JACK KIRBY: STORY TELLER (2007)

[GRWelsh]

I just watched a nice documentary on Jack Kirby aka Jacob Kurtzberg. I learned his father was named Benjamin and his mother was named Rose. It's tempting to conclude the ever-lovin' Blue-eyed Thing, Benjamin Jacob Grimm, was named after both his father and himself, and that the Thing's Aunt Petunia may have been named after Jack's mother (as another flower) or an actual aunt. Anyway, it was a nice homage with many other artists and creators paying tribute to the King. It was interesting to me that some admitted that they weren't Kirby fans initially. I also was one of those people who took Kirby for granted back in the 1970's... I thought his art was blocky, ugly, and loud, and I much preferred the clean lines of Neal Adams, George Perez and John Byrne at the time. I thought Kirby's anatomy was unrealistic and that his stories were weird and I used to call him "Squarefingers Jack." But the more I learned the more I appreciated Kirby's creativity and work ethic and just how much he had actually contributed and how other creators were standing on Kirby's shoulders. Kirby was self-taught and started in comics when high speed output was necessary so he developed a style that wasn't necessarily realistic but had energy. He co-created Captain America and many other action based characters in the 40's, co-created romance comics in the late 40's, did monster comics and various other genres in the 50's, ushered in the Marvel Age in the 60's, and went on to DC in the 70's with a new slew of creations, came back to Marvel to invent ANOTHER new slew of creations, and then got in animation to do things like THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN. For at least four decades he was one of the hardest working and creative individuals the industry has ever had, and they're still riding on his coat tails at Marvel and DC with Cap, the Avengers, Hulk, the X-Men, the Eternals and Darkseid and the New Gods, just to name a few. His creations are now the wellspring of a multi-billion dollar film genre.

[geneweigel]

That sounds good. I said this before my introduction to Kirby was the MISTER MIRACLE original series (1971-1974) which did not have the editor notations, e.g "Way back in issue #2 - Ed" type keys to get around the ultraweird content and that shaded everything. It was as if they gave Kirby so much space that they cut corners on helping him out like Marvel did with reference to back issues. #10 is such a non-standard story to read (almost a foreshadowing of todays fringe themes) as an old adult so as a kid it was terrifying. Essentially its sci-fi mythical fantasy characters interacting in a mundane everyday world. Was the market for trippy stories here in wake of Woodstock, etc?

If you reread the Jimmy Olsen intro to Apokolips it is not straight forward at all and this eclectic chaos is invading the "Curt Swan" style Superman normalcy of Metropolis.

The height of what I used to call "Kirby madness", where the story was at its most "Kirby-ly" incoherent to me as a kid reading it, is SUPERMAN'S PAL JIMMY OLSEN #141 (SEPT 1971 with comedian Don Rickels photo cover). Dissecting the end: the bomb squad arriving in Darkseid's human (intergang) stooge Morgan Edge's office, Clark Kent arrives in a boom tube, Jimmy Olsen and "Goody" Rickels (Acts and sounds like Don Rickels but isn't and real Don is in other room) are laying on the floor, smoke coming out of them, recovering from being human bombs (Poisoned by "pyro-granulate" given by Morgan's stooge Ugly Mannheim in a last meal dinner a few issues back.), the clone of the 1940's hero the Guardian called the Golden Guardian just smashed through the glass (Cap style) gave them the bomb antidote and the real Don Rickels has a nervous breakdown runs out from the other room and jumps on the bomb squad saying that he is a human bomb but isn't.

[GRWelsh]

I started getting comic books in May 1975 and for me, as a kid who liked to draw, it was like a religious experience. Normal issues were only a quarter at the time, and my mom would let me pick one out from the rack each time we went to the Open Pantry, a sort of early convenience store next to the beauty shop where she worked. She'd bribe me to clean my room or do other chores to bring me home a single comic book! My first comic book was MARVEL TEAM-UP #33 with Spider-Man and Nighthawk. After that, it was nonstop begging for more comic books, and I never had subscriptions so often only had incomplete sense of overall story lines. I think my first experience with Kirby was his return to Marvel to take over Captain America for the 1976 Bicentennial Year. Kirby's 1970's run on Cap was wild... I had the issues for the Mad Bomb, the Night People, and Kill Derby -- adapted from the ROLLERBALL (1975) movie. The villains are the elite Royalist Forces of America which is weird to think about as it sort of predicts the future. That is what people on both sides believe is going on now... The greatest threat to America is internal, with elites, the deep state, and/or fascists willing to use terrorism and violence to achieve political ends, etc. The villains think they are the true patriots by trying to overthrow the existing US government. That's pretty wild. As a kid, I think it was all too much for me when I just wanted to see superheroes punching supervillains.

My next exposure to Kirby was a few issues from the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY series which pretty quickly diverged from the movie to become it's own thing, and I had the issue which introduced Machine Man who was originally X-51 or Mister Machine. Kirby did a lot of covers at that time as well, without doing the interior art. Some examples were issues of the Avengers when Wonder Man was fighting the Vision and when Black Talon raised Wonder Man back to life as a zombie. I think it was around that time when I got to be able to read reprints of old stories like the X-Men from the 1960's and old issues of of the FF and more exposure to the Kirby of the 1960's and I started to appreciate him more. His FF run made it truly the greatest comic magazine in the world! That's when I started to come around. And when I learned just how much he actually created I became a true Kirby fan.

[geneweigel]

Kirby reminds me of so many people from that era with the cigars and the way of talking. I wish that I had the chance to talk to him like I did crazies Byrne and Starlin. I've only really knew 2 fringe comic guys and its dog eat dog so all the inklings that I had about doing my own thing crapped out.

Several of my characters are Kirby inspired but some of them are just plain clothed vigilantes. The problem with characters is that so many costumed guys have been produced that its hard to come up with something visually new. I think it was THE BADGER produced a character that was visually identical to one of my "plain clothed" characters so much that it felt like a lot of wind went out of my sails. Of course, I don't see it that way now in retrospect.

In the 80's without the internet it was easy to stay informed of what was coming out but motivations (Like Byrne's and Starlin's temperamental exits on a title) kept us in the dark. I recall the sentiment against big companies from the independent comics. My main comic book store was Backdate Comics by the Chelsea Hotel (Sid Vicious' old stomping grounds) and this weird closet-sized bookstore on Liberty Avenue in Brooklyn but I was still too young for cons. When I moved to Connecticut in 1983, I had started going to "My Mother Threw Mine Away" comic store in Torrington, CT. They had a tiny bit of RPG stuff I recall Palladium Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle & Other Strangeness RPG was available there. I recall the kids in the high school called the guy "mother's". So I did not get into comic cons until way later when independent. It was in Albany of all places because there was nothing else to do there when I would be in the city at that time it was "you need to help me" people everywhere day long cons were out.

If I had a time machine I would make a bee-line to Kirby at a convention but I'm sure it would be a slog like when I waited on the wrong line for Frank Miller in 2008.