I don’t own another page like this one. In fact, I’m not certain I can recall seeing another page like this one.
I’m pretty sure there must be some out there, but four vertical page-length panels is definitely an atypical layout.
And here, it’s perfect. Four astronauts — Sue Storm, Reed Richards, Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm — blasted by cosmic rays, and, well, you know the rest: They become… fantastic.
This page is an example of great visual storytelling by the terrifically talented Paolo Rivera. I love the character reactions and facial expressions here. Even though the team will shortly have superpowers, it certainly looks like a painful origin process to get there.
And for one member of the team, those powers might be more curse than blessing.
After all, his moniker is the Thing.
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original cosmic origin of the Fantastic Four in 1961.
Jack Kirby. The Fantastic Four. A great action page from near the beginning of the peak three-year period of the comic that launched a cultural phenomenon.
Not much more to add here.
Except…2021 is the 60th anniversary of “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine” and the “Marvel Age of Comics.”
60 years. That’s a big deal. Much more on the Fantastic Four to come during the next few weeks.
Concluding our tribute to Captain America’s 80th anniversary.
Ah Las Vegas.
The only place where you are likely to find a giant statue of Captain America, yes? But even Las Vegas wouldn’t have accepted a giant statue of the Red Skull — swastikas and all. (Imagine a giant Patton statue facing off against a giant Rommel sculpture. It does not compute. ) It’s a rare slip in an otherwise fun Cap mini-series penned by Bruce Jones with beautiful visual storytelling by Steve Rude and Mike Royer.
And the good news is that the Skull statue that gets blown to smithereens on this great splash page, anyway.
Happy 80th Mr. Rogers!
In addition to the obvious Jack Kirby references throughout, Rude manages to work in a Steranko homage on the opening page of the issue. Meanwhile JG Jones delivers a surprisingly boring and stiff painting of Cap on the cover, which, to make matters worse, looks like it belongs to a completely different series altogether.
Fallen Son: The Death Of Captain America #5, August 2007
John Cassaday — a fan favorite artist if ever there was one — delivers a striking double-page splash of the Silver Age Avengers, with Captain America dominating the scene.
In the original comic, it was the Avengers that discovered the World War 2 legend floating in suspended animation in (essentially) a large ice cube. Of course, they never would have found him if it wasn’t for another Golden Age icon, Namor the Sub-Mariner, but as always, we digress.
This rendering actually combines multiple 60s Avengers line-ups into one image; The Hulk quit in a huff at the end of issue #2, fought against the team in issue #3, and was MIA by the time Cap thawed out in issue #4.
Cassaday’s art is stunning throughout this issue, but, biasedly perhaps, I think this is by far the best page(s) among many great ones.
The spread has appeared as both a poster and a limited edition Giclee, so, clearly it’s had some impact.
Assemble indeed!
In short order, Cap returned to the Marvel line-up, received his own solo feature, and then a few years later, his own series. (Picking up the numbering from Tales of Suspense.)
Ultimate Avengers #3, December 2009, and Avengers Assemble Season 2 (Marvel Universe) #4, 2015
Continuing our tribute to Captain America’s 80th anniversary.
Captain America breaks a lot of a glass. In his very first solo appearance in the Silver Age, (Tales of Suspense #59) Jack Kirby has him jumping directly at the reader, shattering a window as he does.
Maybe that shield gives him a sense of security. After all, the super soldier serum made him super strong, but not invulnerable. And Batman and the other “ordinary” (no enhanced super-powers) heroes tend to break a bit less glass.
This great splash page features rouge Captain America doing the glass bit with tremendous drama and detail by the terrific Carlos Pacheco.
And the art is so dynamic that Marvel used again six years later as a cover for an animated series cover.
That’s pretty cool —it could have been used as a cover the first time around, but second time’s the charm apparently.
The splash becomes a cover a few years later.
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby break the glass in Captain America’s very first Silver Age solo appearance.
Captain America officially turns 80 in a few weeks, and this iconic character is definitely worth an anniversary celebration. (Cap #1, created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, is cover-dated March 1941, but the on-sale date was December 20,1940.)
First up is this great Jack Kirby homage by Ron Frenz and Bruce Timm that appeared as a pin up in Captain America #50 (3rd series.). This piece, typical of Timm’s other published comic book work, is “inks-only” over a Frenz layout.
The layout itself is an homage to Jack’s Captain America art that appeared on the cover Marvelmania #1 (fan magazine), near the end of his Silver Age run at Marvel. Frenz added the Super-Adaptoid, and Bruce did his magic, creating a classic Kirby look.
Jack’s original art for this cover was little-seen until it finally appeared in color as the cover to the Jack Kirby Collector (#34, 2002),
The Super-Adaptoid was a mid-60s creation appearing early during Cap’s Silver Age revival. Also pictured, Captain America #1 with Cap decking Hitler a full year before the U.S. entered World War II.
Jack Davis and Stan Lee only worked together a handful of times. Jack drew six Rawhide Kid stories at the dawn of the “Marvel Age,” after Jack Kirby became too busy designing and developing Marvel’s earliest superheroes.
Davis’ cartoony style is unmistakable, and definitely a departure from the typical Marvel western art line-up that included Kirby, Dick Ayers and Larry Lieber, among others.
These Davis Western stories are some of the final color comic book stories to he ever drew. Shortly after their publication, Davis returned to Mad Magazine and became a Mad mainstay for more than 20 years.
And of course, we can’t forget the Time Magazine covers. The TV Guide covers. The film posters. The advertising work. Trading cards for Topps. Etc.
Just a few things to occupy the drawing board of one of America’s most talented and recognizable commercial illustrators.
Too bad Stan couldn’t persuade Davis for a bit more work. I’m not sure how it would have worked out on the traditional superhero stories * but a few short pieces for Not Brand Echh would have been right on the nose.
(*Well, actually I’m certain it would have been jarring to see Jack on “straight” superhero stories…)
Jack Kirby’s tenure at DC was ultimately a mixed bag — for both Jack and DC.
The Fourth World saga was one of the most ambitious projects ever attempted in comics at that time; yet, the books were cancelled well before they had a chance to fully realize Jack’s vision.
And yet… there was something about those characters and premises that continued to resonate.
Jack’s Post DC career included a three-year return at Marvel (Think Eternals, et al), his own creator-owned comics (Captain Victory, Silver Star) and a home at animation house DePatie-Freleng studios and then later Ruby-Spears.
And then, another opportunity arose at DC to finish his New Gods saga. DC would reprint the original series in “deluxe” format and give Jack a chance to end the saga with new material.
But, unfortunately Jack wanted to end the saga in a way that would kill off the main characters, and by then DC had grown accustomed to having them in the line-up.
So, Jack was again denied the chance again to finish it in his vision. And somehow the end of the saga morphed into a standalone graphic novel, Hunger Dogs, which also didn’t bring the story to a satisfactory conclusion.
And the graphic novel itself was a mess on the production end. Pages intended for the standard comic books were reworked for the graphic novel using photocopies, corrections, new “border” art and a host of other techniques to turn standard size pages into graphic novel pages.
Fortunately, Jack did create brand new large art pages for the GN, and they are pretty terrific in terms of page layout and composition, as evidenced here. They are his final work for either of the “big two” publishers.
As for the New Gods? They lived on, and more importantly, Darkseid arguably became the most important villain in the DCU. Jack shared in some of that commercial success, and his family continues to share in that success today.
Best of DC #22, March 1982; originally Sandman #7, February 1976 and Kamandi #61, November 1978 (Both unpublished)
Here is some big goofy fun from Jack Kirby (inks by Mike Royer) with a story involving the Sandman and… Santa Claus. (You can’t make this up.)
Even goofier than the actual narrative itself, however, is the fact this story fell victim to cancelation, not once, but twice, before finally seeing print nearly six years after it was completed.
Kirby’s Sandman series was cancelled after issue #6, although this story for issue #7 had already been completed. It sat in inventory for two years, until it was slotted to appear as a back-up in Kamandi #61, and then that comic, along with dozens of others fell victim to the “DC Implosion” and was cancelled as well.
It finally saw print in Best of DC #22, a digest-sized publication, that hit the stands shortly before Christmas 1981.
Which means… It did not actually appear in traditional color comic book format until DC collected it in 2011 in the Jack Kirby Omnibus — 35 years later!
“Technology is fire in the hands of children, and (Jack) Kirby easily foresaw what the world would look like with wealth, corporations, and technology operating simply for human profit and power, without accountability to any Rule of Law.” — Rob Walton, Slings and Arrows Graphic Novel Guide.
Jack Kirby brought his fertile imagination (back) to DC fifty years ago, and the results, while not always commercially successful, were typically fascinating.
OMAC was one of my personal favorites. It felt vastly different than anything else Jack had done, with one wild futuristic technology idea after another thrown into the mix. (And of course, many of these technologies have come to fruition in the subsequent 50 years. But, as always, we digress.) Ultimately Jack never had chance to fully develop many of these ideas, as he jumped ship and returned to Marvel after just eight issues.
This great “chapter splash” checks off many Kirby flourishes. (Many of Jack’s books had multiple chapters, meaning more great splash pages in each issue.)
Why is this page great?
It features the title character, a personal rocket ship, and the Kirby cosmos — in all its glory! (Earth’s atmosphere never looked this trippy.)
It features the title character’s name prominently in a flashy hand-lettered headline.
And, of course, it has great Kirby Crackle.
We celebrate the King’s reign at DC all this week. Stay tuned.
