder, Captain America, Crystal, Destroyer, Dr. Doom, Ego, Enchanters, Falcon, Fandral, Fantastic Four, Frightful Four, Galactus, Heimdall, Hela, Hercules, Him, Hogun, Human Torch, Invaders, Invisible Girl, Jane Foster, Ka-Zar, Karnilla, Kraven the Hunter, Kronin Krask, Loki, Mangog, Medusa, Mephisto, Mr. Fantastic, Odin, Queen Bee, Recorder, Sandman (Villain), Sif, Silver Surfer, Stone Men of Saturn, Sub-Mariner, Tales of Asgard, Thing, Thor, Trapster, Triton, Ulik, Volstagg, Wizard, X-Men, Zeus TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Thorion and all related characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics and Marvel Characters, Inc. • Brute, Glob, Green Arrow, Jed, Mr. Miracle, New Gods, Oberon, Richard Dragon, Sandman TM & ©2002 DC Comics. • Cherries Jubilee, Destroyer Duck, Pablo Parongus, Vanilla Cupcake TM & ©2002 Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby Estate. • "Incredible Walking Stick" and all related characters TM & © Charlton Publications. • Lightning Lady, Sky Masters, Socko the Seadog, True Divorce Cases ©Jack Kirby Estate.

The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 10, No. 36, Summer 2002. Published quarterly by & ©2002 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: $13 postpaid ($15 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $36.00 US, $60.00 Canada, $64.00 elsewhere. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is ©2002 Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is ©2002 the respective authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

f you really stop to think about it, Thor is a little like The Wizard of Oz. Besides the fact that the late John Buscema drew both for Marvel Comics, you’ve got a lot of similarities. Volstagg is the Cowardly Lion. Odin is the Wizard himself, always maneuvering things behind the scenes. Heck, the assorted trolls are the

started as a fairly humdrum strip in the mind-boggling directions it went— —but it wouldn’t have happened if not for Jane Foster, the Dorothy of Jack’s Thor books. Never in the history of comics has such an ever-present character been so quickly shunted away—and completely forgotten about—as Jane Foster. I mean, after more than four years of the typical Stan Lee “Oh, if he only knew how I really felt” ’60s Marvel melodrama, she was eliminated from the strip, and even replaced with a new love interest in the same issue.

Somewhere Over The Rai (this spread, large images) Pages from Thor #136 showing, respectively, how Jane Foster got the boot from the strip, and how she was replaced by Sif, Thor’s new love interest. All characters TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

(next page, top) Uncredited cover painting, based on the splash page of Journey Into Mystery #83, used on a 1968 British Fantastic Annual, reprinting Thor stories. (next page, bottom) Cover to Thor #172, marking Jane Foster’s brief return to the series. All characters TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Munchkins, Loki is the Wicked Witch of the West, and... ...okay, it’s not a perfect analogy, but stick with me here; I think there’s a point to this. Here’s a guy (Kirby) from the Lower East Side of New York, about as far removed from Asgard as a human could be. In the same way Dorothy was swept up from her Kansas existence by a tornado to guide the Oz characters down the Yellow Brick Road, Kirby was a former street kid, suddenly using his cyclonic imagination to direct the actions—of all things—of a bunch of Norse gods (or at least his versions of them). Talk about being out of place; it’s amazing Jack was able to steer what

Poof. She’s gone. Didn’t even have to click her heels together. I know most readers consider issue #126 to be the real turning point of the series, in more ways than one. Not only was that when the book changed titles from Journey Into Mystery to Thor, it marked the moment the strip’s emphasis began shifting from mundane earthly conflicts to more Asgardian fare, commencing with the epic Thor/Hercules saga (sort of Thor’s “Galactus Trilogy,” not-so-coincidentally drawn at the same time by Jack). Certainly, Jane Foster was the impetus to get Thor and Herc to duke it out and get that storyline rolling, but ol’ Jane made a more important mark than that. I’m here to say that the real change in the Thor series took place in issue #136, when our Dorothy—Jane Foster—finally got her Asgardian ruby slippers, and discovered that Asgard was no place like home. In that one issue, Jack managed to remove the Thunder God’s last tie to Earth from the series, and hardly a reader complained. From there on it was gods, gods, and more gods. Sure, his adventures took him back to Earth, but for several years it was always some kind of Asgardian menace that was the crux of the storylines, not a standard Marvel villain like the Cobra or Mr. Hyde. Then, during Jack’s final year on Thor, Dorothy woke up from her dream. Making a brief return appearance in Thor #172, Jane Foster—missing for 3 years, except for a brief cameo in #146—heralded a return to those boring, mundane Earth stories that had started the series. Surely it wasn’t Jack’s idea to bring her back, or to rehash dozens of old villains (and plots) from earlier in the series’ run. Just like at the end of The Wizard of Oz, the series was back in Kansas, and the show was over. A few feeble attempts were made to return the focus to Asgard in Kirby’s waning issues, but again, it was pretty much just rehashes of what had gone before. (For that matter, why was Vinnie Colletta replaced as inker? No one would ever call me a Colletta fan, but the strip sure could’ve used his inks to at least maintain a little consistency that final year. The Everett, Klein, and Verpoorten inks just didn’t seem to work for me on this strip, in the same way those two Royer-inked issues of Jimmy Olsen

seemed out of place. Colletta’s inks, for better or worse, became identified with the strip.) Where am I going with all this? Simply put, Jack found—metaphorically, at least—like Dorothy, that once he’d traveled the Yellow Brick Road (Rainbow Bridge) to the Emerald City (Asgard—or maybe Marvel Comics?), you can stay a while, take in the sights, even learn to like it; but sooner or later, you’re going to find the cracks in its foundations, and you’ve got to come back down to Earth—and that’s a long, long way to fall. I feel a little like Dorothy myself now. After learning something about what went on behind the scenes, I’ve discovered that on Thor, the wizard behind the curtain, directing all the action, was just a man after all. Jack used all the pyrotechnics at his disposal, but the more unhappy he got at Marvel, the more the work suffered, and we were plopped right back where we started.

inbow Bridge With that in mind, this issue isn’t meant to really be a standalone Thor issue. TJKC #14 did a pretty dandy job of covering the highs and lows of Jack’s Thor run, I thought, so why rehash a lot of what we already covered there? No, this issue is meant more as a supplement to #14, where we’re showing art, art, and more art, and keeping the text to a few choice areas that we haven’t explored as fully— mainly, the “Tales of Asgard” back-ups. This month is Thor’s 40th anniversary. Let’s celebrate by remembering all the amazing new vistas Kirby explored in his Thor run; and don’t forget that without plain Jane Foster, we wouldn’t have taken nearly as many trips over the rainbow bridge. ★

Mark evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s

A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby by Mark Evanier

dunno if what Kirk Groeneveld sends me are “frequently-asked questions” about Jack Kirby, but he sure has a lot of them— which is fine but I’m only going to answer this column’s worth of his (plus one from Roger Weems) before I give someone else a chance. This time, Kirk starts by asking:

(next page) It appears when the cover for Thor #133 was originally published in Oct. 1966, the face of Ego was altered, as evidenced by this later reprinting in Marvel Spectacular #4 (Nov. 1973). Marvel must’ve had a stat of the original inks on file for the reprint. Thor, Ego, Recorder TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

“Was Jack’s work sometimes truncated? That is, was a page or two eliminated from an issue or two? For example, Fantastic Four #36 seems to end very abruptly, with the escape occurring off-panel and an explosion to cover their escape. Was this planned—or a rush job?” Pretty much everything Jack did throughout his career was a rush job, in that he had to output 3-6 pages a day (occasionally, more) and leap directly from one job to the next. When you look at the pace at which he worked, it’s amazing any of those stories made any sense at all. I have no info about that issue in particular but it was not uncommon for Jack to finish a story and then to suddenly realize he’d miscounted. As I have described elsewhere, he was a page short on Mister Miracle #6 and asked me to figure out where one could be inserted and to write it. The result was the scene in which Big Barda took a bath—a page which you may note, could be completely omitted without affecting the story in any way. The opposite was also sometimes the case: Jack discovering he was a page over on an issue and having to omit one. It would join a pile he kept by his drawing table containing orphaned material. In that stack were pages in various states of completion— some finished, some barely begun, most somewhere between those extremes. Many were whole, multipage sequences that he’d drawn or at least laid-out before deciding to change courses. From time to time, he’d shuffle through the material in that pile, seeing what ideas were triggered. Quite often, he’d find a way to

use a page or pages in another story— sometimes with major alterations, sometimes not. (Anyone who’s interested can do the exacting research and/or speculation on these: Jack once told me that he’d deleted a long sequence with The Watcher from an issue of Fantastic Four and later used it in Thor. Also, when he was planning on relating his origin of the Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four, he’d penciled a number of pages before learning that Stan Lee and John Buscema were doing their own origin in the new Silver Surfer comic. Kirby had to drop his plans and he recycled the pages— presumably with many changes—into another story. I have no idea which one.) It also happened that, with Jack’s famouslyfaulty memory, he sometimes just plain forgot some part of a story. My guess would be that it happened in the issue you mentioned; that he handed it in and Stan read it over and said, “Hey, wait a minute... you didn’t include a scene where they escaped.” When that kind of thing happened, Stan and/or Jack had to figure out a way to shoehorn the absent info into the narrative, preferably altering as little of the art as possible. The “Marvel method” of writing a comic has often forced writers to awkwardly insert expository dialogue to compensate for some scene that didn’t get drawn. Then Kirk asks: How did Jack feel about whole pages being removed upon reprinting his Thor and FF adventures when the issue page counts didn’t match due to advertising?

He probably never knew about it, but as a general rule, like any artist, Jack wanted his work to reach the readers in as un-altered a form as humanly possible. Any changes bothered him, but especially those that altered the story. If you’d told Jack, “We have to make a change here and it means either the artwork will be harmed or the story,” Jack would not have hesitated a moment. He’d have said to sacrifice the art for the story. Every time. Kirk next asks: How did Jack feel about having his covers altered? I assume you’re asking here about those instances where Jack would draw a cover and then, in the office, they’d move figures around or redraw them completely. As you’d expect, any change bothered him, but alterations in stories bothered him more than alterations of artwork. One thing which I believe changed about Jack throughout his career is that his interest in the sheer act of drawing diminished. He had always thought of himself as a storyteller more than an artist but, with each passing year, covers and individual illustrations were of less and less importance to him. He did them, of course, because that was part of his job. Still, his true passion was in plots and stories. I think you can see some of this in an overview of his covers. As huge a fan as I am of Jack, I think his covers got weaker and weaker over the years, and his best ones were generally those where he was working from a rough sketch by another artist. Jack’s brain simply was not into drawing covers because there was no proper time, creatively, for him to do them.

If he was asked to do the cover before he did the corresponding story, he had a problem. Jack often did not know what a given issue would be about until he was well into drawing it. Even when he had it all mapped out in his cranium in advance, he could get partway into a story, have a better idea and begin course-correcting. You may have heard me tell how Jack once told Steve Sherman and myself the plot of the issue of New Gods he was going to start after we left—a fully-conceived, all-figured-out storyline that we thought sounded great. Then we left... and Jack sat down and embarked on what turned out to be a completely different story. What’s more, when we later pointed out the shift, he had no idea how he’d gotten from the tale he’d planned to the one he’d actually drawn. It didn’t work for him to do the cover while he was in the midst of an issue, either. While Jack was writing and drawing a story—or even just plotting and drawing a story—he became utterly immersed in it. At times, it was tough to even have a conversation with him. To stop and do a cover was a needless intrusion. And if he tried to do the cover after the issue was complete... well, that wasn’t a good time, either. The minute a story was over for Kirby, it was over. Outta sight, outta mind. The work schedule usually required him to leap directly from one job to the next. He would finish a Forever People at 1:00 and start a New Gods at 2:00. If, around 5:30 you went to him and asked, “Hey, what was in that issue of Forever People that Roz just mailed off for you?” he would have no idea. He’d have to go fumbling about for his Xeroxes in order to give you an answer.

Okay, now I’m going to fumble for Kirk’s next question: Also, in most of the Marvel Special Editions that reprinted almost complete story arcs for Thor, or at least two at a time, the covers were redrawn or completely different. Why was this done? The power of Jack’s original covers certainly were better sellers and more representative of the action that was within than any of the four covers that I am aware of. Again, why was this done, and how did Jack feel about this? Anything of that sort represented a decision on the part of someone on the editorial staff so you’d have to ask them why it was done, and I doubt they’d recall. Presumably, the answer would be along the lines of, “We thought we could do better” or perhaps a feeling that a new cover would snag some readers who already had the originals. In a few occasions, I know, the stats or film Marvel had available at the time were of poor quality and, rather than print a cover off bad source material, they decided to have a new one drawn. Even on the Masterworks editions they’re doing now as high-ticket hardcovers, they sometimes find they have no film or stats on a cover or story and it has to be painstakingly re-created. As for how Jack felt about it: I doubt he cared much. His mind was forever on the new story, the next story. He didn’t have much interest in reprints. Matter of fact, since throughout most of his career he wasn’t paid for reprints, I think he was happier not to think about them at all. Here’s Kirk again... Also, as Jack returned to Marvel, he would occasionally 7

Thinkin’ ’bout inkin’

Joe Sinnott: An

Interviewed and transcribed by Jim Amash

(next page, top) Photo of Joe Sinnott at his drawing board in 1961, around the time he would’ve been inking Journey Into Mystery #83.

(Not much needs to be said to Kirby fans about the credentials of Joe Sinnott. Hailed by many as Jack’s finest inker, Joe is also an accomplished penciler in his own right, and drew many of Thor’s early adventures after Jack got the ball rolling, as well as inking numerous artists who followed Kirby on the strip. Joe kindly consented to discuss

his long tenure with the character for this issue, and this interview was conducted in April 2002 by telephone.) THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: You inked Thor’s first appearance in Journey Into Mystery #83. JOE: Yes, I did. I also inked the cover to it and #84, though for years, Dick Ayers has received those credits. The nice thing about

Asgardian Artist inking Jack Kirby was that you got the whole story at once. Most pencilers don’t do that; they give it to you in dribbles and drabs and not always in sequential order. I was extremely impressed by Jack’s splash pages for this book. Jack was great at those. TJKC: Did Stan talk to you about the character before you inked this story? JOE: Nope. Stan would never do that. I never talked to Jack about it. Of course, you know I didn’t have any contact with Jack until the 1975 Marvel convention. I had never even talked to him on the phone and we had been working together since 1961; I inked a couple of things in 1960. I never discussed scripts with Stan or Jack. They figured I was a professional and that I should handle it. Even when I penciled the stories, Stan never called to discuss the scripts—even when the pencils were a little vague (I’m not talking about Jack’s work now), like if a character was supposed to be smiling or sneering or whatever, because there were no captions or dialogue to follow. I’d be left in the dark and had to figure it out myself. TJKC: Do you remember if Kirby wrote margin notes for Stan on the first Thor story? JOE: A lot of times, Stan would write margin notes, too, and Stan’s lettering was very hard to understand sometimes. It’s been a long time, but I don’t remember Jack writing any margin notes on that story. As far as I can remember, Jack never wrote

any margin notes to me. TJKC: Since Larry Lieber wrote the dialogue for this first story, that may explain why there were no margin notes. JOE: It could be. In the early days, Jack was working off of full scripts, so there was no need at the time for Jack to make margin notes. Stan would write notes in the margins sometimes. In those days, I erased my pages so thoroughly, that a lot of those notes disappeared. I know collectors today wish they could read those notes. TJKC: Yeah, but how were you supposed to know it’d be important years later? JOE: Of course. We couldn’t care less back in those days. TJKC: What was your initial reaction to Thor? JOE: I thought he was terrific. I liked the idea of Don Blake stamping his cane on the floor and turning into Thor. It was like Shazam!, the original Captain Marvel. TJKC: I always thought Thor was invented to be Marvel’s answer to Superman. Marvel didn’t have a super-strong, good-looking hero before that. You know, the Thing was ugly and the Hulk was no prize either. Thor had a blue uniform like Superman and also had the red cape, too. JOE: That’s true. Of course, Thor was nothing without his hammer, you know. I never made that connection with Superman, though. TJKC: Thor was the first long-haired super-hero. JOE: He sure was. Jack drew him so well and John Buscema did a great Thor. They did great, well-built superheroes. Jack Kirby and John Buscema were made for Thor much more than they were for Spider-Man. TJKC: Since this was pre-Beatles, did you think the long hair was odd? JOE: No, he had to have long hair, because he was a Viking. TJKC: And with that helmet, he’d have looked funny with short hair. JOE: Right. I think Roy Thomas eliminated the helmet for a while, which to

me was like taking the “S” off of Superman’s chest. The helmet, long hair and cape gave Thor a real flair. I always liked drawing characters with capes. It lends a lot of action to the panel, as does Thor’s long hair and the wings on his helmet. It was a great character design. You know, I’ve done so many characters for Marvel and sometimes, you go a while where you don’t work on a certain character. Well, that character’s costume may change a little over time and if you don’t have recent reference, you may not be aware of the changes. You remember that Thor originally had a “T” on his belt buckle? Well, one time, I was drawing Thor and my son Mark, who knows all about these things, looked at the drawing and said, “Dad, Thor doesn’t have that ‘T’ on the belt buckle anymore. That went out with issue so and so.” [laughs] TJKC: You did a slight bit of work on Journey Into Mystery #84, right? JOE: Right. I inked the cover to #84, though Dick Ayers usually gets the credit. I started to ink the inside story, but had committed myself to a sixtyfour page Treasure Chest story, so I had to send the story back to Stan. I only inked a couple of panels. You know, I never inked the splash page first, even if I had the whole story. I always started with page two and the splash page would always be the last page I’d ink. TJKC: Why was that? JOE: I don’t know. I figured I was on a roll, so to speak. Some people peter out when they’ve got twenty pages or so, but I felt I was getting stronger because I was more into the character. I did the splash last so my strongest work was seen first, and I never start inking at the top of the page. I always start from the bottom up. I read in Draw! magazine where Dick Giordano said he started at panel one and then went to panel two, and so forth. I didn’t do that. Many years ago, I discovered that by inking from the bottom up, you didn’t get the moisture from your hand or arm on the page and smear the pencils. Of course, back in those days, we didn’t have air conditioning and it’d get hot in the room. It was like slave labor back then, Jim. There were times that it was so hot and my studio was upstairs, that I used to take my drawing board outside, under the shade of a big maple tree and ink there. TJKC: It’s funny, but I ink the same way, from the bottom up, though I usually work on two pages at a time. While one is drying, I’m working on another. JOE: So do I. I didn’t so much in the old days but I did in more recent times. 15

Gallery

Retrospective

The Quest! (right) A slightly modified version of the inside cover art from Tales of Asgard #1 (Oct. 1968).

(below) The saga begins (JIM #97, Oct. 1963). Like Harold Foster’s Prince Valiant strip, “ToA”’s absence of dialogue balloons (and Kirby’s bookillustration” style of art) gave the series’ early installments an added visual panache.

the

power and

(next page, top) Before Kirby and Lee returned to Journey Into Mystery with “Tales of Asgard,” the Thor strip lacked the dynamics and intensity it deserved. This panel from Journey Into Mystery #90 (March 1963) shows perhaps the series’ weakest point.

(far right) Page 2 pencils from the “Tales of Asgard” story in Journey Into Mystery #111 (Dec. 1964).

pageantry of

Thor’s eternal homeland

examined (from midgard) by

Mark Alexander!

Prologüe “Beware! The day of Ragnarok draws ever closer!” —Volla, the Prophetess, Thor #127, April 1966

n the Year of Our Lord 1963, readers of Journey Into Mystery should have been wondering why The Mighty Thor, an immortal deity, was wasting his time battling contrived communist stereotypes, and run-of-the-mill gangsters with names like “Thug Thatcher.” When the son of Odin wasn’t busy pursuing small-time hoods (or costumed criminals who were far beneath him), he spent his time pining over a registered nurse. It all seemed rather uninspired. Kirby and Lee, Marvel’s protean creative duo, had pulled out of the series early, leaving the fate of their Thunder God in the hands of various other writers and artists, often with disastrous results. Meanwhile, something odd and wondrous was happening, in Journey Into Mystery’s back pages. Out of nowhere, in issue #97, a Lee/ Kirby back-up series called “Tales of Asgard” appeared. This five-page “featurette” (which often outshone the book’s main feature) would become the key to Thor’s future success. Its unassuming, yet oddly-impressive debut gave hints of its later potential; and if its

creators seemed unsure of where the series was going, where it had come from was notably evident, if one cared to trek back to 1937.

I: In The Days Of King Arthur “The pauper prince captures a horse, constructs his own armor, then sets out to become a knight.” —Harold Foster, Prince Valiant, Feb. 1937 In 1937, Harold Foster, who for six years had produced a daily newspaper strip based on E.R. Burroughs’ Tarzan, switched to a story of his own. Prince Valiant was the tale of a young knight in the time of King Arthur, and it appeared when the comic book was barely a year old. Unlike the comics, which usually told a story with illustrations and elliptical speech-indicators

known as “dialogue balloons,” Foster’s strip employed classically rendered drawings, which were accompanied only by captions (thereby leaving his highly-regarded artwork unmolested). This style of narration lent itself to the quasimythical themes in the subject matter, and gave Foster’s sequences a “once upon a time” quietude and grace. In interviews over the years, both Lee and Kirby have expressed glowing admiration for Foster’s Prince Valiant, and “Tales of Asgard” seems to have its genesis in this elegant, oldworld series. Its influence is reflected in Lee’s absence of word balloons, and Kirby’s attempt at a neo-classic “book-illustration” style of drawing, in “ToA”’s first three installments. This Hal Foster/Prince Valiant approach was to be shortlived. By JIM #100 (Jan. 1964), a new-phase of “ToA” had begun, and the creators decided that traditional dialogue balloons would be necessary after all. Their decision was most likely triggered by two events: A change in “ToA”’s storyline (to “the boyhood of Thor”), and an ingenious stroke of scripting by Stan Lee.

economics of a five-page format didn’t leave room for his usual soap-opera dramatics: nor did the savagery and barbarianism inherent in Kirby’s panels. In a “mini-series” such as this, characterization—by necessity—boiled down to two distinctions: good or evil. In this fabled realm of demigods, temples, and titans, Donald Blake didn’t exist (nor did “Jane-mydarling” Foster). Consequently, Lee broke the bonds of habit, and syrupy melodrama gave way to a highminded tone of writing, which reminded the reader that these were tales of veritable gods, not just costumed crimefighters. With this newfound Shakespearean eloquence (bereft of his usual clichés), Stan had responded effectively to Kirby’s newly-expanded scope and vision. By doing so, Lee had carved a significant niche for himself in Jack Kirby’s Asgard.

III: Jack Kirby’s Asgard: An Artist’s Venue With the advent of this new series (and its new realms), Kirby was called upon to create strange, sprawling vistas, and hordes of bizarre beings never before seen in a comics magazine. The only type of storylines that could do justice to these otherworldly (often-terrifying) terrains were sweeping sagas of mythic proportion; epic battles and heroic quests, with the cosmos themselves as a vast and boundless backdrop. While Journey Into Mystery’s main feature had Thor ensconced in New York, dealing with a secret-identity and a love-struck nurse, Kirby’s back pages wrestled with a concept far beyond anything comics previously had to offer: godhood itself. To effectively render his new Asgardian tableaux,

II: Shakespearean Soliloquizing In A 5-Page Format “You’re wrong, Loki! Merlin lies in a crypt at the museum, dead as a doornail!” —Thor, (as scripted by R. Berns), Journey Into Mystery #96 “I decided that I wanted our hammer-holder to speak like a god. And everyone knows that gods speak with biblical and Shakespearean phraseology.” —Stan Lee, 1991 It’s possible that the finest contribution Stan Lee ever made to Kirby’s artwork was the archaic scripting-style that he developed for Thor, which originated in “Tales Of Asgard.” Replete with “thees” and “thous,” it was usually referred to as “quasi-Biblical” or “neoShakespearean,” and it was ideally-suited for the Realm Eternal. It produced some of the finest pairings of art and dialogue ever rendered on a comics page: “Whate’er befalls, I shall not flinch!” cries the Thunder God. “Strike, thou creatures of darkness—Thor stands ready!” (“ToA,” Dec. 1965). This newly-inspired articulateness was a breath of fresh air from Lee. He realized that the 53

Innerview

“We Create Images, And They Just Continue On.” Part One of an August 1969 Interview with Jack Kirby Conducted by Shel Dorf and Rich Rubenfeld, Transcribed by John Morrow (Shel Dorf and Rich Rubenfeld set out from San Diego to Los Angeles in August 1969, intent on visiting Collector’s Bookstore, and hoping to get interviews with Russ Manning and Jack Kirby. Neither knew where Manning or Kirby lived, but got their phone numbers from Directory Information. After the visit with Russ, they called Jack Kirby, who invited them over. They spent almost two hours at the Kirbys’, and the result was this interview, which is previously unpublished. Our thanks to Shel Dorf for digging out his old reel-to-reel tapes for us, and if you’re curious to hear Russ Manning’s interview, be sure to pick up Comic Book Artist #22 in September, where it appears as part of our retrospective of Gold Key Comics.) SHEL DORF: We’re in Jack’s little studio on the second floor of his new home. Right now he’s digging in the back of his closet and showing us something. What have you got, Jack? JACK KIRBY: This is a presentation I used for Sky Masters when I first sold the strip to the Matthew Adams Syndicate. I colored it myself; I used the dyes on it. Somehow the dyes have a brilliance of their own. I feel that it’s a kind of medium I like to use. It always pleases me; it just appeals to me for some reason, because of its richness. If done right, it can give a drawing a lot of power.

(above) Early 1970s photo of Jack Kirby with Shel Dorf at the San Diego Comicon. Photo courtesy of Shel Dorf.

SHEL: Just to bring us up to date, we’ve been talking to Jack about one of his newest ventures, and that’s collage. Downstairs we just saw some enormous collages with the Jack Kirby approach, and eventually we’ll see them in a museum someday, probably. What made you go into collage work?

(right) 1930s Socko the Seadog panel, by “Teddy” (Kirby’s pseudonym on the strip).

JACK: Basically, I’m an experimenter. I feel that there must be some extension of comics other than the pen and ink, or other materials that we use. I feel I should explore these channels. If a man truly likes comics, or is truly a comic artist, he has to explore all the dimensions of his art, because I feel comics is an art. That’s how I think about it; looking for other ways to extend the medium.

SHEL: This is Jack Kirby 1969. Can we go back to Jack Kirby, about 1920? What was it like in the early days?

(next page) Jack’s cover for the 1971 Disneyland comic convention, (bottom) Jack’s collage from Thor #131.

JACK: [laughs] It was bad, and it was like Warner Bros. said it was. It was John Garfield and James Cagney, and Angels in Dirty Places, and guys in turtleneck sweaters and fellas fighting their father for a nickel, and your mother throwing you out of the house to “go to work, you bum!”, and the fighters that hung around the block, and the gangsters getting shot in the corner candy store, and things like that.

SHEL: It’s a pretty far cry from formal art training. JACK: There was no such thing as formal art training. It seems to me what makes comic art unique is the fact that, like Fahrenheit 451,

each man is a book unto himself. He keeps that book, and he gives that book to the next man. There was no formal school for comic artists. I feel like one man must take from the next. Take the best of what that man has and integrate it into his own style. He gains something; sometimes it’s the fluidity in the figure, sometimes it’s accurate shading. A comic artist has to learn from somewhere, and he can’t learn it at the National Academy of Design. He can utilize the National Academy, but it won’t make him a comic artist. It’s something that he must get from the next man, and take that thing and control it, and express himself with it. SHEL: The earliest published works of Jack Kirby that I’ve seen don’t have any resemblance to any of the well-known cartoonists you mentioned before that influenced you. Did you evolve into your own style before you became published? JACK: I was pressured into it. I feel a man evolves a style when he’s pressured into it, when he has to work constantly; when he has constant experience, and he must meet a constant deadline. He must say, “The hell with it, I’m not Leonardo DiVinci, but I’ll do the best I can,” and he does come up with a style, because in doing that, he begins to tell his own thing, in the only manner he knows: His own manner. That comes through in his style, his personality comes through. I can tell Caniff a mile away. I can tell another man a thousand miles away, because there’s something of that man in the strip. It’s in that style, and it’s an identity. SHEL: What was your first published drawing? JACK: My first published drawing was a thing called Socko the Seadog. Then I went on to editorial cartoons, and I went into comic strips for a small feature syndicate that serviced 700 weekly papers. SHEL: How old were you at that time? JACK: I was about eighteen. SHEL: When you were growing up as a child, did you like to go off in a corner while the other kids were playing on the street, and just draw and draw and draw, or...? JACK: No, I played in the street with the kids, as much as I could. I was no radical departure from any of the others. I got bounced when they got bounced, and I had a good time when they had a good time. I saw an ad in a pulp magazine; you know, “Draw this, and win a free pencil.” I sent away for it, because for some reason it had some basic appeal for me, and I took the bait. I dug up enough money for the first lesson, and that’s all I had. I had a great time with it, a wonderful time with it. I never drew so many comic heads in my life. I really enjoyed it. SHEL: And that was the very beginning of your career, by answering this ad? Did you draw at all?

Did you doodle, did you sketch? JACK: Yeah, I doodled on doors and I doodled on walls, and I wrote bad notes to the neighbors. [laughs] I said, “Mrs. McCloskey is a fink,” and things like that, and I’d write it on the fence, and I’d draw some sort of a primitive cartoon, I suppose. SHEL: Great, we isolated that Jack Kirby got his start doing graffiti. [laughs] JACK: It’s a valid form of expression, and in my neighborhood, graffiti was like doing a mural for the Sistine Chapel. [laughs] SHEL: We were talking before about the average person’s approach to comic art, and how it’s sneered upon by the fine artists, but then there’s Liechtenstein, who will take a panel from one of your comics and enlarge it to wall size, and silkscreen it and sell it for a few hundred thousand dollars. What is your opinion of comic art and these phonies who are getting by, if I’m not slanting the question too much? JACK: Well, I don’t know if I’d call them phonies. I think maybe Liechtenstein in his own way is trying to find an extension of what I’m talking about. That might be an extension. I think it’s rather a static thing, and certainly I feel that it must have an appeal to somebody, and must have value to somebody, because somebody is buying it, and they’re paying good money for it. I’m not gonna put down anything that sells well, because if it’s successful, who’s going to argue with success? I never have. 67

Mike Gartland

(above) Detail from Fantastic Four #99 (June 1970), featuring the Inhumans (probably in an effort to reintroduce them to readers before they spun off into Amazing Adventures #1). (next page) Jack’s margin notes from FF #97 (April 1970) show he intended the Lagoon Creature—Jack named him “Eddie”—to speak, but Stan ignored it. (below) Panels from Fantastic Four #100 (July 1970). Reed erroneously states that only the Puppet Master is capable of making such androids, when he should’ve said it was the Thinker. Since they’d just done a Thinker story in FF #96, it’s an even sloppier mistake. Characters TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

How Could He Not Know?!

“K

irby is leaving Marvel.” Stan Lee passed this information on to the Marvel readership in one of his Bullpen Bulletins editorials, and with his usual glib self-deprecating charm reassured the Marvelites that, although Jack would be seeking his fortunes elsewhere, the best was yet to come. Young readers had no reason to doubt Lee; sales were still going up along much of the Marvel line, and by 1970 the foundation of the “Marvel Zombie” had been laid, as many unsuspecting readers robotically swallowed Lee’s flip preachings. Besides, Lee was still there, and Lee was the man, the creator, the innovator; Lee was Marvel, right? Professionals, hardcore fandom, and industry insiders knew better; they knew that, although Stan was indispensible, this just wasn’t another artist leaving—this was the foundation to the “House of Ideas,” and with a foundation gone, can a “house” stand for long? As we’ve read in previous articles, Jack had reached a point by 1967 where he was fed up with Marvel, particularly with Goodman and Lee. He had seen his concepts and creations exploited and taken credit for by individuals who promised him much but delivered little or nothing. Goodman was becoming even more wealthy on mass marketing and merchandising the Marvel creations; whereas Lee continued to take credit for characters and concepts he had virtually no input on save to dialogue after the lion’s share of the plot and story had been fleshed out

and drawn by the artist. Steve Ditko allegedly left for these selfsame reasons a year before, suggesting to Jack to leave as well, but Jack was still under contract and was still being promised incentives. By the end of ’67, however, Jack realized that outside of an increase in his page rate and contracts that were begun but never finished, he’d been shortchanged again by Goodman and Lee, his contract was coming to an end, and it was time to decide. Stay or go, but if he left, go where? As strange as it seemed, unbeknownst to Jack (or Stan for that matter), television would play an indirect pivotal role in Jack’s decision. By the end of ’67, due to the tremendous success of the Batman TV show, investors began looking to comic book companies as reasonably good investments. Both Marvel and DC had good sales and had been in the business under the same publishers for decades. DC went first, being purchased by Kinney National, then Marvel was sold to Perfect Film and Chemical. In both instances, publishers Goodman and Liebowitz remained temporarily (approximately four years) as publishers to see through a smooth transition and pave the way for their successors. Lee of course was first in line at Marvel, but at DC things were changing that would eventually help smooth the way for Lee to lose his most valuable asset. During the ’67-’68 period many of the “old guard” of DC’s writers and editors were either retiring, looking elsewhere, or simply being let go. The end result would be that the new editorial structure at DC would be composed of their former artists, with one of their premier artists—Carmine Infantino— taking the helm as editorial director. Carmine knew about Marvel what industry insiders knew for years: That it was creatively driven by its artists, and he wanted to bring that to DC. That wasn’t all he wanted to bring to DC. He had heard that Jack wasn’t happy with his present situation, and what better way to dent the competition than to get their main gun and fire it back at them? Meanwhile at Marvel, Jack had heard about the sale of the company (in late ’68) and both welcomed and dreaded it. He’d hoped that this might give him someone other than Goodman to deal with, but these were corporate investors who knew nothing about the comic book industry and even less about Jack. Lee was nervous as well; he now had more than Goodman to please and might have to prove his worth all over again. By this

A Failure To Communicate: Part 7 time Jack’s contract had expired and he was working page-rate, story to story. Despite his attempts to renegotiate for another contract, Jack was either rebuffed or put on hold (indefinitely); he knew he wasn’t going to see any percentage of merchandising or creative control of his work or even proper credit for it, but despite all that, Jack still would’ve stayed with Marvel if they’d only given him the thing that had always been most important to him: A promise of financial security. More than anything else in his life, Jack had the constant need to make sure he could support his family. Family was everything to him; during this very time, Jack began taking steps to move out of New York where he’d lived all his life, and go to live in California (about as far removed from NY living as one could get), all for the sake of his family. Within the Marvel family however, Jack was becoming more and more isolated; Infantino had met with Jack during this time (while Jack was still in New York) and discussions began about Jack joining another kind of family. While all of the aforementioned was going on, Stan was beginning to think of greener pastures. The success of the Marvel line had brought him the notoriety and recognition he so desperately sought during the years before the likes of a Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko came his way. Surprisingly, before his association with Jack and Steve which led to the Marvel successes, he languished for two decades pumping out average, topical, saleable plots and scripts for the Timely/Atlas books—but now by the mid-Sixties, he was being recognized by the general public as the creator of all these great characters and concepts. Contrary to what many may think about Lee hogging credit for himself, this may not have been all of Stan’s doing as it most definitely was in the company’s best interest to have one of their employees recognized as creator of the line, rather than a freelancer who might someday leave and try to take some of the creations with him. With the general—and some of the comic bookreading—public believing all of these great ideas came from Stan, offers began to come his way. Artists and Directors were asking to work with him. Colleges were approaching him to lecture to aspiring students on how to create. Newspapers and magazines were asking him for interviews and articles. Stan was finally reaching the point where he realized that his newfound status might be the ticket out of comics and into the big time. As Stan courted his celebrity, he began to slowly relinquish his scripting chores on various Marvel titles one by one. Shortly before the Marvel purchase by Perfect Film, the title line was expanded; the characters showcased in the “split” books—Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, and Strange Tales—were each given their own respective books, not to mention new titles being created like Captain Marvel, Captain Savage and Combat Kelly, and Not Brand Echh. Lee did the majority of the scripting (towards the end, some editing only) on the split books up until their transition, after which he left virtually all of them, handing the scripting reins over to guys like Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, Archie Goodwin, Arnold Drake, and others. He edited only, saving

his scripting hand for Daredevil (which he left in March ’69), Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, and Captain America. Lee also had plans to script the upcoming Spider-Man b-&-w magazine, a mentioned Inhumans book, and of course the Silver Surfer. Of the five titles Lee was still scripting, Kirby was drawing three of them: FF, Cap and Thor. One wonders why Lee never relinquished scripting the titles on which he “collaborated” with Kirby. Some speculated that, since Jack was doing the lion’s share of the work on those books with little or no input from Lee, and all Stan had to do was dialogue and edit an already

fleshed-out story, it was less work for him than with less experienced artists—but the longer they seemed to be working together, Jack grew more and more frustrated with Lee; their collaborations began to become more like grudging co-operations, with each man trying to put their own plotting into stories that were meant to be agreed upon. The new Surfer book was a particularly stinging slap in Jack’s face; since many believe that Jack could’ve asked for and gotten any title in the Marvel line to work on, and this title was not mentioned or offered to him, it was pretty obvious to him that he wasn’t wanted