Kirby On Campus (King Kirby 034)

In 1966 Esquire magazine ran a piece on the rise of comic books in campus culture. Through Marvel, they got Jack Kirby to illustrate the article and do a cover for the issue. Tragically, the cover was not only never used, it was lost and has remained unprinted to this day, and has only ever been seen by a very lucky few. So, no cover image for this post. I'm going with the lost Kirby cover.

 

 

Here's full page view so you can see how it all went together, even if you can't really read much in these images:

Okay, You Passed... illustrated by Jack Kirby for Esquire magazine (September, 1966)

Jack Knows... (King Kirby 033)

Jack Kirby has done so many cool things over his career that i've forgotten half of the ones that i even knew about. Digging through my Kirby archives, i'm constantly delighted by one find after another. But one that tickled me in particular was a piece he did for the Los Angles Times' West Magazine supplement back in 1972.

Back in those days, NASA was launching their Pioneer probes, expected to be the first man made objects to leave the solar system. In a big PR move, they decided to place a plaque on the probes that looked like this:

The plaque shows a Hydrogen atom, drawings of humans with the probe for scale, what is basically an astrogation fix for our star, and indications for what planet we call home.
This made my face scrunch and head hurt to look at it. Jack explains why below, but first...

West Magazine contacted Alex Jones, Jack Kirby, Peter Max, James McMullan, Victor Moscoso, and Virgil Patch seeking each artist's notion of what plaque should have been sent instead.
Here's Jack's idea:

In a letter sent with the artwork, Kirby explained:
"It appears to me that man's self image has always spoken far more truthfully about him than does his reality-figure. My version of the plaque would have revealed the exuberant, self-confident super visions with which we've clothed ourselves since time immemorial. The comic strip super-heroes and super-heroines, in my belief, personify humanity's innate idealism and drive. However, I would have included no further information than a rough image of Earth and its one moon. I see no wisdom in the eagerness to be found and approached by any intelligence with the ability to accomplish it from any sector of space. In meetings between 'discoverers' and 'discoverees' history has always given the advantage to the finders. In the case of the Jupiter Plaque, I feel that a tremendous issue was thoughtlessly taken out of the world forum by a few individuals who have marked a clear trail to our door.
My point is, who will come a-knocking -- the trader or the tiger?"

Or, as he summarized verbally - "I would rather have aliens believe that we are a race of super-beings. I'd also leave out the map. Why ask for trouble?"

That exactly covered my reaction. Why are we telling potential conquerors or exploiters (y'know - like us) how to find us? And why weren't the rest of us consulted on this?
I'm a huge fan of science and exploration, but have terrible problems with the ... let's say galactically provincial thinking of so many of the decision makers.

Anyway...  I love his design for the plaque. Here's a version prepared to look like it's on the plaque:

There's a bit of mystery about the two versions - note the different colour schemes on the uniforms. Mike Royer, the inker for the West Magazine art, indicates that the white background image is the original he worked with. But the other was restored by Mark Evanier, one of Kirby's two primary assistants (among other things) over the years. How it came into existence to be restored is a question that none have answered to my knowledge.

Jupiter Plaque by Jack Kirby with Mike Royer for LA Times West Magazine (12 Sept 1972)

PinUps, not PinUps (King Kirby 032)

In the early days of Marvel Comics, they did a lot of little things to try to build an kind of club-house atmosphere, including a variety of feature pages, one of which was having Jack Kirby draw mini-posters of some of his characters.

Right from the second issue of the Fantastic Four they started a series of full-page pinups featuring each of the team so you could cut your comic up and hang it on the wall.  And we did. We tore out pages, cut out trading stamps, filled in puzzles and generally savaged so many comics while reading them to scraps. (Psst! Hey! Collectors! That's why those old comics are worth so much money. All these new #1 events you're investing in? Good luck with that.)

Anyway, let's look at those PinUps of each of our team:

Fantastic Four #2:

Fantastic Four #3:

Fantastic Four #4:

Fantastic Four #5:

...

Fantastic Four #6:

...?...

Fantastic Four #7:

???

Fantastic Four #8:

...hello?...

Fantastic Four #9:

...you still there?

Fantastic Four #10:

Damn. The Man sure was harsh to Sue and Jean back in the day...

Fantastic Four PinUps drawn by Jack Kirby for Fantastic Four #s 2, 3, 4, & 10 (1962)

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)