Let's talk about Jack Kirby

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.
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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

next mongrel thread title: KANGA RAT MURDER SOCIETY

is there a TPB of Kamandi? I've never read the whole thing, only bits and pieces

Looks like the only collections are pricey Archive hardcovers with the first 20 issues. CBRs of the whole series took about 10 seconds to locate if you're down with that method.

I'm such a luddite I don't even know what a CBR is

scans, basically

eh I kinda hate reading books on a computer screen

but... it;s the future

I can't decide which Kamandi map legend to make my new screen name.

http://nerdcityonline.com/2010/01/22/jack-kirbys-visual-interpretations-of-god/

Amazing. A Kirby adaptation of the Old Testament would've been something.

this one is more than a little o_O
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4296011324_6331b65011_o.jpg

I've been rereading some Captain Americas from 1968 and really enjoying Syd Shores' inking. Tempted to put him in my top 5 Kirby inkers.

I used to own a Kirby/Shores Cap America page but sold it cos the inking was SO horrible - muddy, brushy, heavyhanded and not at all faithful to Kirby's pencils (compare to similar vintage Cap stories inked by the far superior Frank Giacoia or Joe Sinnott to see just how much style/detail/power that Shores obliterated). I even prefer Colletta over Kirby to Shores.

Shores' career goes back to the 1940s, and prior to the 1960s he was regarded as one of the top artists at Marvel. I don't think he ever really found a 'modern' inking style that suited Kirby's 60s artwork - again, compare this to Bill Everett, another 'lost' Atlas superstar who did some utterly gorgeous inking on Kirby (and Colan) in the 60s.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/business/21marvel.html?8dpc

the new TCJ site just posted the journal's 1990 interview with kirby:

http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/

lots of hilariously splenetic quotes about stan lee, unsurprisingly!

GROTH; When did you meet Stan Lee for the first time?

KIRBY: I met Stan Lee when I first went to work for Marvel. He was a little boy. When Joe and I were doing Captain America. He was about 13 years old. He’s about five years younger than me.

GROTH: Did you keep in touch with him at all?

KIRBY: No, I thought Stan Lee was a bother.

GROTH: [Laughter.]

KIRBY: I did!

GROTH: What do you mean by “bother”?

KIRBY: You know he was the kind of kid that liked to fool around — open and close doors on you. Yeah. In fact, once I told Joe to throw him out of the room.

GROTH; Because he was a pest?

KIRBY: Yes, he was a pest. Stan Lee was a pest. He liked to irk people and it was one thing I couldn’t take.

lol

GROTH: You were drafted?

KIRBY: I was drafted.

GROTH: What year would that have been?

ROZ KIRBY: We were married in ’42.

KIRBY: Yeah, I was drafted in ’42.

ROZ KIRBY: I was married to you…

KIRBY: Yeah, I know you were married to me!

I have that issue - was just re-reading it last week

its real interesting but boy he comes off like a crank! do people take the stuff he was saying at face value? i mean this has to be bullshit right:

GROTH: Can I ask what your involvement in Spider-Man was?
KIRBY: I created Spider-Man. We decided to give it to Steve Ditko. I drew the first Spider-Man cover. I created the character. I created the costume. I created all those books, but I couldn’t do them all. We decided to give the book to Steve Ditko who was the right man for the job. He did a wonderful job on that.

:/

that is not bullshit and other people have confirmed it

he did draw the first cover, had previously done The Spider, and was an old man who got somewhat confused. Roz was there basically to be extra memory and nudge him back onto the rails.

that he designed the character/costume/drew the first cover is not disputed

isn't there more material out there confirming ditko designed the costume?

like kirby designed *A* spider-man costume, but not THE spider-man costume

there's at least like five different accounts - Lee, Kirby, Ditko, Simon, Evanier, etc. - they all agree that he created the costume and drew the image that appears on the cover of Spider-man's first comic appearance

not according to ditko, dude.

Steve Ditko: "Kirby had penciled five pages of his Spider-Man. How much pure Kirby, how much Lee is for them to resolve. The splash was the only one with a drawing of Spider-Man. A typical Kirby hero/action shot. But the costume is what is important. I'm uncertain about the abstract chest design. The closest thing to it is the one on Ant-man."

Steve Ditko: "Kirby's Spider-Man had a web gun, never seen in use. The only connection to the spider theme was the name. The other four pages showed a teenager living with his aunt and uncle. The aunt was a kindly old woman, the uncle was a retired police captain, hard, gruff, the General Thunderbolt Ross type (from Hulk), and he was down on the teenager. Next door or somewhere in the neighborhood there was a whiskered scientist-type involved in some kind of experiment or project. The end of the five pages depicted the kid going toward the scientists darkened house."

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_AZaPyN-5kD4/TAz3D1FXQSI/AAAAAAAABaU/Lzh4l7ZI3ks/s1600/2010-06-07_094113.png

http://www.povonline.com/jackfaq/JackFaq4.htm

Did Jack design Spider-Man's costume?

No. Steve Ditko designed the distinctive costume we all know and love. Jack did claim to have presented the idea to Stan Lee of doing a hero named Spiderman (no hyphen) who walked on walls and had other spider-themed powers — a claim which Stan vociferously denies.

But for all the things Jack did well, he was not great at being interviewed. He occasionally got carried away or confused. There was one interview where, without realizing what he was saying, he said he'd created Superman. Needless to say, he never really believed that but somehow, that's what came out of his mouth.

This kind of thing most often occurred when the topic veered near an instance where Jack felt he'd been undercredited and undercompensated, and Spider-Man was such a case. In at least one such conversation, he misspoke and claimed he'd designed the costume for the final version of Spider-Man. I'm guessing the gaffe had something to do with the fact that he did pencil the cover of Amazing Fantasy #15 with the first appearance of that costume. There were a number of cases where Jack designed a character on a cover, and then Don Heck or Dick Ayers or someone else drew the interior story, following his design. In this case, however, the cover was drawn after Stan had rejected one drawn wholly by Ditko

Jack knew that. And he also knew what it was like to have someone else claim credit for your ideas. So he very much regretted the error.

hmm well I'll defer to Evanier and claim I'm only half-right then (ie, drawing the cover, doing a rough draft, etc)

Spider-man does bear an uncanny resemblance to the Fly blah blah blah

Happy 94th Birthday Mr Kirby

http://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/08/thor-158-page18-kirby-original-art.jpg

Lot's more great original Kirby pages here (nice to see Jack's pencil notes at the top of the Odin pic):

http://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/08/thor-158-page18-kirby-original-art.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/GnMPF.jpg

Happy Birthday to the King!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6hX21EYFyY

Love that pointy-hatted dude behind Odin. He looks MEAN.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A1yJZKDwIRE

^^^interview w Jack Kirby on his 70th bday. amazingly, Stan Lee calls in at the end and they argue about who did what

also lol at Lee big upping Watchmen and Dark Knight (and uh John Byrne)

really y'all should listen to this, it's very illuminating and kind of heartbreaking

I can not relate how wonderful this is, and I'm only about a third through.

pretty amazing interview

I own a Kirby (and Royer) "Kamandi" page. I could seriously part with everything I own in a heartbeat but never my Kirby page.