Prisoner Kirby (King Kirby 074)

Just a year before he died, Jack Kirby appeared on Prisoners Of Gravity, a TV news magazine broadcast in Canada. The show was a tribute to Jack hosted by Commander Rick who also interviews Will Eisner, Walt Simonson, Scott McCloud, Max Allan Collins, Kevin Eastman, Len Wein, Dave Gibbons, Charles De Lint, and Samuel R. Delany. Eisner tells the story that was shown from his The Dreamer yesterday, adding much humor to the telling. There were a lot of good bits to the show, but we're going to look at what pointed me to Prisoners Of Gravity - a partial transcript of the Jack Kirby interview segments from John Morrow, one of TwoMorrows - the home of Jack Kirby collecting. The transcription ran in Jack Kirby Collector #14.
The King speaks at the concept level on comics & superheroics:

 The whole show is worth watching, not just for the things that Jack has to say...

 ...but also for the insights offered about The King.

I'm not going to embed the videos here, but you can watch the complete program on YouTube:

 Part One / Part Two / Part Three

transcript rom Jack Kirby Collector #14 (1997) 

Saturday Solutions 005 (King Kirby 073)

Well - did you find them all?
Here's the answers to yesterday's Spot The Differences puzzle:

 1> Ear more pointed.
 2> Different drawing of Wasp
 3> Longer hair.
 4> Hands are reversed.
 5> Costume now Green.
 6> Blue-Eyed Ben
 7> Belt Logo now A instead of X
 8> Silver Surfer replaced Iceman
 9> Hands & Legs now bare.
10> No-Spider-Man.
11> New Fang.
12> Hands are green.
13> Eyes have pupils.
14> Disk's reduced in size.
15> Where's Loki?
16> Lightning stripe reversed.
17> Word order reversed.
18> Star and A reversed positions.
19> Leg now Tail instead.
20> Visor now has red quartz.
21> Possibly now Probably
22> Doom Dentition.
23> Sunglasses instead of eyepatch.
24> Pacman disk on chest.
25> Tie now bow tie.
26> Lost a bunch of weight.
27> 4 logo backwards.

How Bad Did It Suck? (King Kirby 072)

Almost 40 years ago Marvel found itself in a similar position to their current media ownership issues. When making a Fantastic Four cartoon, they couldn't use the Human Torch because he had been licensed to another studio (Universal? Columbia?) for a possible movie. So they replaced Johnny with H.E.R.B.I.E., which was an acronym for Who Gives A Crap? We hated the cartoon before it ever hit the air because of that stupid looking robot taking Johnny Storm's place. Animation as a whole was at a low point, and pretty much everything sucked, it was only a question of how hard.
Memories of the cartoon are so vague now, i truly cannot recall the quality at all. I'm not even certain i watched them. I was starting a family at the time and working multiple jobs back in those days. I missed a lot of shows - we didn't even have VCRs yet.
But, y'know - look at some of Jack Kirby's storyboards for one of those old toons (episode 9 - The Frightful Four, for the curious among you):

I look at those, and now i want to see those old cartoons. If only to see how badly they screwed up Jack's storyboards, but hopefully to see how much of his original work carried through to the final cartoons.
And i absolutely Love that shot of Ben running in that next to last row of panels. I want to see how that looked animated!

storyboards by Jack Kirby for Fantastic Four Season 01 Episode 09 (1978)

Splashing & Making Waves (King Kirby 071)

I've been pretty clear on my love for those big double-page splashes from Jack Kirby (& sometimes Joe Simon, like today). Back when Simon & Kirby were just getting started on Captain America, they weren't really doing those yet. But they still had some very cool single pagers:

Okay - Queer Case of the Mudering Butterfly and the Ancient Mummies is a winner all by itself. And even way back in 1941, they were already creating villains for the Marvel universe for heroes other than Captain America, like-

And if you don't already love this splash...

...how about the extra in-story splash showing off its innards:

In issue #6 they started using the centerfold of the comic for those glorious 2-page spreads. They left after #10, so they only did five for Captain America Comics:

Some of the wild, edge-of-surreal, fun of their later design layouts is starting to show here, but it feels like they're still testing the waters, seeing what works for them.
It's one of those situations that leaves me wondering - what if they hadn't gotten screwed on their arrangement for Captain America and had stayed with the book & company back then? Besides how that would likely have reshaped Jack & Joe's financial fortunes over the years, how would it have shaped Timely? When they left, the kid they let write the text pages for Captain America as of #3 wound up running the place. You have to think the company's history would have followed a significantly different path.

But, more to the point, what kind of terrific Captain America art would we have seen if they had stayed on the book for a few years? All the great work they did with the Stuntman spreads and such leave me wanting that cross-continuum viewer to peek at artwork from alternate histories.
I know. I should just be grateful for what we got. But Jack taught me to imagine more...

all art by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon from Captain America Comics #s 1-10 (1941-2)

Kirby In Comics, continued (King Kirby 070)

As we've seen, Jack Kirby not only created comics, but appeared in them as well. It's inevitable that one who was so influential to the industry and who is such a "character" himself would wind up being translated into comic reality by others as well as himself. Of course, anyone writing about the early days of comics will have to work hard to not include him, no matter what he's called. Like Jake Corby in Wordsmith:

...or, more simply Jack King in Will Eisner's autobiographical book The Dreamer:

Sometimes he's not mentioned at all by name, but you know who he is...

And sometimes it's nothing more than a little shout-out in the crowd (emphasis added):

Of course, it's always fun to see Jack showing up in a book he helped create...

 ...but even more fun when he shows up in the stories, whether in a parody, as in FF Annual #5...

...or in the main story, as in FF #176...

 At that point, the Human Torch arrived to rescue Jack & John, and the Fantastic Four do brief battle with the Impossible Man, leading to...

SPOILER: It wasn't so terrible - it was the Frightful Four, most inept of FF villains, holding new member tryouts at the Baxter Building.

Those appearances were always lots of fun, but don't be thinking they were created in the Marvel Age - Jack Kirby & Joe Simon were doing that sort of thing decades earlier, as in Boy Commandos #1 when their heroes are in trouble:

Damn, that was a cool little bit, bringing in their character from another book. 1942 - was that the first cross-over? Probably not, but it was a fun break in the middle of the tale.

This post is getting long, and it's not going to end soon. We'll return to Kirby In Comics on Sunday. Join us then, if you haven't already done so, readers from the future.

Jack Kirby appears in Wordsmith #12 (1988), The Dreamer (1986), Captain America: The Legend (1996), Orion #5 (2000), X-Men #98 (1976), Fantastic Four Annual #5 (1967), Fantastic Four #176 (1976), and Boy Commandos #1 (1942)