Kirby Komics (King Kirby 075)

Welcome once again to Sunday Morning Funnies. For our first selection this morning, let's jump all the way back to 1947, to Punch & Judy Comics, v.3 #1. Jack Kirby is drawing Earl, The Rich Rabbit, a precursor to Disney's Uncle Scrooge, who debuted the following year-

I have to say, this makes me want to see more Jack Kirby cartoon work. He would have kicked ass in this market, too.
How about some parody work? In Crazy, Man, Crazy magazine, he illustrated an adaptation of the 1955 John Wayne film, Blood Alley, in a piece entitled

BLOODSHOT ALLEY

The piece included text that stood separate from the illustrated adaptation, so we'll ignore it. Jack's illustrations are covered with the captions:

Okay, some of our readers >*cough cough*< might be less than thrilled reading a parody of something they've never seen; probably never heard of. So how about we wrap up today's funnies with a Jack Kirby drawn parody of one of his popular Marvel creations?

Now go thou forth and smile this day!

all page art by Jack Kirby from Punch & Judy v3#1(1947), Crazy, Man, Crazy v2#2 (1956), and Not Brand Echh #2 (with Frank Giacoia) (1967)

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)