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Make ready for COMIC BOOK CREA REA ATOR, the new voice of CREATOR, the comics medium! TwoMorr woM ows is proud to debut our newest magazine, Comic Book Creator, Creator, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics, focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. Behind an ALEX ROSS cover painting, our frantic FIRST ISSUE features an investigation of the oft despicable treatment JACK KIRBY endured from the very business he helped establish. From being cheated out of royalties in the ’40s and bullied in the ’80s by the publisher he made great, to his estate’s current fight for equitable recognition against an entertainment monolith where his characters have generated billions of dollars, we present Kirby’s cautionary tale in the eternal struggle for creator’s rights. Plus, CBC #1 interviews artist ALEX ROSS and writer KURT BUSIEK, spotlights the last years of writer/artist FRANK ROBBINS, remembers comics historian LES DANIELS DANIELS, sports a color Valentines alentines tto his beloved, gallery of WILL EISNER’s V showcases a joint talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL on their unforrgettable gettab gettable collaborations, as well as throws a whole kit’n’caboodle of other creatorcentric items atcha! Join us for the start of a new era as TwoMorr woM ows welcomes back former Comic Book Artist editor Jon B. Cooke, who helms the all-new, all-color COMIC MIC BOOK CREA ATOR! TOR!

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3-D COMICS OF THE 1950S! In-depth feature by RAY (3-D) ZONE, actual red and green 1950s 3-D art (with FREE GLASSES INCLUDED) by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT, MESKIN, POWELL, MAURER, NOSTRAND, SWAN, BORING, SCHWARTZ, MOONEY, SHORES, TUSKA and many others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover by JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY!

JOE KUBERT TRIBUTE! Four Joe Kubert interviews, art by RUSS HEATH, NEAL ADAMS, MURPHY ANDERSON, SHELDON MOLDOFF, IRV NOVICK, and others, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY’s Comic Fandom Archive, FCA’s Captain Video conclusion by GEORGE EVANS that inspired Avengers foe Ultron, cover by KUBERT, with a portrait by DANIEL JAMES COX!

“British Invasion” issue! History of Marvel UK, Beatles in comics, DC’s ‘80s British talent pool, V for Vendetta, Excalibur, Marshal Law, Doctor Who, “Pro2Pro” interview with PETER MILLIGAN & BRENDAN McCARTHY, plus BERGER, BOLLAND, DAVIS, GIBBONS, STAN LEE, LLOYD, MOORE, DEZ SKINN, and others. Bonus 25” long fold-out triptych cover by RON WILSON and DAVE HUNT of Marvel UK’s rare 1970s “Quadra-Poster”!

GLEN ORBIK demos how he creates his painted noir paperback and comic covers, ROBERT VALLEY discusses animating “The Beatles: Rock Band” music video and Tron: Uprising, plus Comic Art Bootcamp on “Dramatic Lighting” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, BOB McCLOUD gives a Rough Critique of a newcomer’s work, and more!

STAR WARS issue, with custom LEGO creations from a long time ago and far, far away! JACOB CARPENTER’s Imperial Star Destroyer, MARK KELSO’s Invisible Hand, interview with SIMON MACDONALD about building Star Wars costume props with LEGO elements, history of the LEGO X-Wing, plus our regular features on minifigure customization by JARED BURKS, “You Can Build It” instructions, and more!

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ISSUE #60, WINTER 2013

Contents

GALLERY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 (late-era FF art)

The FF FOLLOW-UP!

JACK KIRBY MUSEUM PAGE . . . .53 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org)

OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 (the OTHER Fantastic Four) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . . .4 (three early FF scripts examined) OVERVUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 (dissecting a fantastic success) JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 (Mark Evanier questions FF inkers Joe Sinnott and Dick Ayers) KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 (Barry Forshaw’s horror-fied) KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 (Norris Burroughs examines Kirby’s art and compositional skills on FF #4)

INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 (it’s Excelsior with Stan and Jack) KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . .56 (drawing Kirby inspiration) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 (a western tale) RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 (a timeline of key 1960s moments) GALLERY 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 (the Coal Tig... we mean, Black Panther) NUTZ & BOLTZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 (Jack vs. Stan on the Silver Surfer GN) TRIBUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 (the 2012 Kirby Tribute Panel)

UNEARTHED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 (the FF by Thomas and Kirby) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . .94 PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 Cover inks: MIKE ROYER Cover colors: TOM ZIUKO (an unused 1980s commission piece) The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 20, No. 60, Winter 2013. Published quarterly by and ©2013 TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $14 postpaid ($18 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $50 US, $65 Canada, $72 elsewhere. Editorial package ©2013 TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is ©2013 Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is ©2013 the respective authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA. ISSN 1932-6912

From this...

...To This!

Incidental Iconography An ongoing analysis of Kirby’s visual shorthand, and how he inadvertently used it to develop his characters, by Sean Kleefeld

ack Kirby and Stan Lee perhaps most famously collaborated on Fantastic Four for the most extended period. That title, then, is often held up as an example of their evolving working relationship, and researchers scour margin notes to tease out how much of each story Jack was contributing. What y Thomas. has not been attemptStan’s note to Ro ed, to my knowledge, is a joint analysis of all three surviving Fantastic Four “scripts” from that period, where we can see what Jack actually drew compared with precisely what Stan had originally intended. (Unlike, say, with John Romita’s account of FF #30 being “written” in a car ride on the way to lunch. While I don’t doubt John’s story, we don’t have any concrete details of what was actually said.) The surviving scripts are radically different in form and highlight how much Jack really began to drive the creative effort. The first script, of course, is that of Fantastic Four #1. Stan had somehow managed to hold on to it long enough to realize its significance and it’s become relatively well-circulated at this point; Marvel ran a re-typed version in FF #358 and Roy Thomas presented a copy of the original in Alter Ego vol. 2 #2. [Editor’s Note: We also ran it in TJKC #58, “The Wonder Years.”] It’s not so much a script, though, as an outline for the team’s origin. The two pages provide an overview of the characters, touching on key traits and powers. Stan also notes editorial concerns he has over Comics Code issues. The document clearly indicates this as only half of the issue with their “first case” to follow, and includes a note specifically to Jack to talk with Stan for some further clarification. Stan is clearly taking the company in a different direction with this, not only from the perspective of the genre, but that he’s switching their overall storytelling format. Previous books were a series of short, unrelated stories, and Stan clearly indicates that this one Fantastic Four tale which includes the origin is supposed to take up an entire issue. As it’s helping to redefine how comics get made on top of explaining the issue’s plot, it stands a little apart somewhat from the who-did-what debate. It can’t really be used as an example

of how Stan and Jack “typically” worked because the document itself alludes to its uncommon nature. The second script comes exactly one year after FF #1. Probably in answer to a written request, Stan sent Jerry Bails a page of his script for Fantastic Four #8, which was subsequently published in the apazine Kappa-Alpha #2. While still fairly broad, as far as scripts go, it has a more solid breakdown of the action; three- to five-page chunks instead of half an issue. Stan was clearly giving Jack a fair degree of latitude with the stories, despite having the ideas and

The Puppet Master in Fantastic Four #8 is fairly derivative; another Puppet Master appeared months earlier in Justice League of America. This Puppet Master ‘died’ similarly to Mrs. Dolman in “Voodoo on 10th Avenue” from Simon & Kirby’s Black Magic #4 (right). 4

vision of how the stories should roll out. Jack changed some pacing a bit and added in a few personal touches, but the issue reads more or less how Stan wrote it. At this point, they had been working on the Fantastic Four for a year. They certainly had started getting into a rhythm, both with how the stories should work as well as how they would work together on them. They both had a pretty good handle on the characters, and Stan was starting to get feedback from fans on what they liked. But

they would continue on the book pet Master!” FOUR #8 “Prisoners of Pup TIC for the better part TAS FAN for IS OPS t SYN which he doesn’t wan on something in lab of a decade, and g kin m. wor F the n Mr. wee . bet flame ers headquarters tosses up wall of (5 pages): Thing ent they and their storms out. I.G. p Thing out. Torch u-kee thr to s ch he’ Tor s ls Say . him Thing to see-- tel ping secrets from ion to herself kee ent att are t y rac working relationthe att ls to fee not Thing gets angry-s invisible so as ly see a guy cool him off. Become Thing. They sudden to ship would cong kin ch tal rea gal to runs after him-- to ble tries ple stare at invisi d. Mr. F sees it-in her uniform-- peo tinue to evolve. flare over guy’s hea him. Guy is ots es sho sav . I.G and . guy dge ard a bri about to jump off ch-- Torch flies tow The third town the villain has guy-- too far to rea b oss gra Acr to an. dow ssm win gre model out of is a con him. He has a small w why he did it-d kno ate t str sn’ surviving script fru doe FF e-in a daz bridge by s-- angrygressman walk off ed through binocular y table-- he made con tro comes from on observed what happen des an and ssm FF gre of con ll model of will make puppets and of bridge and a sma Now Puppet Master 1966 with ers to the world, ll puppet of him. demonstrate his pow to ns manipulating the sma pla (He . tty pre erght dau .) Fantastic Four nd der t bid hes hig them! He has bli the is ch es to nation whi es #55. It’s on the mak then sell his servic he mselves-let FF destroy the others. He iest thing to do is the eas heels of the y s tro ure des fig est ter Mas is strong (5 pages): Puppet street, Thing let the Thing who l come to him. In Galactus Trilogy the Thing. He will wil -ng pet Thi pup t er tha one und y so onl ng, rtment followed by I.G. Thi model of his own apa where Stan ture pet Master’s apt., cap moves puppet to a Pup to for es ds tri hea PM and how wing a daze, eresting scenes sho comsuddenly gets in to int PM e . som een allegedly just uns ce, sen ngs sense thi s I.G.’s pre nd daughter who can H Thing, PM’s spell, reveal daughter to go WIT ceeds, helped by bli told Jack to his suc y ls all tel o fin als he te her, and and Torch-- he pet of warden of sta urn and slay Mr. F “Have the FF . Then, PM makes pup ard -gu mands Thing to ret his off m ve the pro ow ers, to costume, to thr of dangerous prison dressed in I.G.’s fight God” e all the hundreds liz rea to him get prison-- gonna and stop him. ds bon leaving Jack to ape esc to power. IG strains knocks out rts to fight Mr. F-Sta . work out the gal nd d Bli ose h exp wit s-- gets ers FF headquarters o lab-- Thing follow (3 pages): Thing ent F tells details of those Mr. me. Mr. F runs int fla s-o ray int er st und bur can he is Torch before Torch only for as long as want Thing three issues. human-- but didn’t becomes human-- but ng s-Thi ray e l mak cia to ifi r-per to art earlie be disappointed. Not he was working on t to wha ng By this point, Thi are t s wan ray erhim the ause didn’t Blind gal can’t und were perfected-- bec ults more lasting. in res le e though, Stan to know until they whi mak to .-etc way a -ter has to find voice-- his charac es fected yet-- still he is handsome-- his self. Mr. F realiz was no longer him nks of thi d she ame ng ash Thi now stand-- tells is broken-- he is -- he has opened pet Master’s spell writing tch to Puppet Master swi we ishuman form the Pup . I.G . I.G .-- wonders where a doll to finish off ing mak is scripts down blind gal is not I.G now and control of warden) prison gates (thru for Jack; they would just talk over the plot and Jack would work from that. This particular script, though, survives because there were two notable witnesses to it. The first witness, the one who actually captured what Stan and Jack discussed, was Nat Freedland. He wrote the famous “Super-Heroes with Super Problems” story that appeared in the New York Herald Tribune. Towards the end of that piece, he recounts sitting in on a weekly story conference with the two creators where Stan extemporaneously blurts out thirteen sentences and sentence fragments that are the entirety of his “script” for FF #55. The issue itself only bears a passing resemblance to what Stan says. There is indeed a fight between the Thing and the Silver Surfer over a misunderstanding with Alicia, but that’s effectively where the similarities end. Alicia was never in trouble, just lonely. It’s Mr. Fantastic, not Alicia, who corrects his friend. The Thing doesn’t wind up brokenhearted and leave on his own; he never really loses control or fails his teammates. Not to mention that Dr. Doom doesn’t make an appearance anywhere, much less capture the others. Jack took only the barest nugget of an idea from Stan, and largely created the issue himself, and even thought to add in a page about the Human Torch’s solo adventure that was running as a sub-plot at the time (though I suppose this could have been added later at Stan’s request). Now, the particular Tribune article where Stan’s script appears is generally remembered more for exemplifying the big rift between Jack and Stan. Jack felt insulted by how he was portrayed and blamed Stan. To be fair, Jack felt slighted because of how he was depicted by the reporter and one can’t help but wonder if the writer had an agenda of some sort—which in turn brings into question the accuracy of anything that was printed from that story session. However, we have a second witness to that meeting. Although he remained silent throughout, having only been with Marvel a few months at that point, Roy Thomas was sitting in as well. Though he 5

however, it turned out that it was the Mad Thinker and the Puppet Master behind this legion of super-villains… and they were all sophisticated puppets at that. No problem— we were there for the celebration and eventual triumph of the FF+ONE. Kirby squeezed as many of his creations as he could get on the pages allowed (too bad it wasn’t a doublesized issue as reports have claimed), leaving out the likes of the Molecule Man, the Infant Terrible, Klaw, Ronan the Accuser, the Impossible Man, and the towering Galactus (too much radioactive clay would’ve been needed for the latter, I suppose…). It was alright. The others were more than enough to keep us and the besieged heroes occupied. The Fantastic Four boasted of a super-villain line-up in 1970 that was unequaled by any other company for a group or single hero. Though their puppet doppelgangers made brief appearances in that 100th issue, their very presence bespoke many memories of, to take one example, Doctor Doom’s subjugation of the tiny East European kingdom of Latveria. Doom was Kirby and Lee’s greatest contribution to the arena of megalomaniacal would-be world conquerors. Partially inspired by Victor Frankenstein (he had to be,

even though Stan and Jack never admitted it!), Victor von Doom cut impressive poses in his gothic castle alongside his Frankenstein-inspired robots (he’d get a “Doomsman” over in Astonishing Tales without Kirby) and surrounded by crackling, powerful machines that boggled the imagination. Stan favored the adjective “senses-shattering” and Jack delivered just the kind of amazing imagery that matched that description on paper. Diablo’s “tomb” (think Dracula on this one) came from the same (Latverian) school/neighborhood of thought. The Super Skrull got his powers from an apparatus that was light years distant from our planet. The Sub-Mariner was redone for the ’60s. The Awesome Android and Dragon Man were humanoid devices adapted to be monstrous henchmen. The Frightful Four, except for Medusa, were established evildoers taken from previous issues of Strange Tales and Amazing Spider-Man, jazzed up by Lee and Kirby for their battles against the FF. All of these and more superb antagonists outdid the ones created by Mighty Marvel’s competitors, if not Reed Richards and company. Great baddies kept us coming back. Superman’s a terrific hero, but he was boring by 1970 because his villain corps was… boring. His challenges (and the ones presented to the JLA, the Doom Patrol, and the Teen Titans, etc.) ceased to be as exciting as the ones heroes faced at Marvel. Lee and Kirby knew this, and their malevolent menaces and the remarkable storylines they weaved for both good and evil made all the difference. Vive la difference!!

(above) Dr. Doom was and is one of the Kirby-Lee team’s best. This impressive pencil piece was originally published on the cover of CFA-APA #16, Fall 1989. (top) Villainy! The Super Skrull showed up in the 18th issue and in the 1967 cartoon episode. This is Alex Toth’s character design page for the mean ol’ Skrulls who put the FF through their paces on the show. 10

And it was those differences, and many more really, that made the title so different from all its “four-runners” and a fantastic success worthy… of the greatness of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. H

Mark Evanier

Jack F.A.Q.s A column of Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby

[For this issue’s column, we’re asking and answering some questions about two of Kirby’s finest FF inkers, Joe Sinnott and Dick Ayers. Presented here is the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel held April 20, 2008 at the New York Comic-Con— not the usual one held at Comic-Con International every year in San Diego. Mark Evanier was in attendance that year in Manhattan, promoting his book Kirby: King of Comics, and the event wisely chose to take advantage of that fact by asking him to moderate this discussion. The panel was transcribed and edited by John Morrow.] (above, l to r) Kirby with comics writer/editor Len Wein 30 years earlier at the 1978 San Diego Comic-Con. (below, l to r) Dick Ayers, moderator Mark Evanier, and Joe Sinnott at the 2008 New York ComicCon.

open up the file and write in another couple of paragraphs here and there. The thing gets longer and longer, and I keep finding out new things about Jack. I just got another cache of Jack’s personal papers, documents, memos, correspondence, contracts, things like that which I had not had access to before. What happens is, it’s like a Chinese puzzle. You get a new piece, and suddenly you have to go back and reassemble the other pieces. You go, “Oh, I get that now,” and you have this very complicated timeline of Jack’s life, and you try to figure out when things happened in relation to one another. Dick Ayers here kept wonderful records of when he worked on everything, and that gives me a guideline of when Jack worked on them, because Dick was not far behind him when Dick was inking his work. So I was able to calculate what Jack was working on during key events of his life. I figured out what story he was doing each time one of his kids was born, and figured out what story he was probably working on when the Kennedy assassination took place, and things like that. And then you plug those into the matrix, and you suddenly discover, “Oh, that’s why Jack was writing about that, that’s why Jack was interested in that.” It’s a fascinating thing, and one of the things that happens is, as I read more of Jack’s work over and over again, I keep seeing more of Jack in those stories. I’ll read a Kirby story that I previously had read dozens of times, and I’ll suddenly go, “Wait a minute, there’s Jack. He was that character, and he was also that character. And that was Roz, and that was Neal. That was Jack’s brother-in-law.” There are levels of subtext in his work, even when he was only plotting stuff that other people were dialoguing,

MARK EVANIER: Good afternoon, this is the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel and I’m—well, who would I be, right? I’m the only guy who does Jack Kirby panels these days. Thank you for being here. We do these panels at every convention that invites me, because otherwise I spend the whole convention talking about Jack. I talk about Jack all the time to people anyway. He is so important to this industry, and to all of our lives, that it seems always appropriate to get together. It’s interesting that we have not exhausted the subject of Jack yet. We never will exhaust the subject. To forestall a question that we’ll get if I don’t answer it up front, the book that I have out now on Jack is the first of two. The second one is so long, even John Morrow will fall asleep reading it. [laughter] Since well before Jack passed away, but especially since then, every time I come across a Jack Kirby fact that I didn’t know, I add it in to the manuscript. I 11

which was a good two-ply bristol. I often tell the fellow at the art story when I go in, I buy Hunt 102 Gillotte nibs, and back in the 1950s, I paid six cents for them. Now they’re $1.29; can you imagine? And you can buy half a dozen nibs, and maybe one of them will work. The quality of art supplies are just not the way they used to be.

look; I really did. I don’t like him too hard with the stones. But he did evolve into that. There were little things that I did add to Jack’s work, little bits here and there. Maybe with the ground, dirt, stuff like that. Jack was so good at drawing bricks, and I loved to do that kind of stuff. Or lava coming out of a mountainside; I used to love to see those things from Jack. No matter how much Jack had there, I always put just a little bit more in; maybe a little black here, whatever. It’s funny; even though Jack was his own man, every now and then I’d see something that looked like my work. He might’ve said, “Gee, this looks pretty good what Joe’s doing. I’ll do it that way.” Certainly, it wasn’t a lot of stuff, but every now and then, there’d be a little of it—my influence, let’s put it that way. So I’m proud to say that I influenced Jack occasionally.

AYERS: Like the brush. Being young, single, all the way through, I only bought just the one brush: Winsor Newton #6. I’d use it, and throw it away when it started to get poor points. I got married, and my wife said, “Why are you only buying one brush? Buy the card, for crying out loud.” [laughter] So you could still do that then; you can’t do that today. I call her my sergeant, to come along and give a little push in the right direction. “Buy your paper, don’t buy it a little bit at a time, store it up.”

EVANIER: I think both of you men influenced Jack occasionally. Maybe subconsciously, but I think he looked at what you were doing...

AUDIENCE: I have a question for Mr. Sinnott. You mentioned that you would do little modifications to Kirby, but it was pretty much all there on the pencil page. There’s one thing I think I’ve seen a lot of in John [Morrow]’s magazine, and heard other people talk about, but I don’t think I’ve heard you talk about it—that is, the evolution of the look of the Thing: Ben Grimm, from lumpy to more of the brickand-mortar kind of look for his skin. People seem to think that you were kind of driving that, the way you were modifying Kirby’s look; what are your thoughts on that?

SINNOTT: Well, when I first started working with Jack—it’s hard to criticize Jack, but I used to say, “Gee, Jack can’t draw ears very well.” [laughs] I’ll give ’em Alex Raymond ears. But then I realized it wasn’t Jack, so I got away from it later on. EVANIER: But I think also, like when Dick was inking him, Jack looked at the books and saw how bold Dick was doing them, with these very bold strokes, and that encouraged him to do more bold strokes.

SINNOTT: Well, yeah, I do have to admit to that to a certain extent. But that’s only normal; I did so much stuff with Kirby. As you know, the early Thing looked like a lump of loose cement. But I liked that

(previous page) The evolution of the Thing was largely facilitated by whoever was inking at a given time. These are in chronological order: Row 1: Fantastic Four #1 inked by George Klein • #4 inked by Sol Brodsky • #5 inked by Joe Sinnott • #6 inked by Dick Ayers Row 2: July 20, 1962 pencil sketch by Kirby • FF #7 cover image inked by Kirby himself • #10 inked by Ayers • Unused pencil panel from FF #15 Row 3: #16 inked by Ayers • #18 cover inked by George Roussos, with a more angular, rocky feel • #19 softly inked by Ayers • #21—Roussos rocks! Row 4: #28 inked by Chic Stone • #34, with stones by Stone • #39 inked by Frank Giacoia • #40, with uncharacteristically hard-edge Vince Colletta inks Thing TM & ©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc. Row 5: Pencils from #44 • #44 inks by Sinnott • #49 pencils • The same panel from #49, inked by Sinnott

(this page) Row 1: Kirby pencils and Giacoia inks from FF Special #5, and later FF #93 inks by Giacoia. Row 2: FF #66 inks by Sinnott • More Sinnott inks from Kirby’s final issue, FF #102 • Kirby pencils from the cover of FF #181, seven years after he first left the book • Kirby’s 1978 storyboards of the Thing were much looser since they weren’t meant for publication, but even in shorthand, the character is dead-on.

Retrospective

Key 1960s Moments by John Morrow

It’s long been discussed that the changes Stan Lee made to Jack’s story in the “Him” storyline in FF were pivotal in Kirby’s decision to stop offering Marvel new characters and concepts in the 1960s. So here’s original stats from Jack’s files of issue #66 (the first issue of that arc, before the big changes were made). The timeline of events we present here should help give you an idea of Jack’s mindset up to the point when these editorial changes were made. Don’t forget that these stats are from Jack’s files, sent to him by Marvel—he saw and read all these notations while working on the next, pivotal issue.

here were many key moments at Marvel in the 1960s, but the first one that really sent shockwaves through fandom (and Marvel) was the 1966 departure of Steve Ditko from the company. Don’t you suppose that got Stan to thinking, “Gee, what if I lose Jack Kirby, too?” Shortly thereafter, in an odd twist, Stan began occasionally letting Jack script a few stories here and there in the latter 1960s. Was that an effort on Stan’s part to keep him happy at the company? To clarify the chronology of events in my mind, I decided to prepare this timeline of key moments that affected Marvel, and Lee and Kirby’s relationship in the 1960s. Of invaluable help were Rand Hoppe, past research by Mark Evanier and Pat Ford online, as well as online excerpts from Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story (I plan to read the full book soon). This isn’t a complete list of every important date in Marvel’s 1960s history, but hopefully hits most of the key ones. I’m sure I’ve left some out, and more will come to light in the future, so please send us additions and corrections. Next issue, I’ll update it, and continue the timeline into the 1970s and beyond. My rule of thumb: Cover dates were generally twothree months later than the date the book appeared on the stands, and six months ahead of when Kirby was working on the stories, so I’ve assembled the timeline according to those adjusted dates—not the cover dates—to set it more closely to real-time.

1964 • This year: Marvel sells 27,709,000 copies of its comics, with an expectation of 32,000,000 for 1965, showing a nearly 50% increase in 3 years. 102 Kirby covers are published (most in a single year). • Also this year: Martin Goodman becomes worried about Stan’s popularity and the control he has over the Marvel line, and pressures him to have other writers handle some of the stories. Stan develops “writer’s test” using four Kirby pages from FF Annual #2, with the balloons whited-out. • May (July/Summer cover dates): FF Annual #2, FF #28, and Avengers #6 are published. Original art for these issues are the earliest pages to show Kirby’s handwriting in the margin notes, but all these issues also feature Chic Stone as the inker for the first time, so it’s unclear if Kirby included notes prior to these, and other inkers simply erased Jack’s notes when they erased the pencil art after inking. • September: Addams Family and Munsters television series debut (influences Kirby’s creation of the Inhumans later).

1961 • This year: Marvel sells 18,700,000 copies of its comics. • February 25: Final Sky Masters daily strip sees print. Page 8, panel 4: There’s a note from Stan to have John Romita pretty-up Crystal’s face.

Page 4 note to inker Joe Sinnott from letterer Artie Simek: “Joe, pages will be skipped -- Stan took em out for art changes -[illegible] -- do your best. -Art S.”

• April-May: Fantastic Four #1 conceived by Lee and Kirby, and drawn by Kirby.

• December (February cover date): FF #35 published, with first ad for MMMS fan club, using Kirby art to sell $1 memberships and, later, promotional products. Flo Steinberg has said, “Nobody expected the fan-club to be so big. There were thousands of letters and dollar bills flying around all over the place. We were throwing them at each other.”

• August 8 (November cover date): FF #1 goes on sale.

1962 • This year: Marvel sells 19,740,000 copies of its comics. 1158 Kirby pages are published (most in a single year). • June (August cover date): Amazing Fantasy #15 published, featuring Ditko’s Spider-Man, after Kirby’s original version was rejected. • November (January 1963 cover date): FF #10 features the first appearance of Lee and Kirby in a comic. On the letters page, Stan tells readers to drop the formal “Dear Editor” salutation in letters, and to instead address them to “Dear Stan and Jack.”

1963 • This year: Marvel sells 22,530,000 copies of its comics.

Page 6 margin notes by Kirby have the police officer telling Ben he was in the police detail that fought the Super Skrull, and Ben saved his hide in the battle; Stan didn’t carry this through in the final dialogue.

1965 • Early this year: Marvel’s reacts to news of an impending Batman TV series, and of new publishers jumping on the super-hero bandwagon due to their success, as Martin Goodman tells Stan to add more books, to keep Marvel from getting crowded off newsstands. Soon thereafter, Lee and Kirby develop the Inhumans and Black Panther (originally named Coal Tiger)—both of which feature a character visually similar to Batman—but DC controlled Marvel’s distribution, and wouldn’t allow the new books to be added to Marvel’s output (they were eventually included in the FF).

• January (March cover date): Tales of Suspense #63 published, the first of several reworks of 1940s S&K Cap stories (with no mention of Simon). • This year and next: Kirby assigned to do layouts for Hulk series in Tales to Astonish, Captain America in Tales of Suspense, Nick Fury in Strange Tales, for Don Heck on Avengers, and for Werner Roth on X-Men. He came to view this as doing the majority of the storytelling, for only a fraction of the pay. • March (May cover date): Charlton’s Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #46 published, featuring Son of Vulcan (influenced by Marvel’s Thor). • April (June cover date): Charlton begins reprinting Captain Atom adventures in Strange Suspense Stories #75, and renames the title Captain Atom with #78 in October (December 1965 cover date), the first of its Action Hero line.

Page 15, last panel: Note from Stan that Sue has no neck, and to fix it.

• June (August cover date): Spider-Man T-shirt first offered for sale in Spider-Man #27.

which was apparently in production at that time.

1966

• Summer: FF Annual #3 published, with Stan and Jack appearing in the story together at Reed and Sue’s wedding.

• This year: Joe Simon sues Marvel in state court, and then in 1967 in federal court, claiming that Captain America was his creation and that he was entitled to the renewal on the copyright registration. Carl Burgos does likewise over his creation The Human Torch. • January 9: NY Herald Tribune article appears, which greatly offends Kirby, and possibly Ditko. In it, Stan also says, “I don’t plot Spider-Man any more. Steve Ditko, the artist, has been doing the stories. I guess I’ll leave him alone until sales start to slip. Since Spidey got so popular, Ditko thinks he’s the genius of the world. We were arguing so much over plot lines I told him to start making up his own stories. He won’t let anybody else ink his drawings either. He just drops off the finished pages with notes at the margins and I fill in the dialogue. I never know what he’ll come up with next, but it’s interesting to work that way.” FF #48 (March cover date) goes on sale the same month, with first appearance of Galactus and the Silver Surfer (a character Stan has said he knew nothing about until Kirby turned in the pages with him on them).

• August (October cover date): Daredevil #10 is published, wherein Wally Wood fought for and received the writing credit from Stan Lee. • September (November cover date): Jack introduces the Inhumans in FF #44. • September (November cover date): Tower Comics’ T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 (featuring art by Wally Wood), and Archie’s Mighty Crusaders #1, are published. Wally Wood had just left Marvel over creative differences with Stan Lee. Kirby and Wood were contemporaries who were known to speak to each other fairly regularly.

• January 12: Batman TV series debuts as a mid-season replacement. • January to February: After months of not directly communicating with Stan, Ditko turns in Spider-Man #38 and resigns. He asks Kirby to join him on a walkout to pressure Marvel into a better contract, and Kirby initially agrees, but backs out due to concerns over supporting his family. (This comes per Robert Beerbohm’s conversations with Jack: http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/dynamics/2012/02/11/goodman-vs-ditko-kirby-byrobert-beerbohm/) • February (April cover date): Myron Fass’ Captain Marvel #1 is published (the character who splits apart into pieces) and co-opts both the famous 1940s character’s name, and the name of Martin Goodman’s company in an attempt to cause market confusion. It’s drawn by Carl Burgos, creator of the Human Torch for Goodman in the 1940s.

• October (December cover date): Modeling with Millie #44 is published, featuring Roy Thomas’ first Marvel writing work.

• April (June cover date): Fantasy Masterpieces #3 published, featuring the first of a series of Simon & Kirby 1940s Captain America reprints, with Joe Simon’s credit line removed. • May (July cover date): Tales to Astonish #81 published, featuring Kirby’s documented design for the villain Boomerang. Also, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #6 is published by Tower Comics, featuring art by both Wally Wood and Steve Ditko.

• November (January 1966 cover date): Daredevil #12 published, with Kirby assigned to do layouts for John Romita, and to design the villain The Plunderer. • December 1965: Interview for New York Herald Tribune article takes place, where Stan is giving art direction to Sol Brodsky about a page from FF #50, page 8,

• May (July cover date): FF #52 published, with the Black Panther’s debut, and includes an announcement that Ditko is leaving Marvel. The real-life Black Panther organization wouldn’t officially be formed until October 1966, but shortly before this issue went into production, news articles were published (as early as January) about a Black Panther logo being used by an organization in Alabama. Page 11, panel 1: Stan’s note says “Isn’t Sue too fat?” (It’s actually Alicia, not Sue.) Panel 3: Note to make Alicia’s bosom smaller, although Stan apparently thinks it’s Sue.

• This year: Kirby stops doing most layouts for other artists. This is the point his work begins to reach its 1960s peak, as he has more time to devote to his own stories. Also, Kirby draws the first of his Fourth World concept drawings, but doesn’t show them to Marvel. • Mid-1966: Lancer paperbacks are released, reprinting Kirby Fantastic 65

Tribute

2012 Kirby Tribute Panel Transcribed by Steven Tice, and edited by John Morrow • Photos by Chris Ng

(below) Here’s the original art for the cover of Tales To Astonish #101 (March 1968), officially credited as Kirby/Shores/ Marie Severin/Giacoia. All the background figures look to be Kirby, and we’re betting this was originally an unused Thor cover, and the Hulk figure is a paste-up. (next page) This issue’s cover inks by Mike Royer.

Held Sunday, July 15, 2012 at Comic-Con International: San Diego. Moderated by Mark Evanier, and featuring Stan Goldberg, Charles Hatfield, Paul Dini, and Paul Levine. [Due to microphone issues, some of Stan Goldberg’s comments were inaudible, and were edited out.] MARK EVANIER: Good morning. Let the record show that this is the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. I am Mark Evanier, and we are in a larger room with a little more time because of the fine turnout we’ve had the last few of these. [applause] If we keep this up, we will have Hall H and the entire Saturday. [laughter] This is, I think, my tenth panel of the convention. I’ve got five today, and this is the one I look forward to the most because I spend a lot of the convention talking about Jack, and it’s nice to just talk only about Jack and not have him be an Mark Evanier aside, to just focus on him for a while. And I got into an interesting discussion yesterday when we were down at the Kirby Museum booth. You have all visited, I’m sure, the Kirby Museum, [and] the TwoMorrows booth. They’re about three steps from each other. At either booth, you’ll find many treasures about Jack and people who are enthusiastic about him. We got into a little discussion with Charles [Hatfield] here, and with Tom Kraft, whom I see is here somewhere. Tom’s over there, and Arlen Schumer, who is over there. I almost introduced him to someone last night as Arlen Specter. [laughter] I’m sure this is not the first time this mistake has been made. ARLEN SCHUMER: He’s the only other Arlen that I know. EVANIER: Okay. To keep it clear, for those of you, so you’ll remember this: Arlen Specter is the man with the single bullet theory of the Kennedy assassination. Arlen Schumer is the man with the Auteur Theory of Comics. All right? [laughter] You’ve got the difference on that? Fine. SCHUMER: The single panel theory. EVANIER: That’s right. [laughter] And we started talking about—the discussion was keyed off a discussion of Mike Royer’s lettering, which we should’ve actually had in this room one of the years Mike was on this panel. [laughter] I love Mike Royer. I learned to letter from Mike Royer, and I thought he was one of the greatest letterers of all time. I always appreciate that there are people who have different opinions about inkers, or their favorite Kirby books, their favorite Kirby colorists—although we can all agree that nobody ever colored Jack’s work better than Mr. Stan Goldberg. [applause] I hope this doesn’t get too sprawled, here. You can look at this from a couple of different viewpoints, if you’re discussing Mike’s, anyway. With Mike Royer, who lettered for Jack, one aspect is just looking at the work and evaluating it. You know, some people say, “Well, I like Sam Rosen better,” or, “I like—”. SCHUMER: Simek! EVANIER: I’m talking about letterers. SCHUMER: Simek!

EVANIER: Oh, Simek! I thought you said “Sinnott”. I’m sorry. Artie Arlen Schumer Simek. Anyway, it’s just a subjective thing. Another thing is, and I want to ask Charles to talk about this. This is Charles Hatfield, the author of Hand of Fire, a fine book about Jack. [applause] Friday night, it won an Eisner Award. [applause] Although I’ve got to tell you, it’s kind of easy. I’ve won an Eisner 80

Award every time I’ve written about Jack. [laughter] But there is the question of, when did you discover Jack? Those people who first came to his work on something like Kamandi, to them that’s Kirby art. The stuff before is Jack doing what he shouldn’t be doing, or, “That’s not the way it’s supposed to look. It’s supposed to look like this.” And there’s something very valid to that. A third approach that you look at sometimes in this case, which I am burdened with, is practicality. When Mike was lettering Jack’s work on the New Gods books— it’s a question of alternatives. Well, if Mike hadn’t lettered it, who would have? I don’t think there was anyone else. There was no one else in Southern California. There was no one else in Los Angeles that we could possibly have gotten. If there was somebody, we didn’t know who they were and therefore could not find them. So the alternative at that point would have been to send the work to New York for lettering, and if you hand it to the people in the DC production office, who already didn’t like the way Jack drew, and say, “Here, you guys find a letterer and then send it back to us unretouched and unmolested”; that wasn’t practical, either. It’s very simple when you look at a comic to say, “Oh, this should have been inked by Joe Sinnott and it should have been colored by Stan Goldberg.” You can’t always get those people. They’re not always available. You can’t always get your first choice. It’s like a variation of what Donald Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the army you have.” You go to press with the artists and writers you have. You can’t magically make Wally Wood appear at any place you want, you know. You deal with the realities. And I think it was wonderful that Mike Royer was as good as he was, and as fast as he was, and available at that moment. And I think you would have liked the alterna-

tive a lot less. If you don’t like Mike’s lettering, that’s fine. Mike would be the first guy to tell you that he loved other people’s lettering more than his own. But there’s different aspects to this. Now, what this gets to—I’m rambling here, but I wanted to do a little editorial about something. I want to take you back for a minute, to the 1980s; most of you remember the fight at Marvel over Jack’s original art being returned. Do I have to remind people what that was all about? I was in a very odd position. This war was going on, people were hurling invective back and forth at Marvel employees, and some of them were yelling at Jack and saying nasty things, and everybody was insulting everybody else. And a certain amount of that, to be honest, was people who really didn’t care that much about Jack, but they had grievances against Marvel Comics, or certain people at Marvel Comics, and they saw a chance to grab some moral high ground and fling mud from a very tall place. There were also those of us who had genuine issues relating not just to Jack, but to the treatment of creators as a whole. Jack was just the example of… if you don’t treat Jack right, who are they going to treat right? Somebody who maybe is more successful for them and creates multi-million dollar properties? So there was a lot of angst going on in fanzines and convention panels and such, and fortunately we did not have the Internet then to ramp this up ten times. But I would look at this, and I was in this odd position. When the battle started, I went to the attorney who was representing Jack at the time, a man named Steven Rohde, now a very prestigious attorney in the civil rights/free speech area. He’s won a lot of major battles to block censorship. He’s an official of the ACLU. And that’s when I met Paul Levine, who was—this is the Kirby family attorney, Mr. Paul S. Levine,

Unearthed

The FF—by Thomas & Kirby! Interview conducted by Jerry Boyd

[We usually look at the King’s work on the fabulous Fantastic Four as a longtime collaboration with Stan Lee, various inkers, Kirby coming up with characters and concepts and pitching them to Lee, or even working out ideas with his wife! But rarely do we think of adding Roy Thomas to the mix. Roy worked on the FF cartoons of the late 1970s and, though he had little contact with Jack at the time, his ideas became storyboards and concepts that the King realized visually on paper. Here, he talks about those times and experiences. This interview was conducted by e-mail on September 27 and 29, 2009 for this magazine.]

TJKC: Were you focused on doing super-hero-based screenplays then or were you open to any kind-of dramatic material? And if super-heroes were your preferred genre, what super-hero stuff did you develop? ROY: I was lucky to have an agent because I’d been pulled into a NY agency that was just as active in Hollywood… and they felt, especially as Star Wars neared, that they might be able to sell me to movies and TV. I had quite a few meetings, but nothing quite took. I did a fair amount of work on a TV version of Siegel and Shuster’s Funnyman, though I doubt the producer ever really licensed any rights to it as he was, of course, supposed to do. The other material was fantasy, science-fiction, and the like. TJKC: You had some Hollywood connections of a sort with Harlan Ellison (who’d written episodes of The Outer Limits and Star Trek), Stan Lee (who’d helped develop the Marvel cartoons in the ’60s and ’70s), and Jack Kirby (who’d been

(above) This undated portrait of the Rascally One was done by Mike Zeck in the early 1970s. (right) This ad showed up in comics during the Summer of 1978 and told fans to look for the forthcoming FF cartoon that Fall. (below) An example of Kirby storyboarding from the Roy Thomasscripted “Blastaar” episode.

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Roy, you’d been Marvel’s editor-in-chief and had been living in New York a number of years by the time the late ’70s rolled around. What gave you the urge to move west and try scriptwriting in Hollywood? ROY THOMAS: I didn’t move west to get into the movies… I just felt it was time to get away from the New York and comics milieu on a daily basis, since I had just left the editor-in-chief job a couple of years earlier and had just been offered the job again. Also, I’d been separated from my first wife Jeanie for half a year by the time I decided to move and that made NYC a bit less pleasant for me, as well.

ROY: Naturally, I thought Jack’s breakdowns were great! Others have said they weren’t “real” storyboards in the usual sense of animation, but DePatie-Freleng was apparently happy with them, and I think they produced a good product. Since Jack turned out the storyboards from my synopsis, of course I got to see them… I was writing dialogue to go with the storyboards.

TJKC: Stan and you wrote cartoon scripts (for the FF cartoons) in the late ’70s. What kind of writing instructions were you given by producers, if any? ROY: I wrote Marvel-style, and loved the result.

TJKC: Do you have anything else you’d like to add about the writing process for those shows? ROY: Not much, except that I had a bit of writer’s block before scripting the first one. Once I got started, it flowed, and Stan and DePatie were happy with what I did. DePatie asked me to develop a show idea on my own about disco, which became The Disco-nauts. They liked it, but it didn’t sell to the networks, and that was that. TJKC: How would you sum up the experiences you had in the studios, overall? ROY: Some of the folks were pleasant, but I wasn’t really enamored of working in animation, ever, despite liking working on the FF show. I preferred comics, but felt a need to branch out. H

TJKC: Were there any meetings with Stan or Jack Kirby to discuss possible ideas for the show back then? ROY: I met with Stan, and, more often, David DePatie… never with Jack, who was basically “just” the storyboard artist. TJKC: In TJKC #47, we saw a beautiful storyboard sequence by Kirby that was a nice alteration of the Lee-Kirby “The Infant Terrible!” from FF #23. Stan wrote that one for D-P from his old script. Did you do any takes on the old FF stories by Lee and Kirby also, or did you want to do completely original stories? ROY: You’d have to look up any stories I adapted… but I think all mine were basically originals, like “The Phantom of Film City” [which you can view at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTdck7HmKQ ] and one about Space Olympics.

[The 1978 Fantastic Four cartoon ran for 13 episodes, with H.E.R.B.I.E. the Robot in the Human Torch’s place. Most episodes were derivative of the comics Jack and Stan did, and there were several writers on the series. Original airdates are show below.] • “A Monster Among Us”—written by Stan Lee (Sep. 9, 1978) based on FF #24 • “The Phantom of Film City”—written by Roy Thomas (Sep. 16, 1978) based on FF #9 • “The Mole Man”—written by Stan Lee (Sep. 23, 1978) based on FF #1 • “The Olympics of Space”—written by Roy Thomas (Sep. 30, 1978) based on FF #90-93 • “Medusa and the Inhumans”—written by Stan Lee (Oct. 7, 1978) based on FF #45 • “The Menace of Magneto”—written by Stan Lee (Oct. 14, 1978) based on FF #102 • “The Fantastic Four Meet Doctor Doom”—written by Stan Lee (Oct. 21, 1978) based on FF #5 • “The Impossible Man”—written by Roy Thomas (Oct. 28, 1978) based on FF #11 • “The Diamond of Doom”—written by Christy Marx (Nov. 4, 1978) • “The Frightful Four”—written by Bob Johnson and Bob Stitzel (Nov. 11, 1978) based on FF #36 • “Calamity on the Campus”—written by Roy Thomas (Nov. 18, 1978) based on FF #35 • “The Final Victory of Doctor Doom”—written by Stan Lee (Dec. 9, 1978) based on FF #10 • “Blastaar, the Living Bomb Burst”—written by Roy Thomas (Dec. 16, 1978) based on FF #63

TJKC: We know from past interviews you’ve done that you and Jack weren’t the closest of associates. However, what do you remember about his attitude toward his animation work of that period? ROY: Nothing whatsoever, since we had virtually no contact. TJKC: What did you think of Kirby’s storyboards and did you get to see each one of them in completion after your scripts went to him?

working for Hanna-Barbera and Depatie-Freleng on various projects). Were any of those great talents able to make things a little easier after you’d settled in California? ROY: I had only a passing acquaintance with Harlan Ellison, Stan Lee didn’t move to L.A. till several years after I did, and Kirby wasn’t active in TV then, I don’t think. I had no connection with any of them.

Jack Kirby Collector #60