Up until 1942 Simon & Kirby produced a lot of outstanding covers and interiors for Timely/Marvel... Enen characters that didn't catch on were powerful reelection of Kirby's dynamic style... I could share more, but this is a pretty fair cross section of books bearing the Kirby war era style. Cat
I think 'hideous' is a bit strong, but his work certainly became more expressionistic - and I admit I liked it a lot less. I also wish he would have worked with a writer during is second period at Marvel.
What's not to like? Except that you can see that somebody (Stan?) decided that one of the legs needed altering.
There used to be a targeted age range for comic book buyers. It wasn't very long and it wasn't very old. I was right at that "drop off" point when Kirby moved to DC. He, along with Neal Adams, kept me "hooked" a wee bit longer than I would have been otherwise. Kirby certainly wasn't the one to go to if you wanted realism, that was Neal Adams. Kirby was the one to go to if you wanted your mind blown. I had never seen anything like the New Gods stuff. That was really "left field". He was a world changer, that's for sure. In his own field, a lot like a Miles or a Dylan.
I really like the Challengers of the Unknown done by Kirby (a sort of warmup for the FF) especially when inked by Wally Wood.
Digital Comic Museum Viewer: Alarming Tales 001 - Alarming_Tales01_01fc.jpg » Alarming Tales: complete all-Kirby book from 1957. Digital Comic Museum Viewer: Black Magic 001 (v01 01) JVJ - Black Magic 01 pg 01.jpg » Black Magic: Simon/Kirby early 50s cover and lead story for the first dozen or so issues. Digital Comic Museum Viewer: Young Love 001 (v1 01) -JVJ - 01.jpg » Young Love: love comics were a Simon/Kirby innovation in 1949 Comparing this work to the peaks of late 60s Marvel and the exaggerated grotesques of the mid-to-late seventies (not a criticism btw), the range and dedication to craft and evolution of style is impressive. People debate who did what in the development of the modern superhero, but No Kirby = No Marvel, it's that simple. Especially with Joe Maneely's death at the end of the 50s, Stan Lee had no one else who could deliver the goods and save Atlas comics and create Marvel. IMO.
Jack Kirby was a bona fide genius who had a huge impact on the medium of comic books. Those interested in his art and his work should read Mark Evanier's excellent Kirby: King of Comics as well as The Art of the Simon & Kirby Studio: Amazon.com: Kirby: King of Comics (9780810994478): Mark Evanier, Neil Gaiman: Books » Amazon.com: The Art of the Simon and Kirby Studio (9781419711602): Mark Evanier, Jim Simon, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby: Books » Mark knew Kirby very well in the 1970s and 1980s, and has told me many times of Jack's many kindnesses and what a bright, thoughtful, interesting man he was. I'm glad that people are now recognizing Kirby's influence on Marvel, not just the artwork but also the many characters and stories that he co-created with Stan Lee. Too often, people remember Stan's name but forget Kirby's, and that's a real crime. Evanier has been working on a long-in-progress biography of Jack Kirby's life, and now that his family's lawsuit with Disney/Marvel is settled, I suspect a lot of truths will be revealed...
When you compare Kirby's concepts, from the Tales Of Asgard to the New Gods, I think it's truly revealing. There's a distinct similarity. Much like Ditko's Spider-Man/Dr. Strange work, Stan Lee gets entirely too much credit for their ideas, aside from the artwork! From Darkseid's parademons in Superman vs. Batman, to practically everything happening in the Avengers flicks, it's truly a travesty that he gets zero recognition for his ideas!
I used to read the Kirby Collector, though it's hard to find and expensive to import. I wish they would put out a couple of best-of books. Some of the pencils they've published - once you get away from the plethora of later, weaker stuff they seem to have mountains of, are fantastic and the interviews and tributes (beyond the inevitable and tiresome ones along the lines of I hate Vinnie Colletta, are revealing). There's a particularly good running feature by Barry Forshaw on Kirby Obscura and it has, in the past, occasionally had novelists Michael Chabon and Glen David Gold contribute. I'll second Vidiot's recommendation of the Mark Evanier books and mention this one, published by TwoMorrows, which also publishes the Kirby Collector: Lee & Kirby: The Wonder Years : TwoMorrows Publishing, The Future of Comics and LEGO™ Publications. » I was reading Mr Miracle the other day. Not his greatest work and, as it progresses, the art, especially the figure art, becomes more and more expressionistic and looser, but there's great use of space and dynamics in this panel:
Kirby was willing to do so, but the problem was that he was not willing to work "Marvel style" (ie, plot/art/dialogue in that order, rather than script first and then art) because he felt (based on his experience with Stan) that it led to him doing too much of the work for too little of the money/credit. Roy Thomas tells that story of how they discussed having Kirby return to the Fantastic Four in 1976. Kirby was willing to do it, but only if Thomas would give him full scripts in advance, so he would not have to provide any plot input. Remarkably, it was Thomas who turned down this idea... he was not willing to go with that arrangement, presumably because writing full scripts without the artist co-plotting would necessitate a lot more work for him. Kirby's experiences with Stan Lee left him with a really sour taste about working Marvel style, and after 1970 he consistently refused to do it. The few times in which he worked with another writer after that (his last few issues of Kamandi, plus Sandman and Justice Inc. at DC, then Destroyer Duck and later the Super Powers miniseries) he always insisted on full scripts in advance. The one exception was his reunion with Stan on the Silver Surfer graphic novel, which he reluctantly agreed to do in part to finish off his second contract with Marvel.
The King! I can understand someone not liking the style, as it was very stylized, but I love it. He especially shone creating the imaginary worlds seen in Thor and the FF and the weird machinery. Always a pleasure to read a Kirby comic. Obviously he was more than just an artist too and should have been given writing credits with the way he worked with Stan Lee.
Although I got into comics in the late 60's almost exclusively buying Marvel comics (my first comic being Fantastic Four #44), I never really appreciated Kirby's work until perhaps oddly, his short-lived series for DC, "The Demon."
I remember a Tonight Show with Carson, where he had some prop during the monolog, I think a cardboard 3-D Glasses, that had printed on the side "Jack Kirby King Of Comics". He went on something like "who is this guy, I never heard of him, who does he think he is, King Of Comics, ha"... and even back at the desk he continued. Sometime later in the show, someone set him straight and he said something like "I've been informed that Mr. Kirby is one of the most well known and best comic book artists and a lot on my staff know of him and respect him, so I'm sorry for what I was saying earlier, it seems he is the King Of Comics for comic books"... Something like that. I can't find that on Youtube, maybe it is on a DVD or the reruns.
That's basically the story, except that the two things (Carson joking about Kirby and his apology) did not happen on the same episode. Kirby was upset enough about the incident to contact a lawyer, then his friend Mark Evanier reached out to Fred DeCordova and wrote Carson a letter explaining who Kirby was. Carson read Evanier's letter on a subsequent episode and then apologized, and reportedly also gave Kirby a cash payout for his trouble.
Ah. I saw both episodes then. What I wrote was from my memory, and I never read anything about it anywhere until just now. I just looked up a webpage describing it, which says it was 1982.
There's a bit of a Kirbyesque feel to the poster for the next film which is going to be a sort of Tales From Asgard epic. Can't wait to see it. A pity Jack isn't here to see all this.
I liked early Kirby but I always inclined more to Steranko. I hated Colan's work at first (those blurred pictures, the equivalent of a vaseline-smeared lens) but grew to love it. It didn't help that British Marvel was in b&w, which affected some illustrators' work more than others.
I was a DC Comics reader and was kind of oblivious to Marvels for a while (and apparently they got spotty distribution even in Houston when I first started buying comics). Kirby covers were just such grabbers and I loved Chic Stone inking Kirby! Sinnott is slicker overall and a heck of an artist himself. But Kirby and Stone were just so powerful. Got to correspond with Chic a little before he passed away. Since the way the industry is now I doubt I'll ever ink full-time again I have done some cover recreations from time to time. Many are ones that I love from when I was younger. Here's a link to more and larger images: Kirby and Cover Recreations by DRHazlewood on DeviantArt
