Showing posts with label Captain America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Captain America. Show all posts

06 September 2017

King Kirby 101


Got knocked down with dental infection and abscessed tooth for the holiday weekend, so wasn't able to prepare this planned final post on Saturday as planned. But, we're here now thanks to the miracle of Clyndamycin Hydrochloride and Hydrocodone.

If you're a Jack Kirby collector, there's a magazine named for you. The most useful reference for the King Kirby 100 comes from the same people. If you're not already familiar with TwoMorrows publishing, you'll definitely want to visit their site. For comics collecting in general, they're great. For Jack Kirby fans, they're uniquely unparalleled. For almost a quarter century, since the year we lost The King, they've published  the Jack Kirby Collector magazine. It's packed with Kirby features, art, interviews, essays, strips, and surprises on a constant basis. Assuming the site layout hasn't changed by the time you're reading this, here's a direct jump to the magazine.
And then there's this beauty:


If you're looking to collect Kirby, this Jack Kirby Checklist not only lists what comics he worked on, but also indicates which covers, stories, features, etc.,. It denotes when Jack is writing, it lists & cross-references reprints and other related appearances. Here - take a look at the basic entry Key:


There are appendixes with listings of other works by and about Kirby in other media. There are historical annotations to individual issues/stories. They even attempt to index all of Jack's unpublished work.
If you're hunting Jack Kirby, this is your treasure map.



If you're a Kirby Fan and not already familiar with it, there's a Jack Kirby Museum. It's a small organization, but quite dedicated to archiving the history of King Kirby, and are a good way to track ongoing events, such as the recent New York show for Jack's birthday. The site also hosts a few Jack Kirby blogs focusing on different aspects of his career and influence. Being a small organization means they are generally in constant need of funding. That means that you can find new and unique Kirby merchandise offered up for your support. So even if you don't want to study Kirby's effect on modern comics, you still might want to direct a little attention their way.



If you're looking to go hunting through old golden age comics to find your own Kirby treasures, there are a couple of digital archives on the web that may be of interest to you. Comic Book Plus and The Digital Comic Museum. Both archive and index public domain comics with free access to any who register. There are also the un-curated wilds of the Internet Archive, which is a general knowledge pool in which the comics are a small splash. On the other hand, they also archive things like old half-dime pre-pulps from the 19th century, so the digging can pay off nicely if you're interests are eclectic enough.



To close things out, and - for those not really aware - give an idea of the impact that The King had upon the comics industry as a whole, let's go back 21 years to 1986. Amazing Heroes magazine was having their 100th issue and decided to dedicate the entire issue to Jack, creating the first King Kirby 100. They asked industry pros for their thoughts on Kirby, and these next 17 pages are only a part of the response:

(For anyone seeking to track information in that last credits box, 22 was the number of the first page in this sequence.)

We may have lost Jack, but he's still with us, shaping influencing and shaping our dreams through his influence on others. And as we move into the future, he'll be waiting for us there, too.



Jack Kirby Tribute pages from Amazing Heroes #100 (1986), Captain America pin-up by Jack Kirby for Marvel Treasury Special #1 (1976)

26 August 2017

Saturday Solutions 006 (King Kirby 090)


You didn't come here looking for the answers to yesterdays' King Kirby 100 Crossword Challenge, did you? I said i was going to give you extra time to work on that one.

So, let's try to pierce the Veil and turn to The King for some other solutions, shall we?


Mr. Kirby - um....
How does one see so far, as You did?


Okay. That's not quite what i meant.
Your vision seemed so wide ranging - how do we perceive the worlds around us with the clarity You demonstrated?


All right. Obviously, this isn't the right line of inquiry. Let's take this in a different direction -
How can one live beyond death, as You have done?


Well, that's more interesting. Now You've got me thinking about some of Your other creations. After hearing this tale, i wonder what Captain America would have been like if it was a western, like BullsEye...


Well, that's pretty cool - An American Icon x 2. Makes me wonder what he would have been like if Cap had been around earlier - at the formation of the USA?


Ha! The Red Skull makes it glorious!
I don't think the Veil will stay parted much longer... One last answer -
How did Thor earn the right to weild Mjolnir? How did he prove he was worthy? Did he just walk up and grab the hammer, or were there some sort of trials?


all page art by Jack Kirby & co. from Classics Illustrated Special #165a (1961), BullsEye #6 (1955), Marvel Treasury Special #1 (1976), and Journey Into Mystery #100 (1964)

19 August 2017

Splashing & Making Waves (King Kirby 071)


I've been pretty clear on my love for those big double-page splashes from Jack Kirby (& sometimes Joe Simon, like today). Back when Simon & Kirby were just getting started on Captain America, they weren't really doing those yet. But they still had some very cool single pagers:


Okay - Queer Case of the Mudering Butterfly and the Ancient Mummies is a winner all by itself. And even way back in 1941, they were already creating villains for the Marvel universe for heroes other than Captain America, like-


And if you don't already love this splash...

...how about the extra in-story splash showing off its innards:

In issue #6 they started using the centerfold of the comic for those glorious 2-page spreads. They left after #10, so they only did five for Captain America Comics:


Some of the wild, edge-of-surreal, fun of their later design layouts is starting to show here, but it feels like they're still testing the waters, seeing what works for them.
It's one of those situations that leaves me wondering - what if they hadn't gotten screwed on their arrangement for Captain America and had stayed with the book & company back then? Besides how that would likely have reshaped Jack & Joe's financial fortunes over the years, how would it have shaped Timely? When they left, the kid they let write the text pages for Captain America as of #3 wound up running the place. You have to think the company's history would have followed a significantly different path.

But, more to the point, what kind of terrific Captain America art would we have seen if they had stayed on the book for a few years? All the great work they did with the Stuntman spreads and such leave me wanting that cross-continuum viewer to peek at artwork from alternate histories.
I know. I should just be grateful for what we got. But Jack taught me to imagine more...

all art by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon from Captain America Comics #s 1-10 (1941-2)