Early Art (King Kirby 031)

Last time The King talked about his early art days. This time, let's take a look at some of the work he did under other names before settling on Jack Kirby.

Bob Brown:

Curt Davis:

Lawrence:

Lance Kirby:

Ted Grey:

Teddy:

Charles Nicholaus:

Jack Curtiss:

???

(for Lincoln Newspaper Features)

Early Art Days (King Kirby 030)

I mentioned previously Gary Groth's massive interview with Jack "King" Kirby back in issue #134 of The Comics Journal. Let's start digging into that a bit. But just a bit at a time with over 40 pages, it's an epic interview. Even better, Roz joins in partway through. If that name isn't familiar to you, Roz Kirby was Jack's wife for nearly 60 years. If you ever met them, you know she was very much a part of him. Also, quite conveniently for the interview, she acted as something of an external memory storage bank for Jack at times.
That's later, though. We're going to start not quite at the beginning, but close. We'll come back to Jack's early days growing up and the street code.

Today we'll focus on The King's beginnings as an artist.
(NOTE: The excerpted interview segments below sometimes skip over portions of the conversation that were less relevant to today's topic, so this is not a complete transcript of the article. Some of the skipped bits are linked to other topics we'll be covering later, and will appear at that time.)

excerpts from Gary Groth's interview with Jack Kirby for The Comics Journal #134 (1990)

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.