Let's talk about Jack Kirby

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

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

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