JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #81
BETA
$10.95
FALL 2021
cs.
TM & © DC Comi
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Contents Kirby: Beta! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 IN MEMORIAM: STEVE SHERMAN . . 3 INNERVIEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 (early Lee & Kirby interviews)
ISSUE #81, FALL 2021
C o l l e c t o r
FORMATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 (the maddening mystery of Magneto) BOOM! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 (eclectic bursts of genius!) GALLERY 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 (twice-told Marvel covers) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM PAGE . . . . 25 BOYDISMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 (“howcome?!”) FOUNDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 (Simon & Kirby crime comics) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . . . . . 38 KIRBY OBSCURA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 FORMATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 (Marvel’s mighty... Man-Monster?) GALLERY 2: BEFORE & AFTER . . . 48 RETROSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 (Kamandi’s U.F.O. saga) KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 ( Mark Evanier moderates the 2019 Heroes Con panel, with Mike Royer, Jim Amash, and Rand Hoppe) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . 78 Co ver inks: VINCE COLLETTA Co ver color: TOM ZIUKO COPYRIGHTS: Angry Charlie, Ben Boxer, Darkseid, Dr. Canus, Freedom Fighters, Goody Rickels, Guardian, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Mister Miracle, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, Oberon, OMAC, Orion, Pyra, Scrapper, Spirit World, Superman, True Life Divorce, Tuftan, TwoDimensional Man, Ugly Mannheim TM & © DC Comics • AIM, Arnim Zola, Avengers, Balder, Blastaar, Blob, Bruce Banner, Bucky, Captain America, Colossus, Daredevil, Diablo, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Dragon-Man, Falcon, Fantastic Four, Forbush Man, Frightful Four, Giant-Man, Goliath, Gorgolla, Gorilla-Man, Green Thing, Hawkeye, Hercules, Hulk, Human Torch, Hydra, Inhumans, Iron, Journey Into Mystery, Juggernaut, Ka-Zar, Kid Colt, Loki, Mad Thinker, Magneto, Man-Monster, Modok, Monsters to Laugh With, Nick Fury, Odin, Professor X, Rawhide Kid, Red Skull, Rick Jones, Ringmaster, Scarlet Witch, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Strange Tales, Sub-Mariner, Taboo, Tana Nile, The Leader, Thor, Wasp, X-Men, Zeus TM & © Marvel Charaters, Inc. • Kiss TM & © KISS Catalog Ltd. • Frankenstein, Wolfman TM & © Universal Studios • Captain Victory, Sky Masters of the Space Force TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • Fighting American & Speedboy, Headline Comics TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates • Lord of Light TM & © Roger Zelazny • The Heap, Sky Wolf TM & © Hillman Periodicals or successor in interest • Jack Ruby story © Esquire Magazine • Archie characters TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc. • Drak Pack TM & © Hanna-Barbera Pty. Ltd. • Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Tigger TM & © Walt Disney Productions
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(above) Jack’s experimental photo/collage/watercolor assembly for a featurette in Spirit World #1 (Fall 1971).
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The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 28, No. 81, Fall 2021. Published quarterly (barring worldwide pandemics) by and © TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $13 postpaid US ($19 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $49 Economy US, $72 International, $18 Digital. Editorial package © TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All Kirby artwork is © Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. Views expressed here are those of the respective authors, and not necessarily those of TwoMorrows Publishing or the Jack Kirby Estate. First printing. PRINTED IN CHINA. ISSN 1932-6912
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INNERVIEWs
Lee/Kirby: Beta
with thanks to Barry Pearl (http://forbushman.blogspot. com) and Nick Caputo for unearthing this
ED: Where do you get your ideas for story plots? STAN: I just sit down—and think! ED: Have you ever worked for any other company in the past besides Marvel/Atlas/ Timely? STAN: No. ED: How did you get started in comics? STAN: They needed a writer. I started writing captions for a mag. ED: Where did Marvel Comics Group get its name? STAN: Well, there was a book long ago called Marvel. We liked the name so we called it “Marvel.”
From the G. William Jones Film & Video Archive at Southern Methodist University (above) One of Stan Lee’s earliest attempts at becoming a media celebrity—his introduction for the 1966 Marvel Super-Heroes animated television series produced by Grantray-Lawrence. (below) The published cover of Strange Tales Annual #1 was a vast improvement over its beta version.
[This interview, conducted circa Fall 1964, originally appeared in the fanzine Crusader #1 (Winter 1964-65, published by David Castronuovo), long before Stan became the polished media icon he eventually became. Its mimeo cover art (right) was by Vince Colletta.] EDITOR: Before we start, is there anything you’d like to say to fandom? STAN LEE: I love you all! ED: Which Marvel super-hero to do you consider to be your favorite? STAN: Well, really, I like all of them. It’s like your own children—you like all of them.
haven’t got the time.
ED: Do you study any background information for writing stories for your super-heroes? STAN: No, unfortunately, I
ED: Are you planning to bring back Captain Marvel, as you did Captain America, or don’t you have the rights to revise him? STAN: Actually, it’s up for grabs. However, we don’t like copying, and we like to stick to our own work, so probably not. ED: Is there any reason behind the fact that you are always changing the Wasp’s costume? STAN: We really aren’t satisfied yet! ED: Do you consider any one of your heroes to be the worst of the group? STAN: No, not really. ED: Do you mind being interviewed? STAN: No, not if it is by mail. I don’t like to give in-person interviews too much, because it isn’t really fair to other ’zine editors, who could not come to New York for an in-person interview. (Editor’s Note: The above shows one more reason why we are greatly in debt to Stan Lee for letting us interview him. Also, we are very grateful to Vince Colletta for making the interviews possible.) ED: Do you mind it when a satirical strip is done on one of your super-heroes? STAN: No, because it means that they read the comic. ED: Are you planning to start any new super-heroes in the near future? STAN: Of course. One of them will be (censored at Mr.
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Lee’s request).
ED: Are you planning to have any of your heroes be killed off? STAN: Not in the immediate future.
ED: Do you keep your own personal collection of comic books? STAN: I sure do; I keep a file cabinet of them at home. I don’t have all of the issues but I do have everything I’ve done in the past three years.
(Editor’s Note [not again!]: Here, Stan Lee told us a little bit about Jack Kirby, and his art style.) STAN: It’s a funny thing with Jack’s artwork. You never know just how good Jack really is. If he gets a good inker, he looks good. If he gets a bad inker, he looks bad. But Jack Kirby’s penciling is so magnificent, no inker can really do it justice.
ED: Did you do most of the Captain America stories of yesteryear? STAN: Yes. ED: Do you plan to have the revised Captain America fighting the Russian communists or the Red Chinese? STAN: No.
ED: Do you save any of your original manuscripts? STAN: As a matter of fact, there really are no manuscripts to save! The way I do it now, I write the story in synopsis form, and then give it to the artist. He pencils the drawings, and I get it back again. Then, I write the words above the panels, and these are eventually lettered in. So, we work so fast, that there almost aren’t any real manuscripts.
ED: Do you particularly favor any of your villains? STAN: I love our villains! All of them. I like the villains as much as the heroes. ED: Why did you kill off Wonder Man (who appeared in the Avengers)? STAN: Well, that is a very interesting story. We intended to bring him back, but we found out that DC had a story about a year ago, concerning a robot named Wonder Man. I myself never saw him or heard of him. The head of National Comics wrote to us and informed us of the fact that he had already used the name Wonder Man. We do not want to use anyone else’s name, so only for that reason, we are not bringing Wonder Man back. And, besides, we can’t, because we don’t copy anyone!
ED: Is the original Human Torch artist ever going to draw the modern version of the Human Torch? STAN: That was Carl Burgos, and he isn’t going to be drawing the new modern version of the Human Torch. As a matter of fact, he stopped drawing for comics. Actually, I wanted to use him just out of sentiment. He may came back later, but at the moment, he is not doing any work for us. ED: Would you name a few of the other heroes you did back in the Forties and Fifties?
ED: Are you planning to give Captain America his own magazine? STAN: There is only one thing stopping us; Jack (Kirby) doesn’t have the time to draw it, and I don’t have the time to write it. But, sooner or later, whether it be a year from now, or ten years from now, we will find the time to do it!
(above) Marvel Comics’ 1966 house ad for the syndicated Marvel Super-Heroes animated series, and (inset) a blurb from distributor Krantz Films’ promotional brochure, which trumpeted that the show re-used art from the actual comics for its visuals. Marvel’s artists, however, weren’t paid for the re-purposing of their work.
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Boom!
Eclectic Bursts of Genius! by Shane Foley
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ith this issue covering Kirby’s “wildest, most experimental ideas,” his “prodigious imagination,” some of his “unhinged lunacy,” and his “non-stop inventiveness,” most Kirby-ites will have many favorites that immediately spring to mind. Here are some of mine. (There are lots more, of course, but there is a limit, not the least of which is excluding things I’ve written about before.) When compiling my list, some examples immediately suggested others, for reasons that will become clearer as we go along. In the end, I found I could arrange the examples into three lists. All except one item are chronological, but while the third is of random examples, the first two are thematic.
List 1: Personal Transport, Kirby style!
1962 • FANTASTIC FOUR #3: THE FIRST FANTASTI-CAR By any artist’s standards, and particularly after the Atom Horse, this bathtub design is very bland. There are many factors seen in the very early FFs that give me the distinct impression that Kirby initially had little confidence that the FF would be a success— and this bathtub design is one. For example, a few months later, in the same year... 2
1962 • TALES OF SUSPENSE #35: THE SPACE CRAFT IN “ZARKORR” ...Kirby created this spacecraft, for a one-off story. Yet how much more inspired is this craft than the Fantastic Four’s flying car, which would be seen regularly? But then... 3
This list was inspired by once noticing the difference between the vehicles mentioned below for 1974 and 1980. It grew from there.
4 1963 • FANTASTIC FOUR #12: THE SECOND FANTASTI-CAR ...exactly 12 months after FF #3, the F-Car got a face lift—and what a beauty it is, too. Kirby knew by this time that the FF was a huge hit and he let rip with his designs. This redesign is one of the first fruits. What a terrific design this is, based no doubt on some ideas he had read about. We’re unsure if Kirby had real scientific or mechanical knowledge (see page 56!), but he sure knew how to make things look like they would work! 4
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1959 • SKY MASTERS SUNDAY STRIP— SECOND WEEK: THE ATOM HORSE What a brilliant design. Was this based on anything in NASA’s files? Or was it a Kirby original, based, no doubt, on 1950s futuristic designs he’d absorbed over the years? Either way, it’s stunning and set a benchmark for such designs in the future.
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1968 • FANTASTIC FOUR #84: THE INHUMANS’ VEHICLE Exactly five years after that (all these FFs have a March cover month), Jack threw in this wonderfully weird flying machine. It’s a flying machine with no aerodynamics of any kind, yet one that screams of an other-worldly, anti-gravity capability. A few panels later, the machine disappears and is never seen again. (I wonder where the FF would park such a thing in New Yori City?) So what did Jack base this on? No one else did stuff like this!
1971 • NEW GODS #1: ORION’S ASTRO-HARNESS Climaxing here with a 9 return to ’71 for what I think is Kirby’s crowning ‘transport’ achievement! I still remember the goosebumps I got when I first saw the ad for New Gods #1 and viewed this amazing design—all capped off with Orion’s dynamic helmet. Maybe one reason Kirby jettisoned the harness in later New Gods issues was because it would be a pain to draw over and over again, but that doesn’t take away from its artistic brilliance. What a treat that he brought it back in 1984’s “Even Gods Must Die!” Such perfection!
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6 1971 • NEW GODS #2: A NEW GENESIS CONTRAPTION Kirby continued his wonderfully inventive string of transportation vehicles at DC with Jimmy Olsen’s Whiz Wagon and the Forever People’s Super Cycle. But then, for no real logical reason, he showed some ‘transportation’ of a totally different kind. This design shows Kirby’s abstract artistic thinking being applied to what is basically a children’s swing set. It’s crazy, it’s 6 ‘out there’, yet it looks functional enough that we know what it represents. In Kirby’s early months into the Fourth World at DC, his inspiration and imagination were flying! 7 1974 • OMAC #5: THE GPA’S TRANSPORT VEHICLE Shades of the first F-Car—what’s going on here? This vehicle is a box! Is Kirby experimenting with a new, ultra simple design? Or did he draw this on a day when he just couldn’t get his mojo going? Or was the situation at DC getting under his skin so much he wouldn’t give more than he needed to? (Personally, I think the latter, where Kirby wrote his stories but refused to design great villains or—in this case—machines that he would lose all rights to as soon as they were published. He continued this trend for a while when he returned to Marvel in 1975.) 8 1980 (CIRCA) • “LABOUR LAUNCH” ANIMATION DESIGN Now this is more like Kirby in full flight—the design genius is back with a creativity that matches his best! Wonderfully, totally Kirbyesque!
List 2: Some Kirbyesque versions of “The Control Room” Kirby must have drawn thousands of types of Control Rooms in his career, but here are a few that stand out to me. 10 1966 • THOR #132 What a great Control Desk he drew here—just one of many machinescapes he put into this sequence. Kirby was red-hot at this time.
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11 1969 • FANTASTIC FOUR #85 A few years later, Kirby revisited this design by giving Dr. Doom a similar control seat in a full-pager. It’s brilliant, and looks very convincing. But as time went on, many “Control Rooms” later, Kirby’s concepts became a little more obscure...
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Gallery 1
Beta Redux [next page] Marvel Collector’s Item Classics #19 (1969) Fantastic Four #27 is from June 1964 and MCIC #19, reprinting that story, was from nearly 5 years later. Why, in the middle of a run of reprint covers, is Kirby suddenly doing a new one? This is a lot earlier than a batch of new covers for reprint comics he did about 18 months later (and about which I have a theory). Perhaps Marvel simply couldn’t find a good copy to print—we know for example that Marvel had no copy of the Iron Man story from Tales of Suspense #50 and Tom Brevoort commissioned Don Heck to replicate it. For whatever reason, Jack did a new cover—using the same basic layout, but beefing up the tension and action in accordance with the change in his art style that had pervaded his work in the time since the original was done. And it’s a beauty!
[right] Marvel’s Greatest Comics #77 (1978) What can we say about this piece, which simply reverses the original cover to Fantastic Four #96 (1970), except that (a) it proves Jack’s light-box still worked and (b) he had absolutely no interest in adjusting the reverse image to get the hair of Reed, Sue or Johnny ‘correct’. The only differences I can see between the two, besides the reversal, are a change in the torn curtain, an upgraded telephone and its cord, the deletion of the pipe and cigar, and the lack of dwindling flame on both Johnny figures, with a table added to fill the gap. We could ask the question: Why the need to reverse the original? The masthead/logo certainly did not require it. Perhaps Jack was asked for a new cover and he simply decided to do it this way, rather than try to think of another. After all, if it was an editorial decision, anyone in the office could have light-boxed the original. The new version is signed “J.K./M.R.”, so it’s possible Mike Royer did the light-boxing.
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Twice-told Kirby covers, with commentary by Shane Foley
Tales of Suspense #78 (1966) unused cover layout Presuming this is a genuine 1966 piece (Fury and the robot look like mid-’60s Kirby, but the Cap figure? To me, it looks like Kirby from a decade later—bulkier and less supple. But I’m probably wrong!), we have to assume Jack rejected it himself, since we know he didn’t submit cover layouts for approval. (He’d kept the piece and a collage was pasted right over the top.) So he was not happy with it himself. Good call! Though why did he decide to reverse the viewpoint rather than simply do a better Cap figure? Perhaps because showing the heroes front-on is easier from this angle. Although that Fury figure is perfect...
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BOYDISMS
In 2018, I bumped into Irving Forbush in New York City’s Times Square. I recognized him from my beloved Not Brand Echh comics and we chatted for a while. He told me that after NBE folded, “Stan and Jack, great team that they made, had created a few conundrums that I just couldn’t take anymore!” Irv tried several times to confront the creative pair about the ‘discrepancies’ (as he saw them) he’d read, only to be politely and professionally rebuffed at every turn. I quickly jotted down his words and… well, here, he finally gets his say! Forbush Man: “Lee and Kirby did hundreds, maybe thousands of wonderfully told tales, but some things, I gotta tell you, just don’t add up. And those made me ask then and now...
(above) Marie Severin did this impressive portrait of ol’ Irv in ’73 in watercolor. Thanks to Rob Pistella of comicartfans.com.
“Howcome?!” Ideas that might’ve need a little more thought, as told by Forbush-Man to Jerry Boyd
“Hey Jack and Stan, if Doc Doom can create androids, take over a small country, challenge the FF, and come up with a time machine to boot, howcome he can’t figure out a way to get his face fixed up?!” [Fantastic Four #5, left]
“Howcome four of the Inhumans debuted with masks? They never had secret identities to protect from their fellow Inhumans, right?” [Fantastic Four #46, bottom left]
“Hey Stan, howzabout writing up a story where the mad but brilliant scientist retains the good sense to figure out an antidote before he experiments on himself, like the nut who turned himself into a Gorilla-Man (twice!)?” [Tales to Astonish #30, below]
“Wait a New York minute, guys! If Col. Nick Fury was the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, why’d he always take the toughest missions— solo? Weren’t there other agents he trusted to do 26
(above) Not Brand Echh #1 in ’67 gave us some great times and the first appearance of Forbush Man—art by Kirby!
the job?! Wasn’t he supposed to be like… an administrator? Sheesh!” [Strange Tales #141, right]
“Impressive, Jack! But how can even the great Rawhide Kid and terrific Two-Gun Kid squeeze-off so many shots that fast and that accurately from a six-shooter?!” [Two-Gun Kid #61, bottom right]
“Since Mighty Thor had never spent any time in Mt. Olympus before in his centuries-spanning life, howcome he automatically knew the job description for Lord Zeus?!”
it! No excuses! Report to the Disintegration Chamber! Bye! Hah-hahah!” [The whereabouts of these panels could not be shown and must remain secret and are classified by direct order from the Supreme Hydra of Union Local 12, Syracuse, NY]
[Journey into Mystery Annual #1, left]
“Awesome cover, Jack! But you and editor Stan forgot to give the Kid his gun belt and six-guns! I own a copy of this, and Colt had it on as he approached the situation, so don’t offer me a sourball and a No-Prize and tell me to go back to sweeping!”
“The Green Thing boasted, ‘Yes, I have powers—all the powers I shall need for the great task that lies before me!’ In the next panel, he tells the human near him to help him out! Which one is it, men?”
[Kid Colt, Outlaw #88, left, natch!]
[Tales of Suspense #19, right]
“Congratulations, X-Men! You all graduated from Professor Xavier’s school in X-Men #7. So howcome you were still getting trained in combat exercises weeks/months/ years later? Aren’t you grads supposed to pack up/ move out/make room for a new class after finishing up? Imagine contacting your parents and telling them you’ve completed all your training but you’re going to remain in school because… whatever!”
“Hold up, men! Doc Banner didn’t want to be the Hulk early on, right? But shortly later, and still not wanting to be green, he’s built a machine to bombard him with gamma rays so he can Hulk-out whenever. Shouldn’t he have made a de-gammaray-thingy-machine-device instead, so he could go back to normal?” [Incredible Hulk #4, left]
“Does Spider-Man think the hood he’s carrying around can’t hear him say his secret identity?” [Amazing Fantasy #15, right]
“Lord Odin has an entire kingdom of noble, trustworthy immortals to choose from to be in charge of Asgard for a short period, right? So howcome he has the next of kin, the god of mischief, who happens to be the most untrustworthy god in the whole realm, sit in for him?! Hasn’t the All-Wise been paying attention to this evil guy’s way of doing business?!”
[X-Men #7, below]
[Thor #155, below]
“Jack, Stan… you’re killing me! Black Bolt wanted an advance scout to check out us human types, correct? So howcome he didn’t pick an Inhuman who’d have had an easier time of blending in with us? Hey, I’m a Triton fan, but a green scaly amphibian?! Uhhhh, no.”
“Okaaaaay, we get it! If you work for Hydra, you’d better get it right the first time, because if you fail, you die! So why would anyone want to work for Hydra? You’re late for work one time… and that’s
[Sorry, the Inhumans protect their files, also.]
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OBSCURA
Barry Forshaw
A regular column focusing on Kirby’s least known work, by Barry Forshaw Barry Forshaw is the author of Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide and American Noir (available from Amazon) and the editor of Crime Time (www.crimetime. co.uk); he lives in London.
there is a story called “The Two-Dimensional Man” in which the hapless protagonist takes a powder that turns him into a comically-drawn “flat man.” The story is full of truly bizarre ideas, and Kirby tackles head-on one quite absurd sequence in which a group of cows about to be transported are turned into flat, two-dimensional creatures and stacked like a pile of newspapers—even though they are still living and breathing. The hero is next up (accidentally) for the treatment, and the reader has time to wonder why if he has ingested the transformational powder via a cup of tea (he has an English butler—it’s the only way Americans drink tea, of course, when given to them by their London-born butler), how it is possible for his clothes to attain the same two-dimensional status as his body. But the story is great fun, and the best thing in an issue which contains an excellent piece by Lou Cameron, who also provides a rare cover. And “The Two-Dimensional Man” is a reminder of how humour was something else that Kirby could do when necessary. The recent death of Mad magazine’s great caricaturist Mort Drucker makes one wonder about the other things that Kirby might have done in this area, given the chance—although he did do humour work for Marvel and Mad imitators.
CONFRONTING THE RIDICULOUS
All readers of this magazine will happily accept praise for the comics medium in general, won’t they? After all, why would anyone be looking at The Jack Kirby Collector if they were not a fan of the medium? But here’s something you may not have heard praised before; the possibility that the medium can (that is, for the duration of a story) make the ridiculous—as opposed to the simply imaginative—surprisingly plausible. In comics, somehow, all things are possible—which they are demonstrably not in other fields. Case in point: Jack Kirby’s work on Fantastic Four—and specifically Mr. Fantastic. The first example of a human being who can stretch and distort his body in astonishing ways was, of course, Jack Cole’s Plastic Man, and Cole was well aware of just how silly (and unscientific) the concept was. Cole played his red-clad hero (and idiotic sidekick Woozy Winks) for laughs—in fact, there are those who would argue that Plastic Man was the greatest humour comic book ever produced. But when Kirby and Stan Lee repurposed the notion with Reed Richards, they largely played it straight, and Kirby enthusiasts were persuaded to willingly accept this most ridiculous of superhero powers. However, there is an earlier example in Kirby’s work of something similar in terms of outrageous notions—but on this earlier occasion, it is perfectly clear that he knew it was impossible to take the concept seriously. In DC’s Tales of the Unexpected #24 (April 1958),
GARGOYLES
Writing a column such as this over a long period— which John Morrow has been kind enough to ask me to do—leads to certain problems. For a start, writers such as myself have to avoid an endless stream of encomiums for the subject of the column (in this case, a certain comics illustrator); that would become a little boring after a while, and—apart from anything else—most readers of The Jack Kirby Collector don’t need to be persuaded of the talents of the man whose name is in the masthead. To that end, over the years, I’ve tried to be frank about what even Kirby’s admirers sometimes admit are the missteps of the Master: such as the fact that his amazingly fertile writing imagination (leaving aside his illustrative skills) was wildly undisciplined—and even in his best work, in need of a stern editorial hand such as that provided by Stan Lee (and which was in less evidence in his last DC period). Having said that, one can instantly start to argue with oneself—despite the purple prose and the occasional incoherent plotting, Kirby’s innovations in those final DCs still produced an amazing bushel of concepts and notions which are still in use today, including one which is central to the current DC universe: the godlike super-villain Darkseid. But back to finding something new to look at in the work of Jack Kirby. Examining a typical issue of Atlas/Marvel’s Strange Tales (#74, from April 1960) will remind the reader of what was becoming a typical package of that era: a lead-off Kirby strip followed by back-ups from the likes of Don Heck and Paul Reinman, topped off with an outing from editor Stan Lee’s other heavy hitter, Steve Ditko. In this issue, the Heck and Reinman tales are unexciting, standard stuff—as they so often are in the books of this period. The Ditko closer, “When the Totem Walks”, is one of his most impressive pieces from this period, with a dynamic splash panel that dispenses with the border and uses the white of the page to great effect. But we’re here to talk about Jack Kirby, and the opening story, “Gorgolla! The Living Gargoyle!!” (overuse of exclamation marks was a Stan Lee 40
“hook” technique was to be employed in a two-fold fashion: the opening tale, the extravagantly named “I am Taboo: The Thing from the Murky Swamp!” was clearly only half a story, with the deceptive alien invader destroyed by an atom bomb, but with a final exclamation-point-heavy box that read “...and so ended the threat of Taboo! Or so we thought! Yes... so we thought!” Readers of the day would have been happy to see this promised return of the mudbased creature. Despite its amorphous shape on the cover of the book as it menaces three fleeing men (only one in the story itself, however), the more humanoid creature in the splash panel is much more effective with its dramatic shape (ironically, Kirby was to come up with the yet another iteration for the character in the story itself—the artist was nothing if not prodigal with his character designs). But back to that continuity idea—the second tale in the issue is “The Return of the Totem”, another superbly drawn Steve Ditko piece that is a sequel to the one that appeared in the earlier issue. Certainly, readers of the day were hooked—including now, British readers. Those of us on this scepter’d isle had previously had to make do with black-and-white reprints of Marvel comics, but this issue of Strange Tales was customised for the British market—full-color (still considered a luxury over here), but bearing a ninepenny price and the legend on the indicia: “Created exclusively for Thorpe & Porter, Ltd, Oadby, Leicester, sole distributors in the United Kingdom.” We were more than happy to shell out for this issue, even though the two final stories are unexciting and workaday pieces by Paul Reitman and Don Heck respectively. The Don Heck story, however, is the one that has the famous title “I Made the Hulk Live”—nothing to do, though, with Lee and Kirby’s subsequent Jekyll and Hyde monster. Bruce Banner was yet to be born. H
characteristic). The design of this grotesque monster (in fact, an alien visitor, like many of the other stone gargoyles around the world it corrals to disastrous effect) is as striking as anything Kirby produced in this period. One wonders, however, how he was able to come up with so many very different creatures that had we youthful aficionados stumping up money for each new issue?
THE DOUBLE WHAMMY
But examine the splash panel, and you’ll see something else which is what makes the artist so special. Take a look at that crumbling masonry. It’s very easy to take such things for granted in Kirby’s work; apart from anything else, destroyed masonry is so plentiful in Kirby, but notice the way he turns the bricks that Gorgolla is smashing into almost abstract geometric shapes. As so often in his work, they become part of the total composition— as important as the destructive central figure and the scurrying, terrified humans. The whole tale itself is full of the design ideas which are a Kirby specialty. There is a small panel on page 2 in which a climber is seen against a backdrop of snowy mountains— simple, but designed with the kind of skill that is a Kirby hallmark. And while Atlas/ Marvel here is firmly in the era when we are already on the way to the “monster of the month” syndrome that became a cliché in the company’s universe, the Kirby/Ditko Double Whammy make this issue of Strange Tales very collectable.
KIRBY KONTINUITY
One of the canniest innovations that Stan Lee was to bring to the Marvel universe was a sense of continuity from book to book. To some degree, this was a simple commercial ploy: leave the reader with a hook that would ensure that they would be keen to pick up the next issue of a particular book. And this strategy was to be employed in the very next issue of Strange Tales (#75, June 1960) after the one discussed above. Not only that, the 41
Gallery 2
Before & After
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Big and small changes made to Kirby’s work, with commentary by John Morrow
(above) Color guide for 1954’s unpublished Fighting American #8, and its eventual use as the cover of the one-shot Harvey Comics released in 1966. Compare how Jack’s style evolved by the time of this 1970 illo for Kirby Unleashed (previous page). (this page) Back in TJKC #25, we first documented these Simon & Kirby swipes from Fighting American #5’s “Invisible Irving” story (1954), working from the Jack Burnley Starman story in 1942’s Adventure Comics #77 (which contained both a Sandman and a Manhunter story by Joe and Jack). Harry Mendryk examined these further at: https://kirbymuseum. org/blogs/simonandkirby/ archives/2975.
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Mark Evanier
JACK F.A.Q.s
A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby
That’s it.” And I learned a lot from Mike about meeting deadlines.
(right) No inker captures the fluidity of Jack’s work as faithfully as Mike Royer, as evidenced by this pencil sketch Jack bound into his personal volume of Golden Age Captain America comics in the 1960s. (next page, top) Announcement for the May 11-13, 2018 popup exhibit in New York, curated by the Jack Kirby Museum.
(below) Chase Craig, hard at work at Western Publishing in the 1960s.
MARK EVANIER: My name is Mark Evanier. You don’t need to be told that; this is the Jack Kirby panel. Who else would it be, right? And this is Mr. Mike Royer. [applause] This is Mr. Jim Amash. [applause] This is Mr. Rand Hoppe. [applause] Now, for those of you who don’t know who any of us are, Mike was Jack Kirby’s inker from about 1972—.
could make the payments.
ROYER: I got a mortgage from Bank of America on the strength of a letter from Chase Craig at Western Publishing. He said, “We set our clocks by Mike Royer. If we could only get more work out of him.” So they were convinced I
EVANIER: And that was important, because when Jack was doing the New Gods and those books from DC, there was some rooting interest against him in New York, not because they had anything against him personally, but they didn’t like the idea of someone working for the editor in California as opposed to the office in New York.
MIKE ROYER: —in print. But from late ’68. EVANIER: Well, you took over regular inking in... ROYER: We’re gonna start arguing, any minute. [laughter] EVANIER: ...he inked Jack’s stuff for a long time. He did an amazing job of it. There are people still thanking me for my role in salvaging Jack Kirby’s pencils from the person who would have inked them if Mike had not been available. And he did an amazing amount of work—it was not just the fact that he did it well. That would have been enough. In this business, doing it well is a great thing. But he was the most reliable person you could have asked for. Mike has missed in his life, zero deadlines on anything. Were you ever late with anything for anybody? ROYER: No. EVANIER: All right. And that’s not just bragging. I worked for a man named Chase Craig for years, who was the editor at Gold Key/ Western Publishing Company, who did the Dell and Gold Key Comics, the Disney comics, and the Warner Brothers comics, and I asked him one time, “If you had to bet your life on some freelancer turning in the work on time, who would you bet on?” He said, “Two people: Dan Spiegle and Mike Royer. 62
2019 Heroes Con Panel Held Saturday, June 15, 2019 at Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. Featuring (left to right) Mike Royer, moderator Mark Evanier, Jim Amash, and Rand Hoppe. Transcribed by Steven Tice, and copy-edited by Mark Evanier and John Morrow.
They didn’t like that Jack could pick his own inker, and they hadn’t picked the person. And they just had the idea that the company created the books. So when Mike took over, they were just waiting for him to fail. They were waiting to be able to say, “We’ve got to get rid of that Royer guy. He can’t meet a deadline and the work’s lousy.” And they were not able to say that, and Jack was very, very happy. And we were very happy to have Mike inking his work also. And Jim Amash is another inker person. He’s done a lot of comics for Archie and other places, and he’s a historian, and a friend of mine, and a friend of the Kirbys, and I just wanted him on the panel because I don’t get to see Jim enough because he doesn’t come to Comic-Con. This is my excuse to see my friend Jim. And this man, Rand Hoppe, he operates the Jack Kirby Research… what’s it called?
of spreading the word of Jack, that as long as I am able to breathe, I will be telling people about this wonderful man who was in my life for not enough years. I work with and have met a lot of incredible people, talented people. I’ve worked with Sid Caesar. I’ve worked with Bob Newhart. Jack Kirby is the most amazing, talented person I have ever met in my life. [applause] As I get older and older, the more I really come to appreciate the privilege it was to be around Jack, and just sit with him and talk about anything—and not just about comics.
RAND HOPPE: Museum and Research Center. EVANIER: The Museum and Research Center, which is doing Herculean work to catalog Jack’s work, to make copies of it. Have you scanned anything interesting here at the convention yet? HOPPE: We’ve scanned two pages. One was a Kamandi page, and I can’t remember the second one.
ROYER: People ask me what it was like inking Jack’s pages, and I can’t remember the nuts and bolts. I had to do three pages a day, letter a whole book in less than two days, and rule the borders, and have three pages of display lettering. What I remember is sitting in the kitchen with Jack and Roz, eating homemade chocolate cake, and drinking milk, and talking about Warner Brothers movies.
EVANIER: And so they are building a library of great scans of Jack’s work, and that’s a wonderful thing. We all feel charged with the idea
EVANIER: Jack liked Warner Brothers movies. Jack’s life was a Warner Brothers movie. ROYER: People have asked me, “What’s the basic difference between Joe Sinnott and Mike Royer?” And I loved Joe Sinnott, since the first work I ever saw when I was a kid was the free Buster Brown comic books. And, if you’re familiar with the dichotomy of the movie studio system in the Golden Age, Joe Sinnott inked Jack Kirby “MGM.” I inked Jack Kirby “Warner Brothers.” EVANIER: That’s a good analogy. One of the interesting things about Jack’s inkers, since we’re talking about inkers: When I first met Jack, which was in July of 1969, I naturally asked him who his favorite inker was. I assumed he would say Joe Sinnott or Frank Giacoia, who I thought were the two best guys who had inked him at that point. And Jack said, “Everybody’s good.” And we actually kind of had a small argument about this—I mean, I didn’t argue with Jack, but there was a difference of opinion. He thought every inker was fine. “Any professional inker can do the job.” Because the thing that interested Jack about the job was telling an exciting story, and he didn’t think even a bad inker, what I would consider a bad inker, could ruin the story. And he also came out of a tradition where, the other guy’s got to make a living. He was a Depression-era kid, and he was very conscious of everyone’s need to make a living. It was always fine, whoever it was. He only asked, ever, at Marvel, for them to replace one inker, and he asked very politely—not demanding this, just, “Could you maybe put him on somebody else,” and that was Dan Adkins, who inked a couple of Captain Americas. So when he took on Mike, initially, the reason he wanted Mike had a lot to do with geography. He wanted someone who worked for him, because Jack would write a book, draw a book, send it off to New York, and never see it again. He was ostensibly the editor, but somebody would letter it there, and it would go to Vince Colletta to ink, and then Colletta handed it in 63