Go Ahead - Take A Guess (King Kirby 060)

Quick question:
What do PT Barnum, Daniel Boone, George Washington Carver, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, and Robert E. Lee have in common? They are all Americans, but the answer we're looking for isn't quite that easy. I'll give you a bit to think about it.
Since they are all Americans, here's a nice Jack Kirby drawing of Captain America. Scroll down past Cap when you've got your answer, if you're playing along at home. (Or work. We're not telling anyone)

Welcome back.
If your answer was "They all had biographies drawn by Jack Kirby" -  Good Job!

Nor were they alone. Just take a gander at this list:

Quite a famous roster. Hmm...
I don't recognize one of the only four women in this collection. Who was Jane Addams?

Well, damn. A Nobel Peace Prize winner who seems to have actually earned the award. But she seems rather forgotten 70 years later.

And, wait...   who's this? James Cash Penney?

Now, how did J.C. Penney get on this list?

Oh...

...published by J.C. Penney Company, Inc. Clever boy...
Got Jack Kirby to draw it.
Very clever boy.

all art by Jack Kirby, mostly for 48 Famous Americans by J.C. Penney Co. (1947)

What'd He Say? (King Kirby 059)

We all know about the famous Marvel Method that led to the artists co-plotting/writing their books by default, right? But, even knowing this we don't know if we read what Jack Kirby was 'writing'.
Mike Gartland wrote a very interesting 4-part series for the Jack Kirby Collector, starting in #21, entitled A Failure To Communicate. In these articles Gartland covered some of the differences between Jack's margin notes explaining the story and the final story as printed. It's a nice series that covers some potential reasons leading to The King's exit from Marvel to DC and worth reading.
The example strip he used in the first part was the Origin Of The Inhumans back-up feature from The Mighty Thor #147. To allow you to more easily track the differences, i've eliminated the text from the lettered pencils and cleaned up Kirby's notes for easy reading. (Don't try to correlate descriptions to word balloons - it won't work) Read through this 5 page story with Kirby's notes to follow the story.
The published version appears below so you can compare, contrast, and critique at your leisure.

There you have Kirby's tale of failure of expectations and predictions for a dark future for the Inhumans.

Pretty much the exact opposite slant of what Jack had intended. One can only guess how annoying that might have been for him.

art from The Mighty Thor #147 by Jack Kirby, inks by Joe Sinnott (1967)

Proto-Kirby Tales (King Kirby 058)

I know we already mention Jack Curtiss as one of the names that Jacob Kurtzberg used for his artwork before settling on Jack Kirby. Have we mentioned Floyd Kelly? I'm not sure, but if not we're mentioning it now.
I gotta say... I'm glad he didn't decide to keep that one. While that Pretty Boy Floyd - Machine Gun Kelly mash-up would work real well for his crime comics work that we were looking at yesterday, it just doesn't match up with his artwork nearly as well as Jack Kirby, or Jack Curtiss, or even Lance Kirby.
(Again - all of these ramblings/ponderings upon names is coming from someone who goes by a number. Take that into consideration)
Anyway - Floyd Kelly did a little piece in Mystery Men Comics #10 starring Wing Turner. It's quite short - only 3 pages. This is from early 1940, just about the time Jack & Joe Simon were starting their first work for Timely/Marvel.

Wing may have returned in the next exciting issue, but Jack (Floyd) did not. He and Joe headed off to make history and fortunes for others. Within the year, Captain America was punching Hitler in the face and making superstars of Simon & Kirby.
But, since that was so short and we mentioned the Jack Curtiss alias a couple times above, here's the first episode of Solar Legion by Jack Curtis from Crash Comics #1:

There were two more 5 page Solar Legion stories in the following issues, and then Jack was gone. I have no clue if the series continued after his departure. This, too, was early 1940 as Jack & Joe were getting started at Timely.

Wing Turner and Solar Legion by Jack "Alias" Kirby for Mystery Men Comics #10 and Crash Comics #1 (1940)

Reality Comics (King Kirby 057)

I talked a bit last month about some of the reality hopping/bending adventures at DC comics where-in the creators of the comics in Earth Prime would

cross over to interact with their characters on Earth One (or Two or ... well, it used to be infinite). It was all strange world-bending fun.

Over at Marvel comics, they didn't have the same constraints. Superman lived in Metropolis. Batman in Gotham City. Flash in Central City. And so it goes with their roster of heroes.

But the Fantastic Four - Spider-Man - Doctor Strange - DareDevil - The Avengers ...  they all operated out of New York City, right here in the 'real' world. Marvel comics, of course, are published in New York City. Which can lead to that weird little blurb on the cover of Fantastic Four #10. And, inside the comic, after a few pages of character interaction with the First Family of Marvel Comics...

The FF need that licensing fee, so Reed changes to some civvies and heads over to the Marvel offices...

Last we had seen the bad Doctor, he was flying off uncontrollably into deep space. He explains that he encountered technologically advanced beings, learning much from them, even body transference that they use to forestall death. Now he has returned to Earth, augmented by greater-than-ever technology...

Reed tries to explain to the others, but Victor is ready for that...

The team each share their fantasies of how to deal with "Doom," but Victor's got his own plans, of course.

Now that he's secured the real Mr. Fantastic - how to deal with the rest of the team?  As always, he's got a plan. A whacky plan, but a plan. Let's let him explain it:

The team flips for this news, and they head off to chill while "Reed" gets things ready.
However, the real Reed manages to escape and tries to reach Alicia Masters hoping she can perceive the truth about his situation. Alicia isn't alone, however...

They take "Doom" back to the Baxter Building to get "Reed's" advice...

...which leads to a solution heavily steeped in that crazy Silver Age comic book science:

 Yup. Right through walls and everything.

And so, once again, Doctor Doom is lost to his seeming... Doom?
Until the next time he walks into the Marvel offices, likely to demand a cut of the money generated by his appearances in their books.

our comics is real comics from Fantastic Four #10 (1963)

No Wonder that Deadline Doom was Dreaded (King Kirby 056)

An Artist In Contention With A Contentious Monster.
This is unarguably my favorite Jack Kirby drawing of Jack Kirby. I'm just going to leave it laying here and see if it doesn't become your favorite, too.

Jack Kirby by Jack Kirby (1978)