31 August 2017

Mainlining Kirby (King Kirby 100)


In 1954, Jack Kirby and his long time partner, Joe Simon, were tired of making other people rich while getting screwed on their agreements. The two of them were THE superstars of comics, consistently producing some of the highest selling titles on the market. Simon & Kirby was the first byline to be plastered on covers to increase sales. They were creative and market gold, but saw only a tiny fraction of the wealth they produced.
So together they formed Mainline and started publishing their own books.

Sadly, what could have been the greatest comics enterprise in history was killed by timing and random chance. It really all boils down to their choice of distributor - Leader News, and a power hungry attention whore named Wertham. You may have heard of him. He was one of those particularly venal evil types who decided to screw society by making up facts and selling fear. You know, like most modern public figures.
His goal - destroy one of only two art forms created in America. So, obviously some sort of anti-American type, too. Probably a terrorist...

Anyway, he triggered a social meltdown which centered, in part, on EC, one of the largest publishers of the day. EC was distributed by Leader News When EC collapsed, it took the distributor and many smaller publishers with them as their payments were not forthcoming and yet, all the bills showed up just fine.
Mainline was suddenly bankrupt. With the Fates seemingly against them, Joe Simon called it quits with the comics business, and Jack Kirby wound up taking work at what would become Marvel Comics.

But... What if they'd chosen a different distributor? What if Mainline hadn't close down just as it was getting started?

First - without Jack Kirby's input to revitalize the company (and one meeting with Martin Goodman in particular that forstalled the event), Marvel comics would likely have closed its doors as the 60s began.
No Fantastic Four. No Thor. No Hulk, Iron-Man, Spider-Man, Avengers, Etc.,. No Marvel Age.

Meanwhile, over at Mainline...
Jack wouldn't have taken his Challengers Of The Unknown to DC, Mainline would have put out the title. With BullsEye already one step removed from a cowboy superhero, and the Challengers basically non-superheroes, odds are that Simon & Kirby would have soon launched into full superhero action before long.
I noted before that in their first months at Timely (Marvel) back in 1940, they launched The Vision, Marvel Boy, and Mercury - a mythological god brought down to Earth and recast as a Superhero. With Marvel Comics shut down, odds are good that Mainline could have re-acquired, either through legal contest or outright purchase, the rights to Captain America, their first superstar creation. They might even have picked up the rights to some of their other old characters at the same time, if it's a cash deal. Martin Goodman might likely have offered them to up the buyout value.

Oddly enough, they might even have given a job to the kid who got his first writing break from them, churning out the Postal Permit required text pages for Captain America, starting back in #3. That's unlikely though, as we've been told he would left comics have gone on to write the great American novel when Goodman closed up shop. It's more likely that Steve Ditko would have found himself working there, as Mainline offered better money and better deals for the creators, as Simon & Kirby had always done with their previous shop.

The early 60s would very likely have seen some very familiar seeming comics - an Earthbound god, an elemental based quartet, the return of Captain America, possibly The Vision (maybe with Ditko artwork, if we were lucky?), and a host of others - since they would not have been trapped in the bad distribution deal with National, as Marvel was.
Jack & Joe were already setting their eyes on older audiences in the late 50s. Their revived superhero titles would likely have followed this path as well. Their willingness, even eagerness, to experiment would have provided dynamic contrast to the set & staid house style at DC, and we could very likely have seen the Mainline Age of comics in the 60.

Kirby's Fourth World work would have come sooner (as evidenced by his paintings & designs of the late 60s), and at Mainline. (Best part about that - Jack Kirby would have no connection at all to Batman Vs. Superman & what follows in the DC movies) The New Gods & Apokolips would likely have been a part of the ongoing Mainline universe, very likely encountering their 'old god' superhero.

It's really impossible to guess what things would have been like, because even if we were possessed of Kirby's boundless imagination, who can say where it would have gone. That's kind of the whole point of "boundless".
But there's one of which we can be certain...

"It could've been ... Glorious."




Ah, well...   let's look at a couple other What If notions. Back in 1995, Darcy Sullivan was pondering in The Comics Journal...


WHAT IF JACK KIRBY HAD OWNED HIS OWN MARVEL CHARACTERS?


Lastly, we have a series of Bullpen Bulletin notices from a different reality. One which asks, What If Jack Kirby Hadn't Left Marvel In 1970?


Want to hear Craig McNamara's logic and alternate history behind these Bulletins? He elaborated in Jack Kirby Collector #53.
It's been 100 posts, and we've barely scratched the surface of Jack Kirby and his artistic legacy. This ends the King Kirby 100 commemoration, but Jack will continue to be a frequent subject for quite some time to come. We may have lost the man, but The King will always be with us...


page images from The Comics Journal #181 (1995), Jack Kirby Collector #53 (2009), and Weekly World News (1996)

One More TIME! (King Kirby 099)


Let's jump back just over half a century, to 1966 in the Merry Marvel Messenger (the newsletter of the M.M.M.S.* - that which came before F.O.O.M.).


In this rarely seen paper, Jack Kirby gave us perhaps his most unique tale of his life up until the Marvel Age of Comics.

MEET JACK KIRBY


Bonus Content! Here's a couple Kirby family photos from a bit earlier, before the arrival of the Kid From Left Field:



Autobiography by Jack Kirby from Merry Marvel Messenger (1966), Kirby family by Jack & Roz (ongoing)


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*(If you didn't know and it was driving you crazy, that's the Merry Marvel Marching Society)

30 August 2017

Odd Encounters with The King (King Kirby 098)


Previously, we heard from Ahmet Zappa comments Jack Kirby had made while dining with his father, Frank. Despite the colossal Oddness inherent in this situation, we skipped blithely on by with a promise to come back to it later.
(Let's be honest - there's only 2 more entries in the King Kirby 100, so we won't be getting back to everything during this event. But i've ingested so much Kirby this month, that you can be sure that he'll be a popular topic for months to come.)

But back to the subject at hand-



Yup. That's Frank Zappa & Jack Kirby doing the buddy/buddy bit in Zappa's living room. And this wasn't a singular occurrence. Though rather shocked by Zappa's language in his recordings, Kirby liked the man himself and was a recurring dinner guest at the Zappa house.
Zappa was obviously a Kirby fan, having written a song based on one of his old monster tales*, and even taking out the first rock & roll comic book ads in Kirby's books, like Thor #150:


At one point, they even considered collaborating on a project - Jack Kirby doing a comic strip called Valley Girl, a concept that Frank's daughter, Moon Unit, would go on to popularize later-


It always seems that talking about Kirby & Zappa leads to Kirby & Paul MacCartney, here with Linda...



Younger readers may not remember that Paul MacCartney & Wings had an early number entitled Magneto And The Titanium Man (which also featured the Crimson Dynamo).


It was an odd little song in which thing singer's rivals in love manifest to him as super villains. And when they performed it, the stage looked like this:


Jack wasn't really a fan of their music - he was more big band, and wasn't expecting MacCartney to stop the show at this point and introduce him to the audience. Even with a minor name flub (quickly corrected by Linda) it was a fairly huge thing for the time. Most surprising for Kirby since he was seated next to Kirk Douglas and at first thought the spotlight was for the actor.
But what's really amazing out of that night is this drawing that Jack did for them-



Steve Sherman, one of Kirby's primary assistants and party to arrangements at the event, informs us that this drawing was done in the gap between when Kirby was called and when the car arrived - about 45 minutes.
Amazing.

Now, one might think that all of this lead to the drawing like this:



But that meme actually dates back more than a decade earlier, to 1965 in Fantastic Four #34. A mysterious package has arrived for Ben...


page art by Jack Kirby & Chic Stone from Fantastic Four #34 (1965)

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*("Billy the Mountain" on The Mother's Just Another Band From L.A., performed with Flo & Eddie (Of Turtles fame and Illegal, Immoral & Fattening infamy) after "Spragg, The Living Mountain" (Journey Into Mystery#68))

Planting Seeds (King Kirby 097)


You know Jack Kirby's work passingly well by now, yes? So if we encounter Cadmus, post-apocalyptic evolved animals, and a scientist's chair that travels at unfathomable speeds between worlds you've probably got a fair idea of when & where we are in The King's career, right?

Are you thinking 1950s at Harvey or 1970s at DC?

When we talk about that flying chair, which are you picturing?


Alarming Tales #1 was quite the little atemporal oddity. We've looked at it before, and this is why i promised to come back to it. This one issue seems to reflect the future in little ways. First, we have a Cadmus project...


...then, instead of a last survivor of the old world, we have a time traveler transported to an evolved animal future...


...and lastly we have that cover story, with which my mind was happily playing tricks on me. At first, his name appeared to me as Donnovan -


That's what happens when fresh deities leave their toys laying around...

all pages drawn by Jack Kirby for Alarming Tales #1 (1957), Metron by Kirby from The Hunger Dogs (1985)