Return of Mobster Monday (King Kirby 054)

The old crime comics from the 1940s on which Jack Kirby worked, usually with Joe Simon, had a cover style that was heavy in exposition and often seemed like they were trying to tell the whole story on the cover. Here's a gallery of 13 Simon & Kirby covers from the period, mostly from Justice Traps The Guilty because we already looked at a bunch from Headline Comics. You can get a pretty good idea of what i mean from these:

Hey! You made it past all those bad, nasty people- congratulations.
Here - have a nice little 6 page Simon & Kirby story from the first issue of Justice Traps The Guilty to reward yourself:

all art by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon for Justice Traps The Guilty and Real Clue Crime Comics (1947-1951)

Entertaining Headlines (King Kirby 039)

Y'know, the news must have been a lot more interesting back in the first half of the last century.
I mean, check out these Headlines:

Yep - that last one was out of numeric order. But it's such a great cover, it got saved for last. These Headline Comics covers are all Jack Kirby/Joe Simon pencil/inks.

covers by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon for Headline Comics (1947-1951)

Branding Kirby (King Kirby 038)

As we saw earlier today, Jack Kirby did cartoon parody art, too. One of the first places those who know that side of The King might think that ad we looked at came from Not Brand Echh!. Others might now be going Not Brand Wha-? To explain:
Back in the 1960s, Mad Magazine forged a market for a slew of comedy/parody comic magazines. (Cracked.com readers might be interested to know it used to be a cheap imitation print magazine that we didn't read back before the internet gave them new life) Marvel Comics, always eager to fill as much shelf space as possible ever since they got out of that distribution deal with National Periodicals, decided they needed a comedy parody book. For a fair bit they'd been calling the competition Brand Echh, and so a new title was born - Brand Echh! August 1967 Marvel titles like the Fantastic Four ran full page ads featuring the cover of the first issue, and it was proudly proclaimed in the top bulletion of the BBP that month:

Notice that it's called "Brand Echh!" while i referred above to "Not Brand Echh!" That's the fault of their title slogan on the cover...

Who says a comic book has to be good??
not Brand Echh
And everybody ignored the line at the top as intro and called the book Not Brand Echh. Take a look at the contents page for the first issue:

Note that it is listed as Brand Echh in the indicia at the bottom of the page. By issue #5, they gave up and changed it to Not Brand Echh (Possibly in issue #4. I don't have that issue)
For younger readers, PG is an abbreviation for 'page', not a movie rating. The ratings board wouldn't change the designation from M to PG for another 3 years at this point.
Of course, to lead off a parody of Marvel comics, you pretty much have to do a parody of Marvel's First Family, the book that embodies Marvel comics - the Fantastic Four. But who are you going to get to parody Jack Kirby? Well, Jack Kirby, of course. They brought in Frank Giacoia to ink Kirby's pencils and give them a different feel than Joe Sinnott's work over on the FF's home book, and - Presto!:

But, no - Comet Feldmeyer isn't from Not Brand Echh.

Cover & story art by Jack Kirby & Frank Giacoia for Not) Brand Echh! #1 (1967)

Kirby's First Cover (King Kirby 037)

You know what we haven't looked at? Of course you do - it's in the title. One of those obvious things that gets completely overlooked most of the time. I can't remember seeing it featured in any piece on Jack Kirby, though it's probably in one of the many books & magazines still waiting for us to dig up and find.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Kirby's first comic book cover was a collaboration with Joe Simon. At this early stage, it was Jack on pencils and Joe on inks, for Champion Comics #9  cover dated July 1940, from Worth Publishing Co.:

That appears to be Duke O'Dowd, The Human Meteor (not Duke O'Dowd, The Champ as it first appeared to me. The Champ is a different character) having issues with the colourist on the cover.

Doesn't Liberty Lads sound like a Simon & Kirby creation? It focuses on "two hardy Colonial lads" in Revolutionary times in the American Colonies. Jack & Joe would certainly go for more than two, but they'd have run with that concept and title, all the way to glory.

Bonus Fun!
Here's two Simon & Kirby covers from Champ Comics:

Champ Comics is from a different company, Family Comics, Inc., located in St. Louis, Missouri. Champion Comics was published in Buffalo, New York. Did The Champ take over the comic and move across country? No clue. And yet, our Human Meteor is here, too. Now he's wearing red on the cover and green inside, while up there at Champion Comics he's wearing blue on the cover and red inside. I'm still not sure what color his outfit is supposed to be, or if he's just fashionable. 

Kirby/Simon cover for Champions Comics #9 (1940) and Champ Comics #s 19 & 21 (1942)

Best of Marvel's Best? (King Kirby 035)

I thought i'd try to pick out Jack Kirby's 10 best covers for his epic run on The Fantastic Four, Marvel's flagship title. I limited it to just the first 100 issues, no annuals, king-size specials, etc.,.

I've managed to narrow it down to about 30 so far. I don't know if narrowing it to ten is going to be possible for me. So, new idea! Here's an overview of all 100 for you to peruse and see if you can decide before i do.

 Some of the covers aren't in the best shape. I had to go with what i had on hand. As always, click for a closer view.
Meanwhile - I'll keep trying to narrow down my selection. Maybe it'll wind up being a Top 20 instead.

100 Covers by Jack Kirby for Fantastic Four #s 1-100 (1961-1970)

Kracklin' Kirby (King Kirby 023)

I made note in the second post of the King Kirby 100 to an early proto-krackle effect Jack Kirby was using in what i believe to be Simon & Kirby's first co-credited work. That led me to wondering  about the development of his stylistic Kirby Krackle, but far too immersed in preparing the KK100 to follow through on the pondering.
Happily, the Universe loves me in its weird way, and dropped Jack Kirby Collector #33 out of sequence in my path. Lo and behold - Shane Foley has contemplated this issue, and actually had the gumption to go digging. He found that, though we saw him playing with the notion back in 1940, The King didn't really define and embrace the Kirby Krackle we know today until a quarter century later.

Let's go to the stark comparison he provided bracketing that period - these two Silver Surfer covers for the Fantastic Four, just two years apart:

From nary a trace on FF #50 to fully embracing the Krackle on FF #72. And what a dynamic difference it brings to the background. Shane further traced the evolution of Kirby's experiments as he worked out the fine details of his famous patterned dots over the course of 1966. He provides us with this nice visual chart of the progress:

Once Kirby decided to develop the effect, it took him remarkably little time to refine it and incorporate in seemingly endless ways, adding yet another layer of dynamics to his work.

Shane Foley leads us to the Krackle in Jack Kirby Collector #33 (2001)