Let's talk about Jack Kirby

That shot is so good that if it didn't exist, we'd have to make it up.

facebook'd btw

aw!

Has anyone ever did a rough estimate of exactly how many comics Kirby did? Just with what he did at Marvel in the 60s FF-on has to be a couple of long boxes in itself.

The first thing that popped into my head was "probably roughly 100 pages of pencils a month." From 1940 to 1976 or whenever he moved to animation, that would be 43,000+ pages JEEEEEZ.

I doubt he kept up that pace the whole time, but still...

kirby's most productive years as a penciller were, roughly, 1960-1978, when, for some of the time, he might've been pencilling close to 100 pages a month, if you include covers, promotional pieces, basic layouts for other artists etc. but that still strikes me as a slightly high estimate (kirby really only had two 'regular' comic books at marvel for most of the 60s, FF and Thor, tho' of course he started off most of their big titles before others took over.0 during the 40s kirby's career was interrupted by the war, and up to the mid-1950s he was running the simon-kirby shop with joe simon, so for a lot of that time he was working in a more piecemeal fashion - supplying roughs/layouts to be finished in the house style, collaborating with other pencillers, writing scripts etc etc - tho' the 'pure' kirby pages still tend to stand out, esp. when inked by simon himself. by the mid-1950s, and the downturn in the comic bk industry, kirby was actually struggling to keep himself busy - he was drawing less than a comic a month for DC, and so tried his hand at A newspaper strip, with fairly unhappy results. as we know that kirby could, if pushed, pencil an entire comic book in a weekend (as he did with the first issue of Pvt Strong) he was actually UNDER-productive for much of his career!

oh, and great photo - never seen it before

Found this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kirby_bibliography

Adding just the Marvel stuff in my head counting layout issues, I got like 515 issues there.

That is a whole lot of drawing.

There are probably not too many if any artists in the whole Marvel history that more issues than Jack Kirby. 500+ issues is like doing one a month for 40 odd years.

I'd think John Buscema would maybe be the closest, as he usually had 2 titles going most of the time for years.

Sal Buscema would have worked on a ton too, although probably not as many pencils issues, as he did much more inking in the early days.

i dunno, sal was a pretty regular penciller for marvel for 30 years plus (68-98), that's a lot of pages, maybe even more than kirby

jrjr must've drawn a lot of pages for marvel, by now

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

Love how the Silver Age guys produced all their crazy trippy shit while constantly wearing sharp pinstripes.

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2012/04/09/growing-up-kirby-the-marvel-memories-of-jack-kirbys-son/#/0

Best dad ever, sounds like.

Really nice article here about Kirby Kollages, including lots of examples shot from the original art:

http://imprint.printmag.com/illustration/jack-kirby%E2%80%99s-collages-in-context/

That's a nice article. Love that Metron piece.

Whoa! Those are amazing.

never seen (or even heard of) those Spirit World ones. Days of the Mob I've seen referenced at least.

Kirby Couture:

http://www.fashionising.com/runway/b--romance-was-born-aw-12-23407.html

Yikes

the one with the "cosmic energy" pants is, um, special.

if you look at expression on model's face, there's a subtle shift from aloof stoicsm to despairing claustrophobia between outfits.

anybody got any opinions on Kirby's 70s Captain America run...? I am considering getting the big omnibus for father's day

I love a couple of the stories ("Madbomb" and "The Swine"), but there's about a years worth of filler in there as well. But you do get the first stories with Arnim Zola, maybe the last amazing WTF character Kirby created. And of course the artwork is top notch.

It's prime stuff IMO. Besides the storylines EZ just mentioned there is the absolutely unforgettable energy being from the future that possesses a hollow-eyed corpse.

I'm kinda torn between getting this or asking for the two Carl Barks'/Scrooge Fantagraphics books

There's only a Donald volume so far, first Scrooge comes out soonish but not sure if they'll make it to a second this year

hope that collection includes the all-original, all-fantastic 'Bicentennial Battles' Treasury, complete w/ Barry Windsor-Smith inks and this scene where Benjamin Franklin designs the American flag based on Captain America's costume:

http://www.littlestuffedbull.com/images/comics/capflag2.jpg

lol @ "There, MY MAN!"

ok I am totally getting this

Those Kirby CAPs are a treasure. How I wish *that* Captain America had showed up in THE AVENGERS.

from mark evanier's blog (and collection), an envelope sent by stan lee to jack kirby in 1968:

http://www.newsfromme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/stanleeenvelope.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjcuxSl991s

I don't know what to say.

can you tell me if that's worth actually watching? I got to the first punchline and... i dunno.

It's horrible. I sorta watched it out of the corner of my eye while doing some audio editing and still it wasted my time.

reading an old Theakston interview - he alleges that all those changes to the Marvel Universe around the time of Secret Wars (new black spidey costume, rearrangement of FF, other new costumes etc) were all part of an effort to change the characters enough so that Jack would not be able to launch a successful copyright ownership claim in the event that he secured the rights to his original pages in his court. never heard of this before and maybe it's a bit conspiracy theory-ish but otoh...

seems perfectly reasonable to me

It has the ring of truth. Isn't that also about when Captain America became The Captain, and donned that black, red & white outfit? And Thor went all beardo in chainmail? Interesting to think of those changes through that prism.

Related: I was out of comics for most of the 90s. Was Electric Blue Superman in response to S&S legal wins?

I remember hearing about that theory of Kirby's back in the day -- it definitely passed the smell test for me.

Related: I was out of comics for most of the 90s. Was Electric Blue Superman in response to S&S legal wins?

would have had to be pre-emptive - Joanne's termination wasn't served until 1999.

The complete absence of the name "Superboy" from all ten years of the Smallville TV show ar definitely down to legal shenanigans, though - Siegel has always had a stronger, and frequently court-supported, claim to have created and owned the IP of Superboy separately.

wtf was this

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cup1T2Y03ls/ULaWHH0tH9I/AAAAAAAAuLA/fgxJq3zUUq8/s1600/6038.jpg

im the guy in the flying chair

Kirby's New Gods : Return of the New Gods :: 2001 : Kirby's 2001

i've seen issues of that in the dollar bin here and there, flipping through it did not convince me it was worth the dollar

Kirby's 2001

His adaptation or the original series he did afterwards? 'Cause that original series is awesome.

I just mean in terms of faithfulness to the source material. The 2001 series is fun, and the adaptation is one of my single favorite comics of all time.

first issue special was one of DC's 'showcase' title (ie a different character(s) in every issue) - this was prob the first time that DC had revived the Fourth World characters post-Kirby, and may have even been launched as a slight spoiler for Kirby's return to Marvel (i'm not quite sure of the dates, here) - of course, they have been revived, killed, revised etc ever since

the cover is pencilled and inked by dick giordano, btw

Weird how Darkseid gets a namecheck on that cover but Lightray doesn't, even though he's pictured on it. Also, Barda's going to catch a cold travelling through space dressed like that.

thx for info Ward, was mystified by this cover