Let's talk about Jack Kirby

http://www.lordoflight.com/art.html

I shook his hand once. I felt hugely honoured to meet him.

(My other favourite writers: Morrison, Gerber, Barks, Kurtzman, probably Gilbert ahead of Jaime, Moore.)

I think you're too hard on his draftsmanship. He didn't strive for realism. He was much more expressionistic. Kind of like some painters. Max Beckman comes to mind. At his best, he was probably the most powerful comic artist I've ever seen.

Also, I don't disagree with the mythmaking line, but I think that sometimes masked the substantial thematic content - this is especially obvious in the Fourth World, since he didn't have a Stan Lee there trying to change and dilute his meanings, as it is said Stan did on the FF and other Marvel titles.

but then look at the recently published Essential FF Vol 4, esp the earlier issues where Kirby was still drawing at the larger 'twice up' size. this was marvel's flagship title, and kirby gives it his all - character, action, romance, da woiks - PLUS he gets a shiny-slick finish from joe sinnott, poss. his best ever inker. there's nothing crude or inelegant abt kirby when he's at the top of his game.

I used to sorta like Vince Colletta's work until I found out what he did to Kirby's pencils.

no love for these fantastic Fourth World Omnibus editions?!?

for shame

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180175859789

See here.

I've been on a tremendous Kirbykick, as various recent scattered posts may attest to (and, of course, the title of the most recent SHIP thread I conjured up).

It's fun to finally get ahold of these oft-mythologized works and realize that the hype is in no way forced.

ALSO: I desperately need a Showcase: Kamandi. NOW.

It's fun to finally get ahold of these oft-mythologized works and realize that the hype is in no way forced.

My reaction exactly. I was expecting the first volume to lead in slowly with more "normal" stuff but right off the bat it's Newsboy Legion! Whiz Wagon! Wild Area! Crazy high-tech biker civilization! MOUNTAIN OF JUDGMENT! All in the first damn issue. Needless to say I am enjoying this tremendously.

Those two Archive Kamandi editions are worth springing for, the reproduction on them is REALLY beautiful

yeah I'd never really sat down and read the Jimmy Olsen stuff before - just ridiculously great.

MONSTERS!

WOW! I had loads of this stuff reprinted in FEAR and MONSTERS ON THE PROWL when I was five, and it's all still indelibly burned on my brain - great to see it again, and more of the same!

I've been curious about Kamandi. One of the first comics I ever had when I was about five or six years old was an issue of Kamandi and it kind of weirded me out at the time.

LCS had a giant sale this weekend, and I got the first two Kirby Omnibi. I HAVE HEARD THE WORD--IT IS BATTLE!

2nd one will have to wait for me, I recently blew most of my comics money on the Thor reprints.

HELLO? GET ME THE SECRET INTERGANG MISSILE SITE!

I hated Kirby's work when I was little. At the time I thought it was flat-out bad, but in retrospect I was just freaked-out and overwhelmed by the energy.

I'm sure we've discussed this before, maybe in this very thread, but can you explain this "energy" to me? On a basic aesthetic level, I have a hard time seeing past the blocky shapes of his figures.

Ooo, a Jack Kirby thread. I don't get Jack Kirby. Acromegaly and Wagnerian shtick; what's the attraction? Maybe I'd appreciate it more if I wore a trenchcoat.

http://www.wowio.com/users/product.asp?BookId=4051

Read "The Strange World of Your Dreams" free online!

Just in case people don't know about them, DC is printing a Demon Omnibus in November and a Losers Omnibus sometime in early 2009.

I finished up reading the first Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 1 and for the past week or so I have been going through Essential Captain America Vol. 1. It takes a while for Jack and Stan to decide what they want to do with Cap, but once Nick Fury and the Red Skull show up in current Marvel time with the cosmic cube, it is some good 60s Marvel comics.

It makes me wish Marvel would do an Essential Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD. I've read the Steranko issues but would love to read that one from the start.

Cosmic Cube! Man I totally forgot about that. I think I could spend the rest of my life poring over Kirby's prime 60s-70s stuff. Made it through Thor and New Gods stuff last year... where is Kamandi reprint!

QUOTES FROM THE LETTER PAGES OF OMAC (I.E. Mocking people who may very well be dead):

The art's good. I don't think you'll ever be another Neal Adams but I like your style.
- Richard Petkiewicz (from OMAC #3)

...OMAC is the worst you have ever made. Why don't you bring back BOY'S RANCH? But put them in space.
- Cham Holmes (from OMAC #4)

I was just reading Kirby's mid-70s Black Panther run last night, and it's some pretty tired Mister Miracle recycling. He even brought in a dwarf for the Oberon role.

Yes and no. If you read it as Kirby as T'Challa, outwitting his corporate superiors at every turn, you might wring a little more enjoyment from it. But it's no JIMMY OLSEN. His Cap run from the same period is pretty wonderful, though it does tail off after "Madbomb."

ahh no, best 70s kirby/cap story has just gotta be 'the swine', which comes some time after 'madbomb' - close second = 'cap's bicentennial battles' (treasury edition, obv)

i recently read the demon by kirby for the first time ever, not one of his 'major' works maybe but super enjoyable - its kinda like kirby's version of a universal horror movie, complete with grotesques, crones and mitteleuropean policeman and villages - great inking from mike royer, too

But Kirby never outwitted anyone ever in his working life -- Evanier's book is pretty depressing in detailing that. Everybody he worked for used him like a rented mule.
xpost

Ooo, a Jack Kirby thread. I don't get Jack Kirby. Acromegaly and Wagnerian shtick; what's the attraction? Maybe I'd appreciate it more if I wore a trenchcoat.

― Rich Smörgasbord, Sunday, December 9, 2007 3:41 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

decent troll attempt, C- at best since nobody bit

anyway how bout some kamandi yall

http://doubledamagemedia.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/kamandi2.jpg

fuckin love kamandi & that map is the shit

http://monsterblog.oneroom.org/stories/taxcollector1.jpg

xp Just taking it one day at a time here in the Expanding Tiger Empire

in a white room with jack kirby, peter parker...

Wmc, of course evanier's bk is largely correct, but the situation re: kirby & business is slightly more complicated than just Kirby's Konstant Exploitation. Remember that Kirby - in partnership with Joe Simon - was himself an owner/publisher, running an extremely successful and lucrative 'shop' throughout the 1940s and 50s (until, of course, the whole industry collapsed circa 1955). Even Kirby's dispute w/ DC/National in the late 1950s involves seem pretty murky (and dull) questions about ownership, contractual agreements, copyright etc. For large parts of his career, Kirby was almost certainly the highest paid comic book artist working in America - tho' of course he received only a tiny, tiny fraction of the income that his ideas generated for other, more ruthless or self-aggrandizing business types.

thanking you Kamandi map

I'm sure I've said this elsewhere, but I'm pretty sure the pinnacle of Kirby for me is the middle of his run on Thor

EGO! so awesome

iirc the end of his Thor run has yet to be reprinted as a Marvel Masterworks volume, no...?

ooh I see Volumes 7 and 8 are out now shut my mouth

Born 100 years ago today.

facing front, pilgrim

Hail To The King!

Don't Ask! Just Buy It!

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F24.media.tumblr.com%2Ftumblr_m493v3Zzrs1r846jso1_1280.jpg&f=1

"Jacob and the Angel"

The composition is amazing in that drawing

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_large/6/62047/1293342-fighting_american_v2__1___page_1.jpg

Anybody got the "don't dangle your gonads in my ear" panel?

holy shit at jacob and the angel, that is gorgeous

jfc I have a half dozen OG issues and would like the rest but this is insane

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0785122052/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=1527201431&sr=1-4

is it real or is it algorithmic

also presumably you get lurid colour reconstruction and bad repro or tracing in that version

Eh i like the 4th World omnibuses just fine

hopefully we get a reprint

btw this has been pretty great, not sure if anyone mentioned it yet
https://www.instagram.com/kirbycomic/?hl=en

Ah! Heard about that but also forgot about it. I love scioli

i like the 4th World omnibuses just fine

those are DC, Eternals is Marvel

Duh

Are u telling me marvel is worse w this stuff? I like the Thor and FF masterworks volumes i have too. Yes the colors are brighter/more garish than the individual issues i have, but those issues also dont look that great themselves (color separations are often super-sloppy) and of course are also falling apart.

Speculators who fix the prices of comics reprint collections at about the range of a large kitchen appliance should probably be, I dunno, arrested or deported or something. Branded, on the face, maybe? Nagh, that might be too much.

Trades of that Eternals material were available at reasonable prices when I acquired them a few years back. And it'll almost certainly be reprinted again prior to the release of the movie.

I have that Eternals hardcover, gotta say that the repro and colour on it are just fine as far as these things go. By the 1970s, Marvel had started to keep decent film of the original art, so there's less 'reconstruction' going on. TBH, the last few issues of Kirby's Eternals are fairly dispiriting - we get the 'Cosmic Powered Hulk', and the feeling that Kirby has somewhat lost interest or focus in the material. The first paperback collection of issues 1-8 is probably all really you need.

Are u telling me marvel is worse w this stuff

well yeah, prima facie. no idea about this hardcover in particular, but iirc DC gave up Theakstonising after three or four Archives.

We saw this at the Marvel exhibit at the Seattle Pop Culture Museum:

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1936/43064874440_c3cdde2088.jpg

LOL, that's awesome

https://www.inverse.com/article/53550-black-panther-2019-oscars-means-wakanda-won-not-the-movie

The first victory on Sunday night belonged to Carter, who won Best Costume Design. “Marvel may have created the first black superhero,” she said in her speech, “but through costume design, we turned him into an African king.”

The article you linked to seems to acknowledge Kirby (and Lee) pretty extensively, though(?)

Sure, my beef is moreso with the costume/design team which i have never heard acknowledge kirby's input at all? I'm aware there was a concerted effort to truly Africanize the look and feel and I get that but Kirby is at the root and that's not something to be ashamed of.

fkn love this

https://scontent-amt2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/64333845_2328049190574930_38307706666221568_o.jpg?_nc_cat=106&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_ht=scontent-amt2-1.xx&oh=f4386a5346bb46cc544b7485f0d6bd02&oe=5D8FC941

https://i.imgur.com/pQ24sZG.png

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/34/9a/6f/349a6f2e2346fd4f1485160a26ae6c91.jpg

that Lainie Kazan!

Wish I could find the precise + persuasive illustration used in the comparison I saw the other day but (and perhaps I'm just the last person to be hipped to the notion) it seems not unlikely that Ben Grimm is modeled after Jack's father, Ben.

https://kirbymuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/19201.jpg

Anyone read that Stuf' Said! book yet? With the chronological interview snippets from Lee & Kirby discussing who created what at Marvel (and which apparently and unsurprisingly favors Kirby)? Curious if anything new or interesting was revealed.

Jack Kirby left Marvel 50 years ago. pic.twitter.com/axYHfshGmO

— Sean Howe (@louchelarue) March 6, 2020

my first reaction - "in 1950? is that right?"

my second reaction - "oh god how did it become 2020 already"

I had this comic as a kid; wish I still did. I remember it was pretty weird.

https://pm1.narvii.com/6672/447dd72c6ad54ef179bc8e6f8033308af0408bc0_00.jpg