New Gods Toys

Examples of toys based on Jack's New Gods characters. These are pretty faithful to Jack's original designs and style. Wonderful to see Jack's Fourth World being embraced by contemporary audiences. I suspect New Gods will make for a terrific film in the future, especially considering many believe it was an influence on one of the most successful film series of all time -- Star Wars.

Star Wars artwork by Jack Kirby and Mike Thibodeaux. Published as a trading card for the Star Wars Galaxy 2 series in 1994. The only time I'm aware of that Jack drew any Star Wars related material.

Marvelmania # 5 Cover

Marvelmania Magazine # 5 (1970) Cover. Pencil art by Kirby

Here's another example of Jack drawing Spider-man without the spider logo on the chest. One wonders if Jack simply forgot to add that to the costume, or maybe Jack figured someone would add it during the inking phase so he didn't bother with it. Also notice Jack doesn't connect the weblines on the mask to the eyes again, just like the Marvelmania piece yesterday. I suspect this was simply Jack giving his interpretation of the character; he may never have studied the costume closely enough to notice that aspect of it; or after creating thousands of costume designs in his career, he may not have remembered the exact details of the costume. I also wonder if maybe those elements may have been part of his original Spider-man costume design from 1963, and Jack decided to make the character more similar to his original vision.

Toys for Tots

Here's a unique piece Jack did for Marvelmania: a Toys for Tots promotional poster. Below that is a scan of the original artwork.

A close-up so you can see another rare example of 60s Kirby inks.

It looks like Jack (or someone in the editing phase) used white-out around Spider-man's eyes. It makes them look like they're glowing but I'm surprised no one changed that to look like the costume fans were more used to seeing -- with the connecting weblines. Notice Jack didn't draw a spider logo on Spider-man's chest, but one was added later in publication.

Stuntman # 2 Cover

Classic Kirby cover from Stuntman # 2 (June 1946), inks by Joe Simon. Here is a close-up of the action from a scan of the original artwork, and below that a slabbed copy of the original comic book.

Clever use of the book within a book motif on the cover, and the red color for the background must have really popped off of the spinner racks in 1946.

Funky Flashman Pin-up

Here's another DC piece I found online featuring one of Jack's more obscure characters: Funky Flashman. From Who's Who: The Directory of the DC Universe (1985), art by Kirby and Bill Wray. Many have suggested this was a piece of satire poking fun at Jack's previous editor Stan Lee, and Stan's assistant Roy Thomas.

Note Funky without his toupee reading a book called How To Be Lovable, and Mr. Miracle's disgusted expression.

Funky Flashman's first appearance with Houseroy in Mister Miracle # 6 (Jan 1972). Below that is a B/W panel from the collection of reprints published in 1998.

Some Kirby Memories: by Barry Alfonso

Surfing the web, I found these great pictures of Jack. I emailed the young man in the photos, Barry Alfonso, and he was kind enough to offer us some recollections from his time spent with Jack. It has been mentioned before that Barry was the visual inspiration for Jack's Witchboy character.

Art from The Demon # 15 (1973), pg. 7, panels 5 - 6.

Some Kirby Memories
By Barry Alfonso

I've noticed that a good many of the posts on this blog deal with Jack Kirby's work for DC in the early 1970s. Since those were the days when I knew him, I thought I'd offer some of my memories about the King of the Comics.

As part of the original San Diego Comic-Con crew, I began visiting Jack and Roz at their home (first in Irvine, CA, then in Thousand Oaks) in the fall of 1969, Some of us (including me) have talked about those wonderful trips in various articles and blog posts in recent years, so I'll try not to cover old ground. What I'd like to emphasize here is what Jack gave to us back then, and what, I think, we gave to him.

Last year, my old friend and fellow Comic-Con alumnus Mike Towry sent me CD copies of taped conversations from several of those Kirby visits. Hearing these recordings after nearly 40 years, I was struck by how patient Jack was in answering our questions, which often involved detailed and nitpicky analyses of his work. Jack took our opinions seriously and responded to them with much thought. Often, he would use our inquiries to launch into long flights of commentary about his then-evolving Fourth World comics and the philosophical ideas behind them. I don't say this lightly, Jack was a very philosophically-inclined guy, obviously someone who had done considerable reading, particularly of world history.

Kirby liked to ponder big topics: life, death, good, evil, loyalty and power. He seemed to view them through the lens of his experiences growing up on the mean streets of New York City back in the 1920s and 30s. His thoughts about Darkseid's motivations - his ego, arrogance and pride - sounded like he was describing some of the gangster bosses of his youth. Really, the Fourth World stories were projections of Roaring Twenties gangsters wars onto a cosmic scale.

Jack talked about how important status and appearance were in the world of his childhood, how a certain style of coat would mark you as a winner or a chump. You were a tough guy or you were a nothing back then. These experiences might've given him a hard-boiled, Nietzschian worldview, but Jack was definitely an idealist. Darkseid and his forces represented the crushing of the individual will by totalitarian force, something he probably related to the Nazis who threatened the Free World back when he was a young man. The kind of mind-numbing religion peddled by Glorious Godfrey in The Forever People was another manifestation of the sort of domination that Kirby abhorred. In his talks with us, Jack emphasized respect for human dignity and a hatred for bullies, whether in the form of a Darkseid or an ordinary street thug. Furthermore, he believed that no group of people (including super-beings) were absolutely in the right and that good and evil co-existed in every society.

Jack's egalitarian beliefs were shown in how he treated us during those visits. We were more than welcomed - we were respected and listened to. Jack was not merely tolerating some worshipful fans during those high-minded gabfests. He was intensely interested in the younger generation, particularly in its hipper fringes. Hippies and flower children made frequent appearances in his early 70s work for DC, particularly in Jimmy Olsen and The Forever People. He told us that the Forever People were essentially hippie pacifist super-heroes, rather than typical aggressive crime-fighters. (They did have the more assertive Infinity-Man to call upon for help, however.) There were more traditional kid characters in these comics as well, most notably the revived Newsboy Legion in Jimmy Olsen. For me and my friends, the ultimate application of Jack's interest in Youth Culture was the creation of the San Diego Five-String Mob, who (very briefly) terrorized Superman in Jimmy Olsen Number 144. (As Mike Towry remembers it, several of us actually asked Jack to put us in one of his comics and he agreed to do so. In those days, Kirby was churning out characters at a phenomenal rate.)

I don't think it's too much to say that Jack found our obsessive interest in his work inspiring. I believe that he drew a kind of strength from us at a pivotal moment in his career. Among other things, his Fourth World comics were an attempt to speak to a new generation about his personal concerns and to warn his readers about the dangers of tyranny and mental domination. As he constructed the dense mythology behind his stories, he liked to bounce his concepts off of wide-eyed teens and college-aged kids like ourselves. He was a great story-teller.

Oh, one more thing: during one of our visits, Jack said, I've got a special beef against clothes. He didn't mean that he longed to be a nudist. Jack hated drawing people in action who were dressed in ordinary coats, shirts and pants - they looked rumpled and silly when they were fighting. Tights looked so much better when throwing or taking a punch. That's one of the lessons of the King I remember.

Orion and Big Barda

Here's a scene from the upcoming New Gods movie featuring Orion and Big Barda.

Just kidding, actually this is a picture of some folks dressed up for Halloween I found surfing the web. Looks like Orion has a Mother Box in his hand or some kind of Kirby-esque ipod; Barda's metallic rod looks like an aluminum foil roll.

A DC Mister Miracle pin-up I found online. Probably from Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe (1986). Inks credited to Dick Giordano. Below that are two examples of toys based on Kirby's costume designs.
I've never been a toy collector, but it is fun to see Jack's original costumes translated into a 3-dimensional figure that is also somewhat similar to his style.

Kirby Conan

On Thursday a private collector paid 1.5 million bucks for a Frazetta Conan painting. I guess the recession isn't affecting art collectors. Here are the only two examples I know of where Jack drew Conan. Above, a spectacular cover for Giant-Sized Conan # 5 (1975). Looks like Sinnott inks, with maybe a Romita face added. Below, a Kirby Conan commission pencil piece. Maybe this will be worth 1.5 million one day?

Big Barda In Action

This is an example of what I call a "ghetto" post because I'm using scans from the internet and I don't know the exact sources for the material. Here is the image of Big Barda that was the influence for that huge tattoo I posted last week. This appears to be from some sort of "DC Universe" book, but I don't know the name of the publication or date. I'll guess it's from Who's Who: The Directory of the DC Universe (1985). Looks like Theakston inks. Below that is a fairly hazy scan of the original artwork in a frame, probably from eBay. Greg Theakston used a lightbox to ink the image, so Jack's original pencils survive.

Apologies for the low-resolution scan, but I thought it might be fun to zoom in and look at some of the details. This may have been one of the last times Jack ever drew Big Barda. Notice in the original pencils, Barda is not holding that metallic rod, so maybe Greg added this in the inking phase, or someone in the DC offices asked for that addition. I actually think the piece works much better with the golden bar -- it makes the character look like she is on the attack.

Kirby Text: Good or Bad?

Kirby dialogue from Eternals # 5 (Nov 1976), pg. 1

Kirby scholars, historians, fans, and critics love to argue. One of the more contentious debates tends to revolve around Jack's text. You have one camp that wishes Stan Lee had dialogued Jack's 70s comic books (or anyone else besides Kirby), and another camp who likes Jack's text, because it's Kirby's voice and his total vision.

On the Jack Kirby-l Discussion forum, I asked the members what they thought were some memorable examples of Kirby text (good or bad) so we could understand what specifically they either liked or disliked about Kirby's comic book prose. There were a lot of great responses, but like most discussion forums the postings tend to drift all over the place, so I picked 4 of the replies that were concise, and stayed on-topic. I also did some minor editing to remove personal references and general chit-chat.

The first response came from Peter Sattler commenting on Forever People # 8 (April 1972).

Peter Sattler: I don’t know whether it’s good or bad to say anything about two pages selected out of hundreds, but in my opinion, the FOREVER PEOPLE selection doesn’t seem particularly well "dialogued." Or perhaps I should say, it seems as poorly (or as well) dialogued as many other overblown superhero scripts. Not much better, not much worse. Let me try to explain why I feel this way, focusing on Panels 3 and 4 in the first image. The main problem, for me, is . . . so much TALKING — that is, talking that merely explains exactly what the pictures have already "written" and shown (or, sometimes, could have shown):

"A pistol in my plate! I suppose I don’t have to guess what you have in mind for me!"
"I'm telling you to pick up that pistol!--point it to your head!!----and pull the trigger!!"
"Huh!! You'd kill yourself quick as a whistle if there were bullets in that gun!!"

How many of these lines mere reiterate the image or repeat the content of the scene? Even the lines themselves seem over-written and over-expository. As noted above, we have a real failure to let the reader see or infer the action, leaving out any possibility of suspense. The phrasing, too, seems over-elaborate and repetitive, even in a short stretch:

Maybe it's just me, but pronouns ("it") and word choice ("loaded") could have streamlined it. I know that comics are not film, but imagine a movie that used dialogue the way these panels do. It seems close to parodies of bad silent-film title cards ("What's that noise?!"). But now I'm going on too long. I'll leave out my longer comments about all the SCREAMING ("!" "!?" "!!"), or the unclear moments (Is "Huh" supposed to be a laugh? The face, which looks puzzled, doesn't seem to match the content of the dialogue), or the clunky eye-dialect ("yerself" vs "your head").

But for me, the strangest thing, is that it looks and reads like some other writer came in a put these words OVER and on top of the images, like he was paid by the word or felt, at every turn, "Well, we have to have he guy say SOMETHING." Even the panels, themselves, give pride of place to the words, forcing you to "read" about an action before you see it. I think they DIMINISH the story, as much as they add to it.

It's almost like Jack picked up some of Lee's worst habits. (The melodrama and endless speechifying, too.) But again, let me be clear. While I don't think this dialoguing is particularly good, I don't think it particular BAD either -- or at least not much different that so much other comic-book writing. In fact, "what to do with the words" seems to be a problem endemic to comics overall; it's just especially apparent in superhero operas. That said, I don't think my feeling indicate that I dislike Kirby in any important way. Other great storytellers (Eisner, e.g.) fell into the same traps. Yes, I love comics, but sometimes it's hard.

Steven Tenerelli gives an example of what he considers great Kirby text from New Gods # 1 (1971).

Steven Tenerelli: I have translated single exclamation marks as periods - since all superhero comics ended every sentence with exclamation marks, and never used periods, a single exclamation mark acts as a de facto period. After reading superhero comics for many years, I only recently noticed that they never use periods - I was so used to just thinking of single exclamation points as periods. From New Gods #1 pages 9 & 10 (Feb 1971). Scans from the reprint published in 1984.

THE HAND: ORION TO APOKOLIPS - THEN TO EARTH - THEN TO WAR
ORION: The moving hand appears. The Source gives us the irrevocable counsel.
HIGHFATHER: But it does not decide. The right of choice is ours. That is the Life Equation.
METRON: The Anti-Life Equation was undiscovered until these days. It means the outside control of all living thought.
HIGHFATHER: The Universe - slave or free - on Apokolips their ruler, Darkseid, has already made his choice. What shall be yours Orion?
ORION: First to Apokolips - Then to Earth - Then to War. (EXITS)

METRON: Now wonderfully wise in the Source. Who is more ready to fight the father - than the son.
HIGHFATHER: Metron, hold your tongue. You toy with my wrath.
METRON: Did you think I didn't know? - Orion the might - Orion the fierce - could this be one born of New Genesis?
HIGHFATHER: No, Apokolips. But it is not yet time for him to know. You shall keep the secret.

Meanwhile, Orion leaves on a journey which is to lead him to a strange destiny ...
ORION: Ahead lies Apokolips - in the shadow of New Genesis. There'll be no cheery greetings there. (this is in reference to greeting he received on previous pages when he arrived on New Genesis).
If the other side of good is evil, then surely Apokolips is the other side. Even its giant Energy PIts feed on the world itself, to gain its power and light. It is a dismal, unclean place of great, ugly houses sheltering uglier machines... Apokolips is an armed camp where those who live with weapons rule the wretches who build them. Life is evil here, and death, the great goal. All that New Genesis stands for is reversed on Apokolips.

Many wonderful literary devices: foreshadowing, alliteration, repetition for effect. Orion's repetition of the Hand of the Source is both for dramatic emphasis, and to show his strict loyalty to the words of the Source. In just one page, Jack perfectly describes Apokolips with brevity. Metron's, Orion's and Highfather's dialogue is heightened, as it should be for gods, but their way of speaking is unique to each. They speak in terse, clipped sentences, to drive the action, and to state simply the very large concepts in that they are speaking about.

Compare the terse, heightened, clipped dialogue of the gods, with the more wordy, more ordinary dialogue of the adult Newsboy Legion from Jimmy Olsen #136, pg 16 (Mar 1971).

SCRAPPER: You may as well have it strait, kids. The original Guardian is dead. During the years we grew to manhood, we lost track of him!
BIG WORDS jr: Of course, you were all pursuing your separate careers.
GABBY: The Guardian vanished when Jim Harper was transferred to the Detective Division, in another precinct.
BIG WORDS: Not long ago, we were called to Jim Harper's bedside. He'd been fatally wounded in an action with fleeing criminals.
GABBY jr: (Blub) Don't tell us da rest - I'll cry -
TOMMY jr: Wait. Before he died, Jim Harper confessed he'd been the Guardian - didn't he?
BIG WORDS: Yes. But we just couldn't bear to lose him. When the original Jim Harper passes on, he left behind a still-living cell-tissue sample.

Stan Taylor discusses Kirby's conversational dialogue.

Stan Taylor: The biggest problem for me is his lack of variety. It seems that every word or utterence from a main player to the smallest of bit players is said at the same loud, forceful assertive mode. There is no modulation, even in those quiet periods between battle and among friends. Every phrase is said and presented as an utterance from God. The phrasing is usually short, with heavy bold lettering virtually shouting at the reader. No one ever whispers or talks in humourous rhymes or jaunty vocularity,everything is just so deadly serious. And the style never really changes per person.

If Kirby drew a fight involving four people just by the dialogue one could never know who said what. The heroes and the villains talk the same way. A group of heroes conversing is impossible to follow without the word balloon tails pointing to the speaker. They all use the same voice- Kirby's voice. The only one who Kirby did attempt to give a unique voice is Darkseid. And all Kirby did was make him even more officious and louder and more philosophical. Even Kirby's women spoke in this same loud, booming stacatto style phrasing.

Kirby also could be clunky in his dialogue. The "rattling gonads" quote and the horrible Henny Youngman takeoff on Henry Kissinger. The "funky corn" phrase in Eternals. We all have our favorites.

"Rattling gonads." Image from Silver Star # 1 (Feb 1983). Reprinted in the Collected Jack Kirby Collector Volume # 1 (1997)

"Henny" Kissenger from Captain America # 193 (Jan 1976), pg. 23, panel 2

"Funky corn" from Eternals # 5 (Nov 1976), pg. 1

It seemed especially grating when it appeared that Kirby was attempting youthful slang. Kirby couldn't do slang. Even back in the forties when he tried it in Mercury. This isn't a major criticism, many great writers suffered in finding a variety of voices, Hemingway comes to mind.

So was Kirby a good writer? Of course he told his tales in a straight forward manner that the reader could easily follow and always entertained and thrilled the reader. Was he a particularly gifted dramatist? No I don't think so. So I guess whether or not one likes Kirby's writing depends on what factors are most important A good story well done, or a smooth and melodic vocal pattern that says nothing. I find it hard to expect both great art and great dialogue. But I do like idiosyncratic voices that can shock the listener.

Kenn Thomas gets the final word.

Kenn Thomas: Everybody's an amateur literary critic and it's all a matter of opinion so none of it matters. I see it all as Kirby's voice, even the various personalities he creates that are different from his own. It's the auteur idea, more like poetry than dramatic popular fiction that academic literary critics would just ignore anyway, unless they're teaching the sociology of literature. I'd like to point to this portrait Kirby has of a human face comprised entirely of Kirby tech, the perfect experession of man and technology. It's as great a literary expression as anything on this theme, but it has no words.

Here is the image Kenn is talking about -- "Mechanoid" from 1976. Thanks to Rand Hoppe for providing this scan, and thanks to all the members of the Kirby-l discussion for sharing their thoughts on Kirby text.

The Maid

Some have argued that Kirby couldn't draw beautiful women, but here are two examples provided by a member of the Kirby-l Discussion forum, Pat Ford, that show Jack certainly was well aware of how to illustrate female anatomy. These are scans of the pencils from two pages of unpublished artwork originally supposed to appear in DC's True Divorce Cases # 1 (1971). Maybe the material was a little to edgy and racy for DC and that is one of the reasons it was rejected.

It's pretty obvious looking at this work that in the early 70s Jack was hoping to explore more contemporary, cutting-edge themes but apparently DC Editor Carmine Infantino didn't feel the material would be successful. A shame because it would have been wonderful to see Jack drift out of the realm of fantasy and superheroes into other genres where he could tackle more stories involving regular people.

Compare and contrast this work with an example of Jack's more conservative 1950s romance work.
Splash from "The Girl Who Tempted Me," art by Kirby with inks by Simon. The story originally appeared in Young Romance # 17 (Jan 1950) and has been reprinted in Real Love edited by Richard Howell (1988), and The Complete Jack Kirby Volume # 5 edited by Greg Theakston (2005).

Kirby Marvelmania Art

Thanks to Jack's grandson Jeremy Kirby for sending me a high quality scan of the Marvelmania piece we looked at recently. Let's zoom in and take a closer look at three examples from the original artwork.

Maybe one of the last times Jack drew Iron Man. Probably the only time he inked the character. Notice Jack penciled the outline of the image, inking those main contour lines with a pen, then filled in the inside details of the image with a brush.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear John Romita drew this image of the Rhino, but it appears Jack wanted to include a variety characters, so he probably swiped this image from a Romita Spider-man issue.

It's actually a little sloppy -- the shadow under the face doesn't have the same light source as the shadow behind the right hand. Maybe Jack's technique would have been more effective if he had penciled out the whole image and added inks, instead of penciling just the outline then adding the details only using a brush. Plus this representation of the Rhino suggests to me Jack wasn't at his strongest when copying the style of another artist.

Finally an image of Jack's Dr. Doom.

Again, it appears Jack added all the interior brushwork without any pencils to guide him -- a pretty common practice artists who are inking their own work use to save time.

You can see the brushwork is not nearly as dark as the pen lines and looser.

Jack probably would have been able to ink his work in half the time it would have taken another inker by filling in details like the metallic sheen of the armor freestyle, using a brush.

At the same time, these images are a little sloppy, and lack the famous thick contour lines/thin interior line style inkers like Chic Stone and Joe Sinnott made famous on Jack's work at Marvel during the 1960s, so maybe this was a preliminary piece Jack did to get back into the groove of inking his own work. When he worked on the larger Marvelmania pin-ups he decided to use a more traditional approach -- detailed pencils; thin-to-thick lines with a brush for outlines; and a pen for interior details.