Right On Target (King Kirby 081)

Over the years, Jack Kirby worked on a lot of westerns, as he did most every other genre. His best known work in the genre is probably his Kid Colt, Outlaw covers for Marvel in the early 60s, and Boy's Ranch, produced with long-time partner Joe Simon.
For me, the greatest western work from The King was, again, partnered with Joe Simon for their Mainline publishing company, and later Charlton - Bulls Eye. For primary evidence, allow me to submit the fabulously designed covers for the 7 issue run. #5 is probably one of my all time favorite designs for any cover.

Simon & Kirby were rocking the west with this series. If those covers aren't enough to convince you, let's go to issue #3 (as we so often do) and take a look at the lead tale. Let me say right up front, this should be a genre, not just something we get on very rare occasions, like here and Valley Of Gwangi.
But, moving right along...

Bulls-Eye - the cowboy equivalent of a superhero, from fashion sense to story encounters. Only seven issues, and Jack didn't draw as much as i'd like - sometimes just the splash for a story - but i just dug him. And Kirby seemed to have fun with him, as in this sketch:

Now, here - go have some fun and color that groove-tastic cover from #5 yourself:

BullsEye by Simon & Kirby (1954-1955)

It Came From Command D! (King Kirby 080)

When Jack Kirby made the jump over to DC, i eagerly read everything he put out. But my favorite of the bunch was easily the kid from Command D - Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth.
The King's wild take on then (and now again) popular Planet Of The Apes movies was its own world, separate from any constraints of sharing an active reality with other titles. This allowed Kirby to let his imagination run free and the joy of that freedom seemed to show in the work.
And none of that messing around for the big reveal that we've been on Earth all along at the end. Jack wants you to know right up front, on the cover -

But don't misunderstand - when i say it let his imagination run free, that doesn't mean he just scribbled down whatever came to mind. Kirby created worlds & mythologies whole cloth, and he knew far more of his worlds than he could share in the books. He once said that he had already lived his stories, and he knew where they were going long before we got there.
Kamandi was a fine example of this. In the very first issued, he mapped out where the book would go for the next 30 issues - literally!

The original map is the center image. Those little boxes are some of the splash panels over the next 28 issues to show story locations. Don't worry - they're all right below, in timeline sequence, so you can enjoy the Kirby goodness:

In issue #29, however, it seemed we had hit world's end...

No need to worry, though. Shortly thereafter, Jack just expanded the map:

I have not read any of what's been done with Kirby's creations in recent years. I wonder if the Kamandi Challenge takes us into any of these map areas? There's some for which i'd purely love to see what Jack had planned. I enjoyed participating in round robin challenges back in APA days, so i'll probably check that one out soon.

all page art by Jack Kirby & Mike Royer or D. Bruce Berry from Kamandi #s 1-32 (1972-1975)

Star Wars Wars (King Kirby 079)

Jack Kirby's profound influence on modern pop culture is inarguable. That said - it's started an awful lot of arguments. The biggest being - "Just how much was George Lucas influenced by Jack Kirby in creating Star Wars?"
There are Kirby fans who will swear that Lucas read Kirby's Fourth World books, a light illuminated over his head, and he wrote the script for Star Wars.
There are Lucas fans who say that George never heard of Jack Kirby.
As is generally the case, the truth likely lies between the two.

George Lucas maintains that Star Wars was influenced by Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress and the old Flash Gordon serials. Happily, we live in the internet age - scripts are available at various stages of development. If you look at the first scripts, Lucas's claimed influences are quite obvious and appear to be absolutely true. All the basic elements in the first draft can be traced back to those two primary influences.

Jump ahead a couple years to the next version, and suddenly we have a lot of new elements and changes to old parts. As the original trilogy unfolds, the parallels become striking.
Kirby's New Gods were connected to a 'mystic life force that surrounds all living things' called The Source. The primary Big Bad was named Darkseid. (That's pronounced "Dark Side", not "Dark Seed" as some Lucas fans argue. For easy reference, whenever you encounter Germanic names with the ei or ie combination, you pronounced the second letter.) The primary hero, Orion, was unknowingly the son of the Big Bad.

In Star Wars, Darth Vader morphed into a cross between Darkseid and classic Kirby villain, Doctor Doom, and is master of the 'Dark Side'. A 'mystic life force surrounding all living things' called The Force was added, as well as the 'holy warriors' who tapped into it as the New Gods do. It took a little longer for Lucas to adopt the Father/Son element of the clash. The role filled by High Father of the New Gods wound up as the wise elder Jedi, Obi Wan Kenobi, and both facilitated the 'baby swap' circumstances of our heroes' childhoods. There are a lot of other little things that are used to reinforce the notion of Kirby influence in Star Wars, from paralleling the Death Star with Apokolips to lining up various characters. But those are the really obvious seeming elements.

For me, it seems obvious that Jack Kirby did indeed influence Star Wars, but it should be remembered that Star Wars was basically nothing but bringing new life to a mix of influences. I see nothing wrong with adding more flavor to the stew. The only wrong is in trying to hide the influence. Unfortunately, it seems typical for the man in the spotlight to try to keep the spotlight on himself. That happened far too often to Jack over the years.
For Kirby, the concern was more one of being able to reliably keep his family comfortably secure. He never seemed as bothered by the lack of attention and respect as those around him. He was always willing to step up and fight for others, to protect those he cared about, but his ego wasn't something i can ever remember seeing him fight for. He knew who he was. He was too busy doing to waste his time trying to make sure everyone else knew.
Privately, he did get upset at times. Ahmet Zappa recalls one of the times when Jack Kirby was dining with Frank Zappa & family*-
“He told my dad stuff like, ‘Darth Vader was Doctor Doom and the Force is the Source’ and that George Lucas ripped him off. Now this you may not know, and I was only a kid, but I remember learning at the dinner table that my dad was asked to write the music for Star Wars; he turned it down, he said he wasn’t interested. That would’ve been really strange, the lives of us Star Wars fans woulda taken a different turn and that whole score woulda sounded like Tatooine Cantina music.”

Every now and then, though, Jack would express himself through his drawings...

Oh, crap. I just realized - We've not been showing proper respect for Star Wars, and now it's owned by...

Eep!
Gotta go

all art by Jack Kirby, some with a bit of embellishment

===

*(Yeah, Kirby & Zappa - we'll get to it)

Jack & Blue

We interrupt the King Kirby 100 for the return of

We're keeping with our Jack Kirby theme this month, but the KK100 tries to be Safe For Work, but not all of The King's fans have the same intent. Nor does this blog, for that matter - but you clicked on the Adult Warning, so you already know that.

So today, let's look at a few of Jack's characters as drawn by other artists, like Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Joe Rubenstein, Adam Hughes, Frank Cho, and Bruce Timm.
One of the most popular Kirby characters for nude/erotic sketches is the Scarlet Witch. One can only imagine that popularity will increase with the current Avengers movies.

NOTE: The images from this post contain nudity, and thus have been moved to our back room for adult content. The text remains that you may make a fair guess as to whether or not you wish to look at the pics.
Please follow this link to The Other Voice Of ODD! archive of the original post to view the artwork.


Close behind, perhaps not surprisingly given the amount of cheesecake inherent in her comic book role as Mister Miracle's stage assistant, is Big Barda. Her warrior side has inspired entire 'muscle porn' fan groups. Those two contrasts offer an intriguing combination to many artists and fans...


The Wasp, of course, has lot of fans and can inspire a fair bit of fetish oriented artwork. Her appearance in the recent Avengers cartoon series open another fan base and style of artwork. We'll see more of her next week, but here's a nice study of her for now...


Kirby's biggest stars are often more popular in cartoons:


To wrap things up for this batch, here's one of my favorite cartoons of the type:

46 Hours And 36 Minutes (King Kirby 078)

We saw previously some art Jack Kirby did for Esquire magazine's 1966 article about Comics On Campus. We didn't talk about how Kirby got screwed on that deal. Esquire acquired Jack's services through Marvel comics, who attracted Kirby's interest by offering magazine rates for the artwork, considerably higher than the rate paid for comic book work, making the deal very enticing. After the work was done, including an unpublished cover - the original art for which was lost - Jack learned that Marvel, not Esquire, was paying for the job, and they were only giving him comic book rates for it.
The contact at Esquire apologized for the whole mess upon learning the details, and promised Kirby more work to help make up for it. So it was that a few months later, Jack was contracted to illlustrate this short piece on the the last 46 Hours And 36 Minutes In The Life Of Jack Ruby appeared in that May's Esquire magazine. The original pages had documentary references to the Warren Commission Report and other sources at the bottom, dozens in total, showing the depth of research for the script:

46 Hours And 35 Minutes In The Life Of Jack Ruby by Jack Kirby with Chic Stone for Esquire #402 (1967)

The King And More (King Kirby 077)

I promised more of our Kirby In Comics feature today, and we've got some good ones to fill that promise.
Going back to late 1968 and early '69 in Not Brand Echh #s 11, 12, & 13, let's start with a trinity of parodies of The King -

Of course, there was that time Alan Moore had Supreme meet Jack Kirby...

Just gotta love that tribute to one of Jack Kirby's greatest covers:

 Of course, how does Moore treat The King inside? Let's look and see...

Whole Lotta Love there. Almost called Jack Kirby God or something.
Of course, there's that time the Fantastic Four actually met God...

...and from a meta standpoint, it's an inarguable truth.

Jack Kirby stars in Not Brand Echh #s 11, 12, & 13 (1968-9), Supreme: The Return #6 (2000), and Fantastic Four #511 (2004)