Back Before Jack

To end our King Kirby Weekend, let's go back to the beginning. Back before Jacob Kurtzberg became Jack Kirby. 

In the first three issues of Jumbo Comics from 1939, Jack drew three different strips under three different names. They were all serialized in four page chapters, spread across three different genres. We had they mystery adventure series, The Diary of Dr. Hayward, drawn under the name of Curt Davis...

Using the name Fred Sande, Kirby delivered one of his first Westerns - Wilton of the West ... 

Okay. I lied in the title. It wasn't entirely "before Jack" since Jack Curtis is the name he used on the Literary Adaptation of Dumas' classic novel, The Count of Monte Cristo...

You might have noticed that there were only 8 pages on the last strip. That's because Kirby only drew the first two issues on that one. Interestingly enough, all three strips were taken over by the same artist - Lou Fine. (Oddly, even bizarrely, this seems to be the first time we've mentioned Lou Fine. That'll have to change.)

I believe Jack left the strips because that was when he hooked up with that Joe Simon fellow and the two of them decided to show everyone else how comics were done. But that's just top of my head thinking without checking actual dates.

page art by Jack Kirby from Jumbo Comics #s 1-3 (1939)

Can Little Bobby Draw?

I ran into one of those old debates again - did Bob Kane draw Batman at all?

Kane fought so hard for so long to hide the work of great artists like Dick Sprang and Jerry Robinson, not to mention Batman's Co-Creator Bill Finger. As more and more came to realize that their favorite parts of Batman came from other creators, speculation arose that Bob Kane never actually did any of the work on Batman. With all those Ghosts in the closet, perhaps he never needed to do more than sign a name and collect the checks.

But, let us remember that Bob did do more than just Batman.

For example, Jumbo Comics was running his Peter Pupp back in 1938. Oddly enough, those were reprints. The strip first ran in the UK in Wags the previous year. So here we have international proof that Bob could draw comics. (No, i don't know what was in his closet. Shut up!)

If the pages seem just a bit "off" to you, it may be because they were printed as Colour Comics. Which is to say, they were printed on orange paper, which looks rather garish and diminishes ease of reading. So i leeched that out and 'upgraded' to black & white -

Um...
I don't have issue #4. I can't tell you what happens next.

But i'm fairly sure no bats were involved...

page art by Bob Kane from Jumbo Comics #s 1-3 (1938)

Ad-Ventures, Not ADventures

As you may know, we occasionally run ADventures - comic strips made as advertisements like Volto, "Pepsi" the Pepsi-Cola Cop, and "RC" and Quickie.

A little over 80 years back, Rafael Astarita decided to reverse the formula and make comics with pre-existing advertising figures. He called these Ad-Ventures, and they ran in Star Comics for a bit starting in 1937. It didn't last too long - only 8 episodes total. We've got 7 of them here today...

Before we continue, let's answer the most obvious WTF? that may be on the minds of some readers...

...the Gold Dust Twins sold laundry detergent. Search hard, and you might find some images with one of them scrubbed so clean he turned white. 

Now you know, and we continue...

Oops.
I'm missing issue #8 - so we must skip one.
On to the final strip from Star Comics #9 -

 Of course, these days he'd be sued out of business over Intellectual Property rights.

page art by Rafael Astarita from Star Comics #s 2-7 & 9 (1937, 1938)