There's Somthing About Ben (King Kirby 029)

You know who Jack Kirby liked? Jack liked Ben Grimm. Oh, yes - The King loved The Thing. Publicly, he identified himself with Ben, which makes perfect sense. Ben Grimm, the scrapped with the pure heart who often finds himself the moral core of the team. But Jack just plain had fun with Ben:

 

Ben makes great Convention Art, with or without the Doctor's help 

Yes, that's Little Ben Fauntleroy. (youngsters, look up Little Lord Fauntleroy) If that's too dated for you, how about some cowboy Ben?

Even Holiday Ben:

Cave dweller me is rather fond of Ben & Friend here:

Thanks, Jack.

Ben Grimm sketches by Jack Kirby (various & unknown)

I got to California too late (King Kirby 028)

We spoke of Jack Kirby's collages last time. Let's take a look at an experiment done in Spirit World magazine. (You want a number? Fine. #1. But #2 was never printed, so generally it's implied. Okay?) Spirit World was one of a pair of magazines that came out during The King's 1970s period at DC, the other being In The Days Of The Mob. While both were advertised in the comics that came to our local stand back in those pre-comicshop days, the only way to get the actual magazines for us was to mail away for them. That made them very rare for us, and probably hurt sales tremendously since neither magazine continued past the pilot issue.
Jack and his assistants (Steve Sherman & Mark Evanier, names to note) edited the magazines and produced most of the material. Collages were used on several occasions, and in one instance they formed the graphics for the entire story. It's only 3 pages in length, so lets take a look. First, here's how it's described in the table of contents:

...and now, our feature presentation...

 For those of you who weren't there - Welcome to the 70s. (It was only 1971, but Jack was always a bit ahead of schedule)

Children Of The Flaming Wheel! by Jack Kirby from Spirit World #1(1971)

King of Creations (King Kirby 027)

Always seeking new ways to express those colossal worlds within his head, Jack Kirby tried many innovations over the years. One of the most distinctive was his work with photo collages in the comic narrative. Severe printing limitations inhibited a great deal of the potential here (remember - a grey Hulk was too muddy to use and had to be turned green due to printing limits), but The King persevered, pushing the envelope to see what would work. Naturally enough, his first testing ground was The World's Greatest Comic Magazine, the title that defined the Marvel universe.
We'll take a wider look at his collages later in the month. Right now, let's look closer at the beginnings in the Fantastic Four. I'm presenting the original printed version next to the modern reprint version for the sake of comparison. He started very small for his first test, just monitor insets in two panels in Fantastic Four #24:

Five issues later he tried a full panel, using an outer space location to offset the jarringly different type of graphics used. The difference made by print technology becomes very apparent here with the much greater details present in the newer version:

Just three issues later, Kirby expanded to a full page composed of two collage panels. Interestingly, the beam weapon actually worked better with the old printing tech. But this is looks more like a result of the separations & toning prep rather than the print limits. Sometimes things that look great on the monitor don't translate properly to paper. Even with the advances in technology, there's always new problems to deal with.

Soon The King was experimenting with the possibilities in many other books, and outside comics as well. But for all the work with collages he has done over the years, none has had more impact on me than his two-page spread in Fantastic Four #62. Nor, for me, has any worked better no matter what level of print technology. The reason for that was how well it integrated into the story. The huge wall sized monitor with the black & white display worked perfectly, with the strangely different images coming from a strangely different reality. (Remember, this was back in the NASA/Apollo days when we expected those distant signals to be in black & white) Having the black & white figure of Reed on the monitor while the rest stand in front in normal colour just helps cement it. No print tech comparison this time. I only prepped one version:

And, once again, Jack Kirby came in and stomped my young brain. 

I always treasure those boot prints...

Kirby collages from Fantastic Four #s 24, 29, 32 & 62 (1964, 1967)

Green is the new Blue (King Kirby 026)

If we had regular readers at this early stage, they'd know that we have a Blue Monday feature focusing on adult oriented comics and adult art from comics artists. But Jack Kirby didn't really go there, and this is a King Kirby 100 feature - all of which should be Safe For Work because Jack's fans shouldn't have to worry about what they step in while they're here. (Just use that King Kirby 100 link in the topics column and you'll be fine)
Thus a new feature is born, just for Jack:

Of course, this is not to say that The King wouldn't indulge in a bit of cheesecake in his artwork...

 

Okay, yeah. Granny's kind of a mood killer. But she's like that.

And he could certainly use provocative poses and angles to great advantage, suggesting far more than is shown. Note here how the angle of the shot seems quite teasingly suggestive - and then realize the implied reverse-angle shot, with her panties dangling from her ankle.* While showing virtually nothing, it gives the impression of a great deal, much akin to coming back from commercial to find Captain Kirk pulling his boots on:

There was, however, a very specific reason for choosing Green as the new Blue. Kirby once toyed with the idea of doing an underground comic style tabloid magazine for DC called Uncle Carmine's Fat City Comix. Rather than going the erotic comic route, Jack was more prone to the social commentary of the undergrounds. He created a far future society where men were nearly extinct called Galaxy Green. Only two pages of art were ever done for it, one being this cover:

...and here's the other:

Uniquely strange, distinctly Kirby, and filled with untapped potential. So much so, that the tale was completed in the French magazine, Strange. The cover above was finished by Reed Mann, artist for the Jean Depelly scripted French comics. (That image was actually coloured by Tom Zukio after Mann's work due to reproduction limitations)
For the curious, here's a translated page of the French comics:

I just love them yelling 'Casanova!' instead of 'Geronimo!' It's a silly little thing, but it also seems very Kirby.
You can find the entire translated comic at TwoMorrows, the publishers of many fine productions, including the more than merely great Jack Kirby Collector magazine.

===

*(yeah. I know. That's actually just her hose dropped around her ankle. But, it's all about the impressions that cue the reader's responses. Details follow. Sometimes - how many had to go back and look?)

Sketches & pages by Jack Kirby, excepting French Galaxy Green page by Jean Depelly & Reed Mann. Kirby page art from In The Days Of The Mob #1.

Decades in Days... (King Kirby 025)

One fourth of the way through the King Kirby 100, and a question has begun to plague the back of my mind. Jack Kirby's work was spread over 6 decades, perhaps for very good reason. Reading through so much in such a short time... The Question rises up...

How

Much

Kirby

Can

The

Human

Mind

Withstand

Before...

Mindstorm triggered by Jack Kirby, mostly from 2001: A Space Odyssey with a touch of Forever, People

Crossing Boundaries (King Kirby 024)

Jack Kirby was, of course, a master of classic comic form horror stories, having spent many years creating them. By their very nature, they gave a certain freedom to let his imagination go galloping where other genres might keep things more tightly leashed. That very freedom must have held great appeal for him as an artist at times.
Let take a look at this little tale...

Now, what's this? The (disrespectfully named) Losers? Yup. Jack's decided to go classic horror story in the middle of the horrors of war.

It's a classic tale of an officer who lost all his men in an ancient temple seeking to redeem himself. The team makes their way to the temple, barely skirting Japanese troops along the way. The Major's tensions build until, as they're hiding from enemy troops above the temple, he freaks out and breaks away as the fighting erupts, and finds himself cut off and alone after the explosions...

I enjoyed being caught by surprise when opening up what was expected to be rather more generic war comics. The cover only kinda-sorta tangentially refers to them being underground in the temple. That's about as close as it comes to giving any clue to what happens in the book.

Though we've focused only on the horror story aspects of the tale here, The King mixes the genres effortlessly and probably had fun running free outside the typical war story constraints. It certainly had to be more fun than revisiting his old war experiences for a different tale.

Unless, y'know, his war experiences were a little weirder than we suspect...

Bonus!
Since i avoided all the action in this issue, here's a two-page spread of our heroes avoiding the action in Our Fighting Forces #151 (the first issue that Jack Kirby took over the title):

The Major's Dream by Jack Kirby with D. Bruce Berry in Our Fighting Forces #161, bottom panel from #151 (1975)