Showing posts with label Mark Bilgrey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Bilgrey. Show all posts

27 August 2017

Sunday Afternoon WTFunnies? (King Kirby 092)


In an earlier edition of Sunday Morning Funnies during the King Kirby 100 we featured a story entitled Spider-Man Tickles The Torch!
Let's look at another related story-





One might ask just how this is related to the previous story, beyond both having Jack Kirby riding pencils.
We've seen how gifted Kirby was with his comic stylings when called upon, and yet there's absolutely no sign of it in either story. The same holds true for Wally Wood's tone in the inks. There's a very simple reason for that. In both cases, Jack wasn't drawing comedy.
In the tradition of Fractured Flickers, the folks at Crazy magazine took old stories and "re-dubbed" them with new dialogue tracks. Of course, "the folks at Crazy magazine" was Marvel Comics, so they had a vault of old tales to use.
Here's the original version of the story above, from Journey Into Mystery #51-


And here's the original version of Spider-Man Tickles The Torch! Kirby & Steve Ditko from Amazing Spider-Man #8:


I like to think that Jack actually got paid for the re-use of his work, and that - unlike some other times - approved of the changes.
But somehow i doubt it.

pages from Journey Into Mystery #51 (1955) and Crazy #s 66 & 82 (1980, 1982)

13 August 2017

Sunday Morning Funnies (King Kirby 048)


The worst thing* about no newspaper these days is no Sunday morning funnies! It's Sunday morning (here), so let's have some Jack Kirby related funnies! Wow! I really seem to be excited about that.
Way back in the first issue of FOOM, Marvel's members only fanzine, they ran a star studded parody of the Fantastic Four:


The following month, the quartet returned to play with another familiar Kirby character:


That was the last we saw from the Frantic Four on the parody front. But soon, another would step up. You may remember Charley Parker from The Origin Of King Kirby which we pulled from FOOM #11. In FOOM #4, this ominously appeared:


It wasn't until issue #8 that the Doctor made his true debut:


Dr. FOOM returned in #9...


...and in #10, we got not only Dr. FOOM And Captain Applepie, but the Eggsmen, too:



The following issue was the big Kirby Returns celebration with the Origin story we already looked at. After that, i never saw Charley Parker again that i recall. I wonder where he went? A mystery for another day...

Meanwhile, here's the grooviest parody of a Kirby character that i remember coming out of FOOM:


My favorite Kirby comedy comics, however, are of a decidedly different vein. And both come from the same person, Roger Langridge -



I wonder if he's done more?

To wrap up our Sunday Morning Funnies, let's go back to Marvel.  After Not Brand Echh went under, Marvel eventually realized that they were competing against black & white newstand magazines, so maybe they should try that instead - and so Crazy was born. (Crazy was the next synonym on the list after Mad and Cracked, you see) In #82 in '82, Jack Kirby parodied by Jack Kirby, with poor Mark Bilgrey begging the man not to take revenge upon him:


various comics by Roy Thomas, Len Brown, Gil Kane, Wally Wood, Charley Parker, Roger Langridge, Marc Bilgrey, and Jack Kirby with Steve Ditko(sweet!) from FOOM #s 1,2,4,8,9, & 10, Internet, and Crazy #82 (1973-5,????,1982)

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*(Y'know - aside from that whole collapse of local news and absorption into conglomerate structures undermining basic functions needed for the survival of a healthy republic, leading to the diminishment and eventual destruction of a free society thing.)