Just over 45 years ago, when The King was building the Fourth World and reshaping the DC universe and giving them their greatest villain, (see upcoming Justice League debacle as a for-instance) these strange ads for not-quite-a-comic magazines started to appear:
Oh, these were so cruel. We knew right away that both the Handy Andy and the Rose's 5 & Dime where we bought our comics from a spinner rack were NEVER going to see these, so neither would we. (Somehow long distance purchases via mail never seemed to work out - a condition that plagues me on the web to this day) In The Days Of The Mob and Spirit World became Holy Grails for our little group of geeks. And, like the Grail, they remained unobtainable for long years. Not until questing across the country to California did i finally see this cover in color:
Spirit World eluded me for a few years more, but that was okay. Jack Kirby and The Mob was bigger appeal for me, by far. I may have frequently dwelt on the edges of the spirit worlds, but that generally left me less interested in the genre as a rule. Kirby and gangsters? Oh, hell yeah. I tracked down a bunch of old Simon & Kirby gangster tales by then - Real Clue Crime Stories, Justice Traps The Guilty, Police Trap, Headline Comics... I was hooked on his crime tales every bit as much as his superhero epics. And here we've got Big Al Capone! Ma's Boys - that's gotta be Ma Barker, right? John Dillinger!
As crime comics go, this was the biggest cross-over event ever, even if they were all separate stories, linked only by Jack Kirby telling them. Could you get a better link? This was the All-Stars!
That inside front cover was pure joy, confirmation of Ma Barker, a reminder that the Kansas City Massacre involved Pretty Boy Floyd, feature & article... and at the bottom - "Written, drawn & editted by Jack Kirby" - framed by a Kirby Collage. And Vince Colletta backing him up. Well, hot burning damn! And on the first page - what's this? This isn't even on the table of contents. Bonus!
Which leads to the first story in the book...
Okay - this one was weird, and it had nothing to do with the contents of the magazine. By the time In The Days Of The Mob was finally in my hands, we were watching Big Bad Mama with Angie Dickenson standing in for Ma Barker, and William Shatner & Tom Skerritt subbing for The Boys. And while it wasn't Ma Barker's story (cough *daughters* cough), it paralleled enough that Dickenson & Shatner's naked love scenes just completely skewed anything vaguely related. I pretty much just skimmed this one on the first read through.
After Ma's tale, the warden heads over to the Dispensary to stop in on a group playing cards while healing 'old wounds' - Owney Madden, Arnold Rothstein, Dutch Shultz, Bo Weinberg, Casbah Holstein, and Jack "Legs" Diamond. But a fight breaks out and the guards have to pull out a flame thrower to keep the peace, so we head over to meet-
Not surprisingly, Big Al gets the longest story in the book, including another Kirby spread:
After the main act, we get a Featurette...
...an Article...
...and then back for one more big story...
...with another great Kirby splash...
...before wrapping up with a 2-page info piece reminiscent of some of the old 1940s crime features Kirby & Simon had done...
I find it interesting that he avoided the typical need to use the Latin Modus Operandi as well as the English Method of Operation, keeping a more street-level feel to things. That's quite rare in my experience.
Wait? What's this...?
Sergio Aragones? What? How?
Yep - His name was there in the table of contents. I just somehow missed it. After the slap in the brain from his cartoons popping up unexpectedly, it was a terrific bonus. How did this come about?
The most delightfully unexpected people turn up with Jack Kirby at times.
And inside the back cover, a teaser of a magazine that never was...
Ah - if only there had been a distribution system in place for these magazines at the time. So many wanted them, so few could get them...
There was even a fold out poster in the center:
Everything except Sergio Aragones by Jack Kirby for In The Days Of The Mob #1 (1971)
Sergio Aragones by Sergio Aragones
Lying record mock-up by Tyrone Biljan
Lying record mock-up by Tyrone Biljan
As I said on one of your posts about 'Spirit World', these mags turned up in the UK, so I was surprised to later learn that they were difficult to find in the US. I only got 'In The Days Of The Mob' back in the '70s, and 'Spirit World' from a dealer in the '80s. Both were stamped with UK prices by British distributor Thorpe & Porter, thereby confirming their availability in this country.
ReplyDeleteSince the problem on this side was distribution, there were likely plenty of copies to be sent that way.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, we went through a couple of decades of some savage times on the distribution front. To this day, you can still see the little-dog-that-got-kicked-at-the-newsstand in Marvel's behaviour dating back to half century old wounds at the market.
These magazines, Skywald publishing and many others were strangled at the distribution points before we even got to see them on most newsstands. And that killed them, as intended.