Saturday Morning Howling (King Kirby 044)

I really like Samuel L. Jackson's characters on screen. (I'd like to say that i really like him, but i've never met the man.) I very much enjoy his Nick Fury. But - I have to wonder how Jack Kirby would have felt about Nick these days. While Mr. Jackson works quite well for the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., it wouldn't work so well for Sgt. Fury back in World War II. I know that the current trend is to racially diversify casting and pretend things were always nice and happily integrated. I even understand and appreciate the notion attempting to influence culture by example. But that doesn't always work well for me. If we forget what things were like, we invite it to happen again. And so watching Sam Jackson's Nick Fury leading the Howlers would have a constant cognitive dissonance clawing at the back of my skull throughout the movie. Not to say that only white men were heroic figures in WW2, not by a long shot. But any minority led command that ran like the Howling Commandos would have faced a firing squad or worse.
And Jack was there in the war. He had a gut connection to Sgt. Fury & the Howlers. So... I wonder sometimes how The King would have felt about some of how his old creations fare these days.
We won't discuss the horrors of their comic book fates. Much better to look back.
If you only know Nick Fury in his modern incarnation...

The first few issues of Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos had some of those pin-up pages that early Marvel comics used to feature so often. Rather than focus on the characters as most other books did, here they focused on the equipment from World War II:

Then there was that time that Sgt. Fury met Reed Richards during WW2...

It was quite the different Nick Fury back in the day. Much as i'm looking forward to seeing S. L. Jackson's Nick Fury fighting a war in Captain Marvel, it would be so cool to see a World War II adventure with Jack Kirby's Sgt. Fury and the Howlers...

all original art from Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos #s 1-5 (1963)

Traveling Full Circle (King Kirby 043)

If you're from the future and reading this, odds are the posts are in chronologically reverse order for you. So you Futurites might not remember that we're wondering from whence came this guy:

Our Champion of those many mentally disturbed readers with a flying saucer complex comes from Charlton Comc's 1955 comedy title, From Here To Insanity. I only have a couple issues, but they seem to feature a different artist for each, which is kind of a cool approach to take. My other issue features Basil Wolverton. (Oddly enough, autocorrect wants to make his name Wolverhampton. That's more common?) But the issue pictured at right is #11.
 In this issue, Jack Kirby's artwork is the star feature.
Aside from the cover, there's 23 pages of Kirby art, including a 6 page parody of the Disney movie version of 20.000 Leagues Under The Sea of which we're only going to run the first page here.Sadly,  Jack isn't working from the best script on this one.

There's also a Rex Morgan, M.D. parody...

...a DIY feature...

...a bit of Foreign Intrigue...

...a mock newspaper...

...some general tomfoolery...

...and an odd little two-pager that's my favorite bit from the book:

Sing it, Brother!

all page art by Jack Kirby for From Here To Insanity (1955)

42 is NOT the Answer (King Kirby 042)

If we had any regular readers, they'd know that today is Friday, and we ain't up to Friday Night Fights, so here at the Voice of ODD! we do

For our second King Kirby 100 edition of Friday Fun & Games we're getting a little harder. This time on Whozit? we want you to

NAME THAT INKER!

Jack Kirby penciled all 9 figures of Ben Grimm depicted above. Your mission, should you be bored enough to accept it, is to identify all 9 Inkers. 

No, there are no trick entries this time. All 9 were inked by different artists, only one person inked each picture, and no Inkers are repeated. 

Join us tomorrow for Saturday Solutions to see the answers.

Ben Grimm penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by - yeah, right! come back tomorrow

Young Kurtzberg - easy read version (King Kirby 041)

If you didn't read the previous post (King Kirby 040), you might wish to do so before reading this one. The interviews with Jack Kirby give background and perspective to this strip which was drawn back in 1983, and eventually published in Argosy #2 in 1990. The Kirby Museum lists this as being an 8 page story. I guess they skipped the two-page spread that brings the page count up to 10, as you can see here:

Street Code by Jack Kirby for Argosy magazine (1990)

Young Kurtzberg (King Kirby 040)

Let's return to the Jack Kirby interview in The Comics Journal #134. Last time, Kirby spoke of his early art career. This time, let's jump back before that to his days growing up before he started his career.

For a bit of extra perspective, here's an excerpt from the interview in The Jack Kirby Treasury, Vol. 1 covering the same period:

Here's a photo of the Boy's Brotherhood Republic that ran with both interviews:

 ...and a cartoon from the BBR Reporter's 3rd Anniversary:

And, lastly, we have a sample of young Jacob Kurtzberg's first weekly strip, K's Konceptions:

Jack Kirby interviews by Gary Groth and unknown (Greg Theakston?) for The Comics Journal #134 and The Jack Kirby Treasury Vol. 1 (1990, 1982)