No Candlesticks

Slowly finding my body again. While bod & brain get reacquainted, how about a little quick Jack to get the day rolling.

First, a couple of one-pagers from Jack Kirby - a bit different than one might be used to seeing, from the pages of My Date Comics...

In an entirely different vein, we've got another caveman comic, though this one is a bit younger than most, being both a boy and from way back in Captain America Comics #1 from 1941. Tuk, Caveboy appeared in four out of the first five issues of Captain America before going extinct. All were written by Simon & Kirby, but only the first installment was drawn by Kirby -

Damn. I'd have liked to seen Kirby drawing Atlantis here.
Ah, well...

I expect we'll be seeing more Kirby later today, if the ol' peripatetic mind can be herded. Otherwise, we'll continue our King Kirby Weekend on the morrow. But for now, i've got this overwhelming urge to read the run of Jack Kirby's Black Panther comics...

page art by Jack Kirby from My Date #s 1 & 2 and Captain America Comics #1 (1941, 1947)

Thunder Fun With Jack & Dick

Man, i hope whoever decided to "upgrade" Blogger to justify their job loses that job in a very loud way that discourages others from continuing this vile practice.

I say that because it's been about 45 minutes of struggle to get all of today's pics to upload. And that's becoming quite frequent and likely to start leading to skip days or time off from blogging.

...

Okay, let's try to get the mind back around to where it was an hour ago. I had a good intro in my head, but it seems to have gotten tired of the wait and gone walkies.

Didja know that Dick Briefer inked Jack Kirby? They did four stories together, including the first time that Kirby had a Thunder God up against the aliens from Saturn, decades before Journey Into Mystery's debut of Thor.

Of course, it was different Saturnians...

...and a different Thunder-God...
 

...not to mention a different art style since they were working in C.C. Beck's playground.

As you may have noted over time, i generally prefer not to work with reprints. For today's tale, we have little choice in the matter. I've never seen an intact copy of the original comic. On the plus side, i didn't have to do any de-aging today.

From 64 Pages Of New Captain Marvel Adventures (seriously, that's the title of the book from 1941) here's The Monsters Of Saturn...
 

One of the reasons i tend to disfavour the reprints is the colours often come across as garishly not right. In part, that comes from working with much whiter/brighter paper and from changing aesthetics. 

If you perceive things the same way, you can fix it for yourself. Here's the story with just the line work so you can colour to your own preferences -
 

And, bonus - something to keep busy if you need it.

page art by Jack Kirby and Dick Briefer from 64 Pages Of New Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (nn) (1941)

Kidnapping, Mystery, & Terror With Rex And Cynde

Well, i hadn't actually intended to stick with Rex Dexter for so many episodes just now, there's plenty of other Dick Briefer awaiting in the wings. But my mind is still half buried in The Third Colony and i got carried away while de-aging and thus have pages at the ready.

I made a passing reference recently to doing some restoration work when needed. That's something i rarely mention. As a matter of routine, i tend to de-age the old material presented here. Nothing really major, but you can see what i'm talking about with this Before & After sample:

I ponder... is basic tips for de-aging and restoration a topic folks would like to see covered here?
Hmm...

The next episode after where we left off already ran here, so we pick up with the subsequent tale, which is where the page above originated. Let us continue.

I'll repeat the page at the standard size. As always, you can click for bigger. (Typically 900 px width (as long as we're talking production details today anyway))

Now, on with the adventures of Rex and Cynde...

Do Cynde & Rex even remember they were headed to Mars? Or have they given up and settled on Earth?

They're running out of time and pages...

page art by Dick Briefer from Mystery Men Comics #s 19-21 (1941)