The JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #63 All characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. $10.95 SUMMER 2014 THE ISSUE #63, SUMMER 2014 C o l l e c t o r Contents The Marvel Universe! OPENING SHOT . .2 (let’s put the Stan/Jack issue to rest in #66, shall we?) A UNIVERSE A’BORNING . .3 (the late Mark Alexander gives us an aerial view of Kirby’s Marvel Universe) GALLERY . .37 (mega Marvel Universe pencils) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM PAGE . .48 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) JACK F.A.Q.s . .49 (in lieu of Mark Evanier’s regular column, here’s his 2008 Big Apple Kirby Panel, with Roy Thomas, Joe Sinnott, and Stan Goldberg) KIRBY OBSCURA . .64 (the horror! the horror! of S&K) KIRBY KINETICS . .67 (Norris Burroughs on Thing Kong) IF WHAT? . .70 (Shane Foley ponders how Jack’s bad guys could’ve been badder) RETROSPECTIVE . .74 (a look at key moments in Kirby’s later life and career) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . .82 (we go “under the sea” with Triton) CUT ’N’ PASTE . .84 (the lost FF #110 collage) KIRBY AS A GENRE . .86 (the return of the return of Captain Victory) UNEARTHED . .89 (the last survivor of Kirby’s Marvel Universe?) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . .91 PARTING SHOT . .96 Cover inks: MIKE ROYER Cover color: TOM ZIUKO If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication, PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended Spider-Man is the one major Marvel character we don’t cover this issue, but here’s a great sketch of Spidey that Jack drew for for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from granddaughter Tracy Kirby in 1975—one of the few good illos of the character Jack ever produced. another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 21, No. 63, Summer 2014. 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All editorial matter is © the respective Lex Luthor, Lightray, New Gods, Orion, Superman, Sandman TM & © DC Comics • Mr. Machine TM Ideal Toys • Black Hole TM authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CHINA. ISSN 1932-6912 & © Walt Disney Productions • Captain Victory, Jacob and the Angel, Beast Rider, Captain Glory, Satan's Six TM & ©Jack Kirby Estate • Thundarr TM & © Ruby-Spears Productions • Destroyer Duck, Roxie's Raiders TM & © Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby Prologue: Conflagration “I was a Scout in the infantry. If somebody wants to kill you, they make you a Scout. Once while I was on patrol, I entered a street and somebody from a window started calling me all kinds of names in German, and he was laughing. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ he said, ‘I’m going to shoot you right in the face.’” Jack Kirby interviewed by Ray Wyman Jr., The Jack Kirby Collector #27 Conflagration: a huge, destructive fire [Webster’s New World Dictionary] fter the war he was afraid of nothing. He trekked halfway around the world and stood face to face with evil men who wanted to slaughter him—just for his ethos—and he lived to tell about it. What could he possibly fear after that? A Jack Schiff? A Martin Goodman? A Jim Shooter? They were nothing—less than nothing. War had been hell—hellfire and conflagration. But Kirby, the advance Scout, had plunged directly into the inferno without a fire mask. The heat was paralyzing—but he never once flinched. How could he ever fear anything again? Bigness Right from the start, Jack Kirby was the comic industry’s seminal action- artist. His intuitive understanding of the action hero as iconography—as opposed to photorealism—brought an unprecedented force and dynamism to his figures. He knew from the beginning the world depicted in comics was infi- nitely larger than life: as such, lifelike illustration couldn’t begin to do it justice. Kirby reduced the human body to its basic components: he deconstructed the human form, then reassembled it in completely new aesthetic proportions. As his sinewy supermen exploded across the page, their bodies defied all known laws of physics. Their powerful arms, legs, and torsos carved endless arabesques in space—they jackknifed, corkscrewed, twisted, turned, and danced magnificently, in impossible contortions. (above) Kirby during WWII. On his sleeve is Exactly, it was “bigness.” That’s it and that’s all. No other word applies. the 1942 Anti-Aircraft Immediately, every superhero artist in the industry was copying his style—trying to capture his “bigness”—but Artillery patch. compared to Kirby, everyone else seemed pygmy. (below) Joe Simon in the 1940s. ©Joe Simon (next page, top right) Enter: Stanley Lieber Stan Lee in the Jack Kirby had fallen from great heights. Timely offices in the In the 1940s, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were comics’ most successful duo. The team sold comics of all genres, to a mid-1950s. myriad of publishers. Their creations included Blue Bolt, Marvel Boy, Newsboy Legion, Boy Commandos, Sandman, (next page, bottom right) Splash from Manhunter, Stuntman, and the Boy Explorers. They did Westerns, crime books, and they invented the romance comic. Yellow Claw #2 (Dec. While working for Martin Goodman in 1940, Simon and Kirby spawned their most enduring character: Captain 1956), one of Kirby’s America, paragon of justice, juvenilia, and jingoism. To meet the demands of Captain America’s monthly schedule, first Atlas jobs. Simon and Kirby needed a gofer—a flunky—so Goodman hired his wife’s teenage cousin, Stanley Lieber. (throughout) All pencil After the 1940s, comics suffered a near-death experience. Plagued by the Wertham crusade, a new entertainment pin-ups are from the alternative called television, and a general lull in overall creativity, comic books were definitely in trouble. When the Valentine’s Day sketchbook Jack industry crashed in the mid-’50s, Jack and Joe—whose Mainline Publications had folded—went their separate ways. drew for his wife Roz Darkening clouds of uncertainty began to gather as Kirby’s professional situation and finances began to dwindle. He got in the late 1970s. a trickle of work from Harvey and Atlas, but nothing substantial. In 1956, Kirby headed for the greener pastures of National, and began drawing Challengers of the Unknown under managing editor Jack Schiff. Meanwhile, trying to get out of comics before he went down with them, Kirby co-produced a newspaper strip called Sky Masters (along with Dave and Dick Wood, Jack Schiff, and Wally Wood). A dispute over payments led Schiff to sue Kirby. After that, the artist felt unwelcome at National and pulled up stakes. Kirby drew The Double Life of Private Strong for Archie Comics, until National’s lawyers decided The Shield’s resemblance to Superman was close enough to prompt litigation. Result: cancellation—such was DC’s power in those days. Kirby also drew a couple of issues of The Fly, but managing editor Richard Goldwater was put off by the bigness. He thought the artwork was “too creepy.” He wanted a slicker, more polished look: “Like the DC artists,” he said. As it happened, both Simon and Kirby had an axe to grind with Martin Goodman. They were piqued at not owning Captain America (Marvel had made a second attempt at matching its 1940s success in the mid-’50s), and Kirby despised 4 the company’s nepotism. But now, at age forty-one, Kirby’s prospects were bleak indeed. He was no longer king of the mountain. A landslide of misfortune had wrenched him down to where he could no longer even see the mountain’s peak. Compared to the new rising comic artists like Carmine Infantino (and DC’s slick, homogeneous “house” artists), Kirby’s big-action art suddenly seemed outmoded. Smallness was in now, as exemplified by Dick Sprang’s tiny-figured, miniaturist- approach to Batman in World’s Finest. No one at National seemed to mind Kirby leaving, and to make matters worse, Harvey Comics was canceling its action/adventure titles for more lucrative kiddie fare like Little Dot and Casper The Friendly Ghost.