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Jack Kirby – Part Four

Aug22
2011 Written by catc1731

For Jack Kirby fans, his work at marvel Comics under Stan Lee must rank as the most prolific period of his career.  After the 1961 introduction of The Fantastic Four, a succession of other, now well known names were created or co=created by Kirby.  Among those were the X-Men, Thor, The Hulk, Iron Man and The Silver Surfer. He was also involved in the creation of the first black super hero, the Black Panther.

What seemed to be a top class working relationship with Marvel was deteriorating however. Kirby felt he was not given the credit due for his work and that Stan Lee was getting all the attention.  After prolonged negotiation he moved to DC Comics in 1970 and began a five year stint there in which he was largely responsible for The Fourth World set of comics which included the Superman character Jimmy Olsen.

Stan Lee managed to persuade Kirby to move back to Marvel in 1976 in a stint which lasted

Black Panther #1

two years and in which he continued to work on Captain America, The Black Panther and other titles of which he had been the creator.  Unfortunately he remained unhappy with various aspects of the Marvel operation and in 1978 he left Marvel for the second time and began to turn his attention to freelance animation work.  To begin with he adapted various comic books for television cartoon purposes before moving on to science fiction projects.

Throughout the 1980s, Kirby understandably worked less as he got older but still had time to work periodically for DC comics again, once more adding to The Fourth World chronicles and also finding time to help bring an end to the work for hire system, whereby artists working for publishers could not retain any rights to their work.  He even managed to get much of his work back from Marvel Comics, for whom he never worked again.

Jack Kirby died in 1994 of heart failure at the age of 76, marking the end of an era for comic book fans and the death of one of the most prolific comic book artists ever.

 

 


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Jack Kirby – Part Three

Aug12
2011 Written by catc1731

When Jack Kirby returned from the war, Joe Simon was once again on hand to organise employment for both of them.  They began work at Harvey Comics and created such titles as Stuntman and Captain 3D.  At the same time Kirby and Simon found massive popular and commercial success by creating Young Romance.  It seems an unlikely road to take after the action packed creations they has so far worked on but Simon had been influenced by the popular romantic,  true confession magazines of the period.

Negotiating a deal for 50% of the profits from Young Romance, the pair created a magazine

Young Romance

which sold almost all of its original print run, leading to ever larger runs for subsequent issues.  Spin off comics were created, all of which sold well and which also inspired a copycat industry.  Kirby and Simon were the pioneers though, and benefited financially throughout this period.

The partnership between Kirby and Simon effectively ended in the mid-1950s following a financial disagreement with a publisher named Crestwood.  Simon moved into advertising and Kirby continued to freelance, working for a range of titles and creating and providing art for publications such as Green Arrow, The Fly and Challengers of the Unknown. Kirby also did some work for Stan Lee at Atlas Comics during this period.

Atlas Comics became Marvel Comics and in 1961 the first title was released under the Marvel Comics brand name – Journey into Mystery #69. By this time, Kirby had become well established at the publisher, working on many titles but it was his work on The Fantastic Four from 1961 onwards which once again brought him into the limelight.  Gil Kane, a fellow artist said of Kirby and his influence:

“Jack was the single most influential figure in the turnaround in Marvel’s fortunes from the time he rejoined the company … It wasn’t merely that Jack conceived most of the characters that are being done, but … Jack’s point of view and philosophy of drawing became the governing philosophy of the entire publishing company and, beyond the publishing company, of the entire field … [Marvel took] Jack and use[d] him as a primer. They would get artists … and they taught them the ABCs, which amounted to learning Jack Kirby. … Jack was like the Holy Scripture and they simply had to follow him without deviation. That’s what was told to me … It was how they taught everyone to reconcile all those opposing attitudes to one single master point of view.”

Fantastic Four

Part Four follows…..


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Jack Kirby – Part Two

Aug03
2011 Written by catc1731

Joe Simon

It was Jack Kirby’s early working partnership with Joe Simon that really kickstarted Kirby’s career. Simon was an editor at Fox Feature Syndicate – Kirby’s latest employer – and was immediately impressed by his work.  Simon says of Kirby - “I loved Jack’s work and the first time I saw it I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He asked if we could do some freelance work together. I was delighted and I took him over to my little office. We worked from the second issue of Blue Bolt.” Blue Bolt was an early superhero created by Joe Simon.

Not long afterwards the pair joined Marvel Comics (then called Timely Comics) and in late 1940 created Captain America.  Kirby and Simon negotiated themselves a profit share from the sales of the strip.  The strip was incredibly successful – the first issue sold out and a million copies were printed of the second issue.  Despite this, Simon suspected that they were not receiving the correct profit share and again looked to move on, finding the pair a sort of joint position at DC Comics (then called National Comics).

An early Captain America

National Comics had been persuaded by Simon to employ them both, but without a real plan of how to best use their abilities.  After some false starts, the co-owner Jack Liebowitz famously told them to “do what you want” and so they did, creating the superhero Manhunter and the Boy Commandos feature.  Boy Commandos was inspired by British soldiers (America had not yet entered the war) and was popular enough to earn a magazine of its own.

In 1943 Kirby was drafted into the war effort and sent to Europe.  Predicting this, Liebowitz asked the pair to prepare some work in advance and subsequently a team was hired to help them create a year’s worth of art and stories.  Once in the army, Kirby was eventually asked to reconnoitre approaching towns and sketch maps and other details after his vocation became clear.  Kirby returned from the war virtually unscathed, after a narrow brush with frostbite, to once again resume his comic career.

 

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Jack Kirby – Part One

Jul26
2011 Written by catc1731

Jack Kirby was what you might call one of the originals of the American comic book industry. The impressive list of characters he created and co-created is fitting memorial to the man.  Born in New York in 1917, his original name was Jack Kurtzburg – his parents were Austrian-Jewish immigrants.

He experienced a relatively poor upbringing in a tough neighbourhood and from an early age his imaginative outlet was drawing.  He had no formal training – in 1931 he actually enrolled at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn but a week was long enough to realise it didn’t suit him.

It was not until 1936 that he landed his first newspaper job, providing the art for comic strips and health advice columns for the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate.  For this work he used the name Jack Curtiss.  He remained here until 1939 at which point he landed a job at Fleischer Movie Studios but didn’t last long.  He regarded the non-creative work he was doing as an inbetweener as not much above working in a factory.

Fortunately for Kirby this was a period in which the American comic book industry was beginning to find its feet.  Kirby found a position with Eisner & Iger.  Eisner & Iger were not a publisher as such, but a company which created comics and artwork on demand for other companies.  Kirby remembers his first work being for Wild Boy Magazine which included strips such as Wilton of the West and The Count of Monte Christo.  It was around this point that he took the name Kirby but was always keen to point out that it was not to hide his Jewish heritage.

Still only 23 at this point, he went with his family when they moved to Brooklyn where he met his future wife Rosalind Goldstein in the new apartment building.  They were soon engaged and Kirby was soon to move to a new employer – Fox Feature Syndicate – where he would begin his working relationship with Joe Simon.

Part two follows….

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Frank Miller – Part Four

Jun15
2011 Written by catc1731

For Frank Miller the 1990s had produced two of his most ground-breaking works, Sin City and 300, and the two which arguably drew the biggest critical acclaim when transformed into big budget movies during the next decade.

Miller’s biggest project as the world moved into the new century was the three part sequel to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.  Entitled Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, the story pushes back the boundaries of superhero comics as a whole range of DC characters are pitted against each other – Batman, Green Lantern, The Atom and others on one side and Superman, Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel on the side of a sham government, controlled by Lex Luthor.  It’s a great depiction of superhero activity in the modern world and the appearance of Green Lantern as a God-like character towards the end of the story is the icing on the cake.

In 2005 Miller wrote another Batman comic, All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder which ensured yet another change of direction for the story.  This comic deals in detail with the initiation of Robin/Dick Grayson ans also features The Justice League (Superman and Wonder Woman are now back on the right side).  Although commercially successful, this comic series has been continually panned by critics, most of whose complaints seem to centre on the fact that Batman uses too much violence towards his enemies.  He is also briefly violent to a very young Dick Graham.  It’s worth mentioning that although the storyline and dialogue have been criticised, Jim Lee’s artwork has always been singled out for praise.

The series is still actually ongoing and its erratic release schedule does not appear to have affected its popularity or sales, although no issue has sold as many as the first (around 300,000 copies).

Miller had another attempt at film directing go awry with the film version of Will Eisner’s The Spirit in 2008 but a sequel to Sin City still seems to be on the cards.

Miller is a comic book artist clearly popular enough to sell stories on the strength of his name alone and although many critics do not like his more recent work, no one can deny he is one of the masters of inventive re-tellings and his influence is recognised by all.

 

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