JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR FIFTY-THREE $ 10 95 IN THE US Contents THE NEW The Magic Of LEE & KIRBY, Part ONe! OPENING SHOT . 2 (Lee & Kirby together again—and again!) ISSUE #53, SUMMER 2009 Collector UNDER THE COVERS . 3 (inking some familiar faces) CRIB NOTES . 4 (a guided tour of Stan and Jack’s New York haunts—be sure to wear your comfortable shoes!) RETROSPECTIVE . 6 (when Jacob met Stanley) INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY . 11 (you’re not getting older, you’re getting better) THE MAN . 12 (Stan Lee speaks!) GALLERY 1 . 16 (a look at Kirby’s incredible inkers during the Marvel Age) JACK F.A.Q. s . 24 (Mark Evanier’s on hiatus this ish, so we dug up one of his earliest published works to embarrass him) TRIBUTE . 25 (the 2008 Kirby Tribute Panel, featuring Jerry Robinson, and Joe Ruby & Ken Spears) ADAM M cGOVERN . 34 (Jack’s rock ’n’ roll influence) GALLERY 2 . 36 (lost and found Fantastic Four pages ) KIRBY OBSCURA . 52 (Barry Forshaw recommends more things to spend your money on in a down economy) JACK KIRBY MUSEUM PAGE . 55 (visit & join www.kirbymuseum.org) FOUNDATIONS . 56 (a silver bullet for your heart) RETROSPECTIVE . 62 (Stan & Jack’s genre comics, plus comments for the whole blamed Marvel Bullpen about Lee & Kirby) QUESTIONABLE . 74 (a game of “What If?”) COLLECTOR COMMENTS . 78 PARTING SHOT . 80 (Stan and Jack and the Surfer) This issue is dedicated to the very dedicated Jerry Boyd, a man whose energy and devotion to comics history and fandom leaves me in awe. - JM Front cover inks: GEORGE PÉREZ Back cover inks/colors: JOE SINNOTT Front cover color: TOM ZIUKO The Jack Kirby Collector , Vol. 16, No. 53, Summer 2009. Published quarterly by & ©2009 TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, (above) They aren’t Stan and Jack, but these two men are responsible for the great Lee/Kirby creations of the 1960s. Who are they? Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $14 post - Turn to page 2 to find out! (And then thank these guys!) paid ($16 elsewhere). Four-issue subscrip - tions: $50 US, $60 Canada, $84 elsewhere. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All artwork is COPYRIGHTS: Ant-Man, Atlas Monsters, Avengers, Beast, Black Bolt, Black Knight, Black Panther, Black Widow, Bucky, Captain America, Captain Mar-Vell, Cobra, Crystal, Dr. Doom, Fantastic Four, Gabe Jones, Galactus, Giant- ©2009 Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise Man, Goom, Groot, Hate-Monger, Hawkeye, Hercules, Him, Hulk, Human Top, Human Torch, Iron Man, Janus, Ka-Zar, Kid Colt, Loki, Mad Thinker, Magneto, Modok, Mr. Hyde, Nick Fury/Sgt. Fury, Odin, Puppet Master, Rawhide Kid, Red Ghost, Red Skull, Sandman, Scarlet Witch, SHIELD, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Thing, Thor, Trapster, Two-Gun Kid, Wasp, Watcher, Wizard, X-Men, Yellow Claw TM & ©2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. • Batman, noted. All editorial matter is ©2009 the Boy Commandos, Demon, Forever People, House of Mystery, In The Days Of The Mob, Losers, Orion, Robin TM & ©2009 DC Comics. • Sky Masters TM & ©2009 Jack Kirby Estate. • Black Magic, Fighting American, Win A respective authors. First printing. Prize, Young Romance TM & ©2009 Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estate. • Captain 3-D, Hi-School Romances TM & ©2009 Harvey Comics. • Thundarr the Barbarian, Ookla, Video Rangers TM & ©2009 Ruby-Spears. PRINTED IN CANADA. ISSN 1932-6912 1 by John Morrow, Opening Shot editor of TJKC hange of plans! This issue’s theme, “The Magic of Lee & Kirby,” came together nicely with the help of C Jerry Boyd, Kirby fan and TwoMorrows Contributor Emeritus. But after assembling all the usual “must-have” pieces for this issue—columns, galleries, Kirby Museum page, and this page, for what it’s worth—the usual problem set in: There just aren’t enough pages to do justice to the theme! So like many of the Stan & Jack, great Lee & Kirby epics of the 1960s, I’ve decided to make this a two-parter, to be “Continued Next Issue!” (as all those last-page blurbs used to say). I hope you’ll be back for Part Two Together next time. Again —T wice! Now, where do you begin to discuss a creative team as important to the history of comics as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby? At the beginning, I guess. Their first collaboration (if you’d call it that) was when Stan was the office boy at Timely Comics in the 1940s, and wrote a text filler page for Captain America Comics #3. But Jack was already teamed up with Joe Simon, and they both viewed young Stanley Lieber (Stan’s given name) as more of an annoyance than a fellow creator, since Stanley spent a lot of time sitting on desks, playing his ocarina, and distracting Joe and Jack from their work. (Reader Stan Taylor has noted the memorable splash page in Captain America Comics #7, where the Red Skull is causing chaos by playing a flute—he wonders if this was inspired by Stan’s antics.) Simon & Kirby went on to produce a string of hits until the anti-comics backlash spearheaded by Dr. Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent took its toll on the entire industry. Joe and Jack dissolved their partnership in the late 1950s after their company Mainline went under, and Jack was back to freelancing. (above) But due to a dispute with DC Comics editor Jack Schiff over royalties for Jack’s Sky Masters comic strip, he became persona non grata at DC Stan and Jack share a laugh at a 1966 New York Comics, which left Marvel Comics (then called Atlas, formerly known as Timely) and editor Stan Lee as one of his few avenues for work. comic convention. (So, here’s a tip of the hat to Mssrs. Wertham and Schiff for inadvertently causing the formation of the Lee & Kirby team; without them, who knows if Stan and Jack would’ve ever crossed paths, let alone created so many classic stories and characters. I’m celebrating both (below) Both men in the men by featuring their mugs on Page One of this issue!) 1970s, after they went their The Lee & Kirby “team” didn’t really exist the way we as fans were led to separate ways. believe in the 1960s Marvel Bullpen and letters pages. (For that matter, there wasn’t really a “Bullpen” of Marvel artists and writ - ers, all working together in one big room, the way it was depicted in the comics.) And as the 1960s drug on, the pair had less and less direct involvement, as both men did most of their respective work from their homes. As tends to happen with many creative successful teams, disputes and animosities arose, and we’ve covered some of that in this magazine’s previous issues. But the focus this time out is strictly to celebrate their achievements, rather than expose any hidden underbellies, or get caught up in a “who did what” melee. Without either gent, the end result wouldn’t have been the same, and almost certainly wouldn’t be as successful, or commercially viable some 40+ years later. So sit back and relive some of the triumphs of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, from their earliest collabo - rations on Marvel’s monster and western yarns, to the creative tour de force that was (and still is) the Marvel Universe. (And thanks to Jerry Boyd for helping me wrap my head around these two issues, right down to this issue’s cover concept.) # 2 by John Morrow his issue’s cover is a bit of a “Brady Bunch” riff, utilizing a wide variety of mug shots of various Stan Under The Covers Lee/Jack Kirby characters, all taken from the Valentine’s Day sketchbook Jack did as a gift for Roz TKirby in the late 1970s. While Stan wasn’t involved in the creation of Captain America or the Red Skull, those characters were major players in their 1960s work together, and Stan’s first professional comics work was a text filler page in Simon & Kirby’s Captain America Comics #3 (May 1941). So it seemed only appropriate that Cap got the center “Alice the maid” spot. When it came time to choose an inker for this medley of faces, I naturally tried to think of an artist who’s known for working on books that feature large groups of super-characters. It took about two seconds for the name George Pérez to pop in my mind. George is known for his work on the Avengers, Teen Titans, and of course Crisis on Infinite Earths, which featured practically every DC Comics character ever created. So I figured a mere 23-character cover image would be easy for him to ink. Which reminded me of an e-mail George sent me back in 2008 (presented here to give you an idea of the kind of guy George is): “If there’s ever an opening for someone to ink a really heavily popu - lated Kirby cover, please keep me in mind. It would be a real honor.” The honor’s all mine, George! When he saw the pencils, he even asked whether I thought he should try to correct any of the mistakes Jack made, as he didn’t want to be disrespectful by “fixing” Kirby’s work. And in typi - cal Pérez fashion, he turned around the inks in just a few days. (Special thanks to Mike Manley for “bluelining” the pencils for George to ink over.) Then, colorist Tom Ziuko and I felt that this piece was crying out for a more basic, 1960s-style color treatment, so we chose a “big dot” effect, and I worked up a similar look for photos of Stan & Jack to complete the piece.