It may or may not be readily apparent, but the King Kirby 100 is not a project that was prepared ahead of time. I gathered together tons of Jack Kirby material, set up access with some comic libraries, and lined up all the resources at my disposal. That kept me fairly busy until the last few days of July. Then the reading began...
I'm don't know how many pages of Jack Kirby's comics are piled for reading, but i've come to realize it's likely measured in the tens of thousands. Plus books, magazines & archives (TwoMorrows is a Kirby post of its own), fanzines... decades worth of fanboy gathering.
It's only when going back and reading after a gap of decades that you begin to realize just how much you've forgotten. I keep swearing that some comics are completely new to me, that i must have somehow tucked it away unread until now. But there's no way that happened with so many books, and even big titles like the Fantastic Four have complete memory gaps. While in some ways annoying that the once encyclopedic memory systems have lost so much data, it's also a huge joy finding so much Kirby that's brand new to me again. Not to mention things that are actually new from the library accesses and such. I'm constantly being surprised and delighted.
Sometimes, though, i wish things would pop up to surprise just a couple days earlier. You may recall that in Son Of Mobster Monday, i found Jack Kirby showing up to transcribe "Red Hot" Blaze's tale into comic format in Treasure Comics #10. It was basically a six page advertisement for Headline Comics where Simon & Kirby regularly created Blaze's stories. This morning as while reading through the piles, this turned up:
WTF? Why is this in my Kirby pile? Did he do some deranged comedy now completely forgotten? Some dark parody?
Nope - it's another 6 page ad for Headline Comics, with Jack Kirby drawing Jack Kirby again while "Red Hot" relates the details for him to draw the story. Meta wasn't a word back then. For reference on him, and just because we haven't seen her yet, here's a photo of Jack & Roz a few years before this tale:
Now here's "Red Hot"'s TRUE Crime Never Pays story:
I'm left to wonder... Are there more?
You can be sure i'll be hunting as i dig, and i'll be sure to let you know.
Another wonder... Has anyone compiled a compendium of appearances of Jack Kirby in comics? With a sub-listing of appearances of Jack Kirby drawn by Jack Kirby, preferably.
Hmm...
Justice Finds A Cop Killer drawn by Jack Kirby for Frankenstein Comics #7 (1947)
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