THE BREAK OUT DDT AND RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! IT’S THE AND BUGS ISSUE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #77•SUMMER 2019•$10.95 with ERIC POWELL•MICHAEL CHO•MARK EVANIER•SEAN KLEEFELD•BARRY FORSHAW•ADAM McGOVERN•NORRIS BURROUGHS•SHANE FOLEY•JERRY BOYD 4 5 6 3 0 0 8 5 6 2 8 1 STARRING JACK KIRBY•DIRECTED BY JOHN MORROW•FEATURING RARE KIRBY ARTWORK•A TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING RELEASE Monster, Forager TM & © DC ComicsNew • Goom Gods TM TM & ©& Marvel © DC Characters,Comics. Inc. • Lightning Lady TM & © Jack Kirby Estate Contents THE Monsters & Bugs! OPENING SHOT ................2 ( something’s bugging the editor) FOUNDATIONS ................4 (S&K show the monsters inside us) ISSUE #77, SUMMER 2019 RETROSPECTIVE ..............12 Collector (from Vandoom to Von Doom) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY .....23 (you recall Giganto, don’t you?) KIRBY KINETICS ..............25 (the FF’s strange evolution) INFLUENCEES ................30 (cover inker Eric Powell speaks) GALLERY 1 ..................34 (monsters, in pencil) HORRORFLIK ................42 (Jack’s ill-fated Empire Pictures deal) KIRBY OBSCURA .............46 (vintage 1950s monster stories) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM .........48 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) POW!ER ....................49 (two monster Kirby techniques) UNEXPLAINED ...............51 (three major myths of Kirby’s) BOYDISMS ...................54 (monsters, all the way back to the ’40s) KIRBY AS A GENRE ...........64 (Michael Cho on his Kirby influences) ANTI-MAN ..................68 (we go foraging for bugs) GALLERY 2 ..................72 (the bugs attack!) UNDISCOVERED ..............78 (a blue bug in Sweden) JACK F.A.Q.s ................79 ( Mark Evanier moderates a panel on Kirby’s monster influence) COLLECTOR COMMENTS .......94 PARTING SHOT ...............96 Co ver inks & color: ERIC POWELL COPYRIGHTS: All-Widow, Dragorin, Darkseid, Demon, Dingbats of Danger Street, Farley Fairfax, Forever People, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Kliklak, Lightray, Lupek, Man Who Collected Planets, Mantis, Mister Miracle, My Greatest Adventure, New Gods, Newsboy Legion, Orion, Prime One, The Bug/Forager, The Howler, The Negative Man TM & © DC Comics • Ant-Man, Avengers, Black Talon, Blip, Bucky, Captain America, Challengers of the Unknown, Colossus, Creature from Krogarr, Destroyer, Devil Dinosaur, Diablo, Dr. Doom, Dragoom, Fantastic Four, Fin Fang Foom, Gargantus, Giant-Man, Giganto, Goliath, Gomdulla, Goom, Gor-Kill, Grogg, Groot, Hulk, Human Torch, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, It, Klagg, Krang, Loki, Man in the Bee-Hive, Metallo, Modok, Mongu, Monster at My Window, Monster in the Iron Mask, Monsters on Mercury, Monsters on the Prowl, Monstrollo, Moonboy, Mr. Fantastic, Mr. Morgan’s Monster, Mummex, Ninth Wonder of the World, Orogo, Rick Jones, Scarecrow, Shagg, Sporr, Spragg, Sub- Mariner, Swarm Queen, Taboo, The Weed, Thing, Thing From the Hidden Swamp, Thor, Triton, Trull, Vandoom, Where Monsters Dwell, X The Thing That Lived, Xemnu TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy, Phantom of the Opera, Six Million Dollar Man, Wolf Man, TM & © Universal • Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Island of Lost Souls TM & © Paramount • Avenger, Justice Inc. TM & © Street & Smith or successors in interest • Black Magic, Fighting American, “A Husband for Tracy!” © Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estates • Chimichanga , Lulu the Bearded Girl, The From Demon #13 comes this incredible pencil page, showing that even as Kirby was relying on old monster films for inspiration, the Goon TM & © Eric Powell • The Fly TM & © Joe Simon series was anything but a copycat. Thanks to Eric Powell for his stunning inking and coloring on our cover! Estate • Green Hornet TM & © Green Hornet, Inc. • Tales from the Danksyde TM & © Rick Becker & Vince Dugar • Close Encounters of the Third Kind TM &© Columbia The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 26, No. 77, Summer 2019. Published quarterly by and © TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Pictures • Damon Hunter/The Raven TM & © Ruby- 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $12 postpaid US ($18 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $48 Economy US, $70 International, $20 Spears • Thunderfoot, “Street Code”, Unknown Insect Digital. Editorial package © TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All Kirby artwork Man, Captain Victory, Egghead, Dr. Mortalis, Mindmaster, Lightning Lady, Insectons, Moon-Bear, Secret City Saga is © Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. Views expressed here are those of the respective authors, and not TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • Blue Bolt, Gorgo, Heaven’s necessarily those of TwoMorrows Publishing or the Jack Kirby Estate. First printing. PRINTED IN CHINA. ISSN 1932-6912 Gate, Legend of Bigfoot TM & © the respective owners 1 here were giants corporation names: Zenith, Vista, Retrospective in those days, back and Atlas, and had no umbrella com- T around 1961—real pany logo. And Marvel wasn’t the giants, and their only comic outfit cashing in on the names were Thorr, Oog, B-movie- Grottu, Gorgolla, Shagg, Fin Fang Foom, Lee, Kirby, and Ditko. inspired nuclear monster fad. Even Batman and Tomahawk They roamed were tan- the four-colored forests of Tales of gling with Suspense, Journey into Mystery, Strange aliens and other-dimensional Tales, and Tales to Astonish with impunity, towering creatures in their own magazines. Well, maybe Dell over their peers, hurling their bombastic challenges to and Gold Key ignored the trend; and over at the Amer- (above) The cover for Tales to Astonish a frightened, insignificant humanity until, one by one, ican Comics Group, where Richard Hughes suffered in #34’s “Monster At they died out; those atomic dinosaurs, supplanted by the same writer/editor position enjoyed by Stan Lee at My Window”, and the the new masters of the comic book jungle, the Marvel Marvel, the focus was on the supernatural with a sprin- [spoiler alert] twist super-heroes. kling of aliens and dinosaurs. No monsters allowed. ending to the tale, are a prime example It was an older, more simple time before the Mar- In truth, it wasn’t until 1959 that the true Marvel of the best of Kirby’s vel Universe had taken over the global consciousness–– Monsters began materializing. Marvel at the time was Atlas monster stories. yes, even before the fabled Marvel Age of Comics. This on shaky ground, its super-heroes long gone, and was was a formative era unto itself, long after the Golden sustained by the likes of Kid Colt, Outlaw; Millie the (next page, bottom) Age of Comics, which might be called the Marvel Age of Model; and a number of colorless supernatural titles It’s Von Doom... er... Monsters. Of its glory I will sing. written by Stan Lee and others and drawn by a train Vandoom himself! Of course, Marvel Comics wasn’t called Marvel of obscure artists. A company purge in the summer of Comics back in the early Sixties. Publisher Martin Good- 1957 killed off most of the supernatural comics, including man copyrighted his titles under a maze of different the company’s first title,Marvel Tales. 12 Then Jack Kirby wandered over from DC, where he had changing and the pace kept accelerating. With an eye to increasingly produced Challengers of the Unknown (who battled countless giant alarming headlines, Kirby used all of this for story fodder. monsters), and began doing some of the science-fiction stories for “The monster phenomenon got started primarily just because Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery (two survivors dating back to people were concerned about science,” he recalled. “People were the early 1950s) as well as Strange Worlds, Tales to Astonish and Tales concerned about radiation and what would happen to animals and of Suspense (all three of which were launched in September 1958). people who were exposed to that kind of thing.” Next thing you know, the four-color pages were bursting with “I But Kirby wasn’t alone. That same year, a self-effacing young Unleashed Shagg Upon the World” (in which the Sphinx comes to artist named Steve Ditko came over from Charlton and lent his life), “I Created Sporr! The Thing that Could Not Die!” (about a veerry unique talents to the revitalization of several titles by drawing big amoeba), and the unforgettable “Creature From Krogarr!” Stan solidly imaginative short features. Initially, he also inked many Kirby Lee never stories, and for decades afterward, Stan Lee would tell fans Ditko showed was his favorite inker on The King. When Lee set Western artist Dick this kind of Ayers to inking Kirby, he found a perfect match, as far as style and imagina- efficiency was concerned, freeing up Kirby to turn in more simplified tion in his pencils which Ayers would embellish as co-artist. This also freed up pre-1959 Ditko to concentrate on his own stuff. And it saved the career of Dick Ayers, who was about to leave comics for the post office. “I enjoyed the monsters,” Ayers told me. “They had terrific names––Sporr and Fin Fang Foom and all that.” “An inker like Dick Ayers would be bold and stark,” Kirby once observed, “and you’d find the style in a bold and stark attitude, and of course, that’s interesting.” Another new recruit was Don Heck, who stepped in to fill the empty shoes of the prolific and versatile Joe Maneely, who had just died, and whose covers had given Marvel its house look scripts, so I would guess it was prior to Kirby taking over cover chores. Kirby, whose mother was born near Tran- “It was the summer of ’58 or sylvania and who told him some pretty wild somewhere around there,” Heck told me. legends when he was a kid, on whose doorstep “I can remember the first job I did and we can lay the credit—or blame. For Kirby it was tough after having not done any had been doing stuff like this for DC’s mystery comics for over a year.