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)

The Kirby Conversion (King Kirby 096)

One of the Odd things about the artistry of Jack Kirby is that, not infrequently, people just don't appreciate it, or sometimes even like it, upon first encounter.
Talk to any fair sized group of Kirby fans and you'll find those who merely shrugged or actively disliked his work at first. And then one day - a light goes on and suddenly they connect to it somehow.  It happens differently to different people, for different reasons. Sometimes it's a slow conversion, more often there's a single trigger moment that alters perception, and then the conversion follows.

Chris Sims wrote of his experience in some detail, tracking his own unique path to The King. Others have spoken of seeing Kirby's originals and the sudden clarity that strikes them - the power in those panel boards.

I've heard people speak of learning to love Kirby by stealth. They find themselves reading an exciting comic, totally drawn into it. Then they go back to see who it was and are shocked. Only then do they go back and find that something changed without them even realizing that they loved Kirby now, and couldn't say why things were different.

Sometimes, it's a learned response. To many readers of DC comics in the early '70s, Jack's comics felt wrong because he didn't follow the House Style. They had been taught most of their lives that 'this' is what comics are supposed to look like. DC reinforced that perception by having Kirby's art redrawn to make Superman and Jimmy Olsen conform to the house style. This caused a lot of readers to dismiss the work without delving into it personally, thereby never making the connection.

Sometimes it's nothing more than finding the wrong Kirby. Jack did so much over the years, working in every genre and even creating new ones. It's quite possible to first encounter him in ways that have no personal appeal. There are times when Kirby draws 'with the cap lock on', so to speak. For those who haven't learned the language, that can be overwhelming and as off-putting as having someone shouting their thoughts at you. After making the connection at a calmer level, returning to those tales becomes more like someone leading a cheering crowd, rather than screaming in your face.

Personally, my connection to The King was almost immediate. Living in Asia, my perceptions of the range of comic art were rather wide - no house style limitations or that sort of thing. And the first Kirby that fell into my hands was over a dozen issues of early Fantastic Four. Soon after, a batch of his monster comics passed my way.
Jack didn't just win me over to him in that time - he started whispering about art and creation, nudging toward a path unseen before.

...at least, i've tried. But really, as close as i can get to actually following in his path is just coloring his drawings.

FF Scene by Jack Kirby & Joe Sinnott, colours & Kirby's Gate by -3- (2017)

Kirby's Dynamic New Aliens (King Kirby 095)

We looked previously at the introduction of  Jack Kirby's world into DC's mainstream, with the Hairies providing the first glimpse of what was to follow. While Jack unveiled the Cadmus Project, the Evil Factory, and their varied offspring in the man stories, he also ran little 2 page bits to build more background for his world.
But first, he ran one of his forward thinking essays to get us thinking, too-

One of the many reasons i always enjoy when The King is writing his own stories is his tendency to explore thoughts and possibilities that society in general hasn't really yet noticed. The essays on Machine Man are another good example of the sort of deep thinking that can lie behind the wild tales we read.
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Now here are the other 2-pagers, beyond the one we've already seen:

To wrap this one up, here's Kirby's pin-up of one of the greatest D.N.Aliens of all:

Dubblilex knows you want to argue - but don't.

text & Jack Kirby page art from Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #s 135, 143, 144, 146 & 148 (1971-1972)

Kirby Love (King Kirby 094)

Jack Kirby touched and influenced many younger artists, helping to shape and define us in some ways. So it's no surprise that you'll find artists creating works honoring The King. I showed you mine last time - let's look at some others as we celebrate Jack's 100th today.

Though it could be argued that he should be saved for the big finish, let's open with someone whose Kirby love we've seen before, Alex Ross-

We usually know him for his inks, but Joe Rubenstein captures his old friend wonderfully in pastels -

From the man who truly earned the name Big John when he stepped into Kirby's shoes to take of the Fantastic Four, John Buscema-

We've previously seen John Byrne & Joe Sinnott's collaborative tribute to The King from FOOM, so here's Joe's solo tribute-

 ...and John Byrne's centerfold from that same issue of FOOM, inked by Duffy Vohland-

Tom Palmer's portrait & tribute to Kirby's influence at 75-

Terry Beatty's tribute to both King and creations-

Richard A Fuscia Jr and young Kirby's creative destiny-

JF Woodward's portrait of power-

...and another look at the Power of Kirby from Luis Chichón-

Thomas Boatright tries to capture Kirby's creative energy...

Moti Friedman makes me want to see the insane animated adventures of the King -

The final page of Orbit's Jack Kirby  bio comic sums things up nicely, drawn by Paul Cox with words by John Judy-

Surprise! We did save Alex Ross for the big finish, with his new portrait of Celestial Kirby for his Jack Kirby 100th Birthday Tribute.

I hope you snagged your copy of the print at San Diego, because now the best you can do is get put on the waitlist to hope for another limited release.

This is, of course, only a small sampling of the Kirby Love offered up to the world, and today being the 100th anniversary of Jack Kirby's birth, there's bound to be many new offerings today.

 Jacky Kirby by Alex Ross, Joe Rubenstein, John Buscema, Joe Sinnott, John Byrne, Duffy Vohland, Tom Palmer, Terry Beatty, Richard A Fuscia Jr., J.F. Woodward, Luis Chichón, Thomas Boatright, Moti Friedman, Paul Cox & John Judy