Entertaining Headlines (King Kirby 039)

Y'know, the news must have been a lot more interesting back in the first half of the last century.
I mean, check out these Headlines:

Yep - that last one was out of numeric order. But it's such a great cover, it got saved for last. These Headline Comics covers are all Jack Kirby/Joe Simon pencil/inks.

covers by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon for Headline Comics (1947-1951)

Branding Kirby (King Kirby 038)

As we saw earlier today, Jack Kirby did cartoon parody art, too. One of the first places those who know that side of The King might think that ad we looked at came from Not Brand Echh!. Others might now be going Not Brand Wha-? To explain:
Back in the 1960s, Mad Magazine forged a market for a slew of comedy/parody comic magazines. (Cracked.com readers might be interested to know it used to be a cheap imitation print magazine that we didn't read back before the internet gave them new life) Marvel Comics, always eager to fill as much shelf space as possible ever since they got out of that distribution deal with National Periodicals, decided they needed a comedy parody book. For a fair bit they'd been calling the competition Brand Echh, and so a new title was born - Brand Echh! August 1967 Marvel titles like the Fantastic Four ran full page ads featuring the cover of the first issue, and it was proudly proclaimed in the top bulletion of the BBP that month:

Notice that it's called "Brand Echh!" while i referred above to "Not Brand Echh!" That's the fault of their title slogan on the cover...

Who says a comic book has to be good??
not Brand Echh
And everybody ignored the line at the top as intro and called the book Not Brand Echh. Take a look at the contents page for the first issue:

Note that it is listed as Brand Echh in the indicia at the bottom of the page. By issue #5, they gave up and changed it to Not Brand Echh (Possibly in issue #4. I don't have that issue)
For younger readers, PG is an abbreviation for 'page', not a movie rating. The ratings board wouldn't change the designation from M to PG for another 3 years at this point.
Of course, to lead off a parody of Marvel comics, you pretty much have to do a parody of Marvel's First Family, the book that embodies Marvel comics - the Fantastic Four. But who are you going to get to parody Jack Kirby? Well, Jack Kirby, of course. They brought in Frank Giacoia to ink Kirby's pencils and give them a different feel than Joe Sinnott's work over on the FF's home book, and - Presto!:

But, no - Comet Feldmeyer isn't from Not Brand Echh.

Cover & story art by Jack Kirby & Frank Giacoia for Not) Brand Echh! #1 (1967)

Kirby's First Cover (King Kirby 037)

You know what we haven't looked at? Of course you do - it's in the title. One of those obvious things that gets completely overlooked most of the time. I can't remember seeing it featured in any piece on Jack Kirby, though it's probably in one of the many books & magazines still waiting for us to dig up and find.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Kirby's first comic book cover was a collaboration with Joe Simon. At this early stage, it was Jack on pencils and Joe on inks, for Champion Comics #9  cover dated July 1940, from Worth Publishing Co.:

That appears to be Duke O'Dowd, The Human Meteor (not Duke O'Dowd, The Champ as it first appeared to me. The Champ is a different character) having issues with the colourist on the cover.

Doesn't Liberty Lads sound like a Simon & Kirby creation? It focuses on "two hardy Colonial lads" in Revolutionary times in the American Colonies. Jack & Joe would certainly go for more than two, but they'd have run with that concept and title, all the way to glory.

Bonus Fun!
Here's two Simon & Kirby covers from Champ Comics:

Champ Comics is from a different company, Family Comics, Inc., located in St. Louis, Missouri. Champion Comics was published in Buffalo, New York. Did The Champ take over the comic and move across country? No clue. And yet, our Human Meteor is here, too. Now he's wearing red on the cover and green inside, while up there at Champion Comics he's wearing blue on the cover and red inside. I'm still not sure what color his outfit is supposed to be, or if he's just fashionable. 

Kirby/Simon cover for Champions Comics #9 (1940) and Champ Comics #s 19 & 21 (1942)

Niche Market Kirby (King Kirby 036)

A talent as widely diverse as Jack Kirby's will please nearly everyone once they find the right Kirby to match their own inner being. Over time, nearly every type of reader/viewer will find immense satisfaction with The King.
Here, for instance, one can find material designed to please "mentally disturbed readers with a flying saucer complex":

Kirby For EVERYBODY!

Comet Feldmeyer by Jack Kirby for [spoilers - come back tomorrow]

Best of Marvel's Best? (King Kirby 035)

I thought i'd try to pick out Jack Kirby's 10 best covers for his epic run on The Fantastic Four, Marvel's flagship title. I limited it to just the first 100 issues, no annuals, king-size specials, etc.,.

I've managed to narrow it down to about 30 so far. I don't know if narrowing it to ten is going to be possible for me. So, new idea! Here's an overview of all 100 for you to peruse and see if you can decide before i do.

 Some of the covers aren't in the best shape. I had to go with what i had on hand. As always, click for a closer view.
Meanwhile - I'll keep trying to narrow down my selection. Maybe it'll wind up being a Top 20 instead.

100 Covers by Jack Kirby for Fantastic Four #s 1-100 (1961-1970)

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)