Mobster Monday (King Kirby 051)

Just over 45 years ago, when The King was building the Fourth World and reshaping the DC universe and giving them their greatest villain, (see upcoming Justice League debacle as a for-instance) these strange ads for not-quite-a-comic magazines started to appear:

Oh, these were so cruel. We knew right away that both the Handy Andy and the Rose's 5 & Dime where we bought our comics from a spinner rack were NEVER going to see these, so neither would we. (Somehow long distance purchases via mail never seemed to work out - a condition that plagues me on the web to this day) In The Days Of The Mob and Spirit World became Holy Grails for our little group of  geeks. And, like the Grail, they remained unobtainable for long years. Not until questing across the country to California did i finally see this cover in color:

Spirit World eluded me for a few years more, but that was okay. Jack Kirby and The Mob was bigger appeal for me, by far. I may have frequently dwelt on the edges of the spirit worlds, but that generally left me less interested in the genre as a rule. Kirby and gangsters? Oh, hell yeah. I tracked down a bunch of old Simon & Kirby gangster tales by then - Real Clue Crime Stories, Justice Traps The Guilty, Police Trap, Headline Comics... I was hooked on his crime tales every bit as much as his superhero epics. And here we've got Big Al Capone! Ma's Boys - that's gotta be Ma Barker, right? John Dillinger!
As crime comics go, this was the biggest cross-over event ever, even if they were all separate stories, linked only by Jack Kirby telling them. Could you get a better link? This was the All-Stars!

That inside front cover was pure joy, confirmation of Ma Barker, a reminder that the Kansas City Massacre involved Pretty Boy Floyd, feature & article... and at the bottom - "Written, drawn & editted by Jack Kirby" - framed by a Kirby Collage. And Vince Colletta backing him up. Well, hot burning damn! And on the first page - what's this? This isn't even on the table of contents. Bonus!

Which leads to the first story in the book...

Okay - this one was weird, and it had nothing to do with the contents of the magazine. By the time In The Days Of The Mob was finally in my hands, we were watching Big Bad Mama with Angie Dickenson standing in for Ma Barker, and William Shatner & Tom Skerritt subbing for The Boys. And while it wasn't Ma Barker's story (cough *daughters* cough), it paralleled enough that Dickenson & Shatner's naked love scenes just completely skewed anything vaguely related. I pretty much just skimmed this one on the first read through.
After Ma's tale, the warden heads over to the Dispensary to stop in on a group playing cards while healing 'old wounds' - Owney Madden, Arnold Rothstein, Dutch Shultz, Bo Weinberg, Casbah Holstein, and Jack "Legs" Diamond. But a fight breaks out and the guards have to pull out a flame thrower to keep the peace, so we head over to meet-

Not surprisingly, Big Al gets the longest story in the book, including another Kirby spread:

After the main act, we get a Featurette...

...an Article...

...and then back for one more big story...

...with another great Kirby splash...

...before wrapping up with a 2-page info piece reminiscent of some of the old 1940s crime features Kirby & Simon had done...

I find it interesting that he avoided the typical need to use the Latin Modus Operandi as well as the English Method of Operation, keeping a more street-level feel to things. That's quite rare in my experience.

Wait? What's this...?

Sergio Aragones? What? How?
Yep - His name was there in the table of contents. I just somehow missed it. After the slap in the brain from his cartoons popping up unexpectedly, it was a terrific bonus. How did this come about?
The most delightfully unexpected people turn up with Jack Kirby at times.

And inside the back cover, a teaser of a magazine that never was...

Ah - if only there had been a distribution system in place for these magazines at the time. So many wanted them, so few could get them...

There was even a fold out poster in the center:

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to go put on the record and read along...

Everything except Sergio Aragones by Jack Kirby for In The Days Of The Mob #1 (1971)

Sergio Aragones by Sergio Aragones
Lying record mock-up by Tyrone Biljan

Mighty Fine Jack (King Kirby 050)

We heard Jack Kirby talk about not having the right outlook for fine art, lasting only 1 day at the famed Pratt Institute. But that doesn't mean he didn't indulge in painting for his leisure, nor that he did not have the facility for "Fine Art". There was simply too much art bottled up in the man to release it that slowly.
When painting, he often favored what is, for me, the hardest medium to work with - water colours. I can only assume his speed helped him there. I have to cheat. (I work digitally, and so can alter the laws of physics governing paint drying and dynamics) That he so well mastered such a difficult type of painting in his spare time just impresses me all the more.
So let us take a pause on this fine Sunday afternoon and just enjoy the paintings of Jack Kirby. Not surprisingly, some were combination of inks and watercolours, for expanded comic style paintings of familiar(ish) superheroes like Captain America...

 ...and Coal Tiger (You can call him Black Panther)

Some combined his collage work, too, as these paintings of Metron and Darkseid of the New Gods:

 

 The gods roamed through Kirby's paintings...

 

Some of his paintings from the late 60s, before heading over to DC to unleash the New Gods foreshadow his work to come. Given the time frame and psychedelic styling, i call them his Acid Gods, but Jack didn't need the LSD to create them.

Or, how about Acid Kree?

 Or a home for the Acid Gods?

Captain Glory looks like he knew those acid gods...

This is delightfully titled When It Is Spring:

 

The Mechanoid appeared briefly to ask a question previously, here's a better look:

Probably one of the oddest pairings for me is Jack Kirby and the NFL. Here's Fran Tarkenton and a true Fantasy Football League player:

Yeah. We're gonna have to come back to that...

Always finish big, they say. So here's a Galactic Head (Not to be confused with a Celestial Skull as we saw in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie - but that traces back to Jack, too)

 

 all art by Jack Kirby, painted over time

Ridin' Lightnin' (King Kirby 049)

Let's continue looking at some old Jack Kirby comics. So old, in fact, that he wasn't Jack Kirby yet. At this point, he was signing Lance Kirby for the Lightnin' And The Lone Rider newspaper strip. In 1939 & 1940, Kirby's sunday comics were reprinted in Famous Funnies, starting with issue #62. They seemed pretty excited to get the strip, because in issue #61 not only did they run this full page ad on the inside front cover...

...they also ran four more ads scattered through the book:

The strip with Kirby's art ran from #s 62-65 and 72-76 with 2 pages in each, excepting 72 which had only one. Here's the complete run of Lightnin' And The Lone Rider from Famous Funnies. I'm missing issue 75, so those strips have been replaced by black & white inks that were reprinted in the Compete Jack Kirby #2.

Lance Kirby by Jack Kirby from Famous Funnies (1939,1940)