February 15, 2005
Appreciating Kirby's Later Work

   Strap yourselves in, here comes one of those "When I was a kid" stories...

   When I was a kid, I couldn't stand Jack Kirby's comics. Oh, I loved his work with Stan Lee in the old Silver Age reprints such as Marvel's Greatest Comics, Marvel Spectacular, Marvel Double Feature, Marvel Triple Action, GIANT-SIZE Marvel Triple Action, etc. But I had a hard time making the connection between THAT Kirby and one that produced such uncommercial (not bad, just uncommercial) oddities as Kamandi, The Eternals and Devil Dinosaur.

   Every hardcore Kirby fan knows that by that time in Jack's career, he wanted to be left alone to tell stories his way. The only exception was the last year at DC before his final return to Marvel (1975) when he'd done some less-than-inspired make-work filler to fulfill his contract. He even acquiesced to allow Gerry Conway and Denny O' Neil to co-plot and write dialogue, Jack's most common target for criticism.

   The most recent issue of the Jack Kirby Collector (#41, cover-featuring The Black Panther) had a very honest study of Kirby's return to Marvel in the ' 70's by Gary Picariello. Picariello boldly states "Much has been made about Jack's desire to be left alone to create and write what he wanted. That's all well and good, but if I'm Jack Kirby and I'm seeing a trend where all my books get cancelled (and this started within two years of Jack's arrival to DC) I might at least consider to meet my employers halfway. And by halfway, I mean more than an occasional reference to S.H.I.E.L.D. or a guest stint by a robotic Hulk!"

   The article makes the point that if Kirby, upon returning to Marvel, had made the effort to integrate his books with the existing Marvel Universe that he helped create, they probably would have sold better, and I tend to agree. Kirby still had the juice, doing stellar covers for Avengers, Defenders, even characters he never drew, such as Nova and Tigra. But Kirby's desire for anonymity segregated his books from Marvel proper, almost making Kirby books a separate publishing imprint of Marvel.

   n the current comics climate, comics companies can isolate a character from a 'shared universe' if a hot creator wants to be left alone and just tell his/her own story without outside interference. Street-level characters like Daredevil and The Punisher tend to be involved with personal stories, yet that doesn't exclude them from making cameos elsewhere. A recent example is New Avengers # 3, where DD turns down Captain America's offer for Avengers membership. Then again, Bendis writes both, so the 'temporary propriety' a popular creator gets for an established character has those built-in advantages.

   Back in the 1970's, isolating characters from a shared universe generally wasn't done. Part of the fun of the MU then was seeing villains like the Gray Gargoyle hopscotching from title to title, always with an explanation, no matter how ludicrous (am I the only kook who misses footnotes?), of how they survived the last battle.

   I now fully appreciate where Kirby was going creatively, but back then his writer/artist tenure turned me off completely. Let's be honest: his art had stiffened, as had his writing (BIG FAT DISCLAIMER: I GENUINELY LOVE ALL HIS STUFF NOW, SO LAY OFF!). And having closed his audience off from the Marvel Universe to write & draw his "Kirby Imprint" made it that much easier to pass on the 'weird' titles like The 2001 and Machine Man. However, I was ticked off that long-established centerpiece characters of the Marvel Universe like Captain America and The Black Panther were, IMHO, shoved off into Kirby's Korner.

   I had similar qualms in 1996 with Heroes Reborn. The Avengers, The FF and others were segregated from the MU, and for that year, Spider-Man no longer existed in the same universe as them. Thankfully, Franklin Richards, who gives Dr. Strange a run for his money in the Deus Ex Machina department, made everything right again.

   I actually quit buying Cap, my favorite title, after #204, because Cap and Falc were dealing with some other-dimensional demons, then some other rocklike monster. A year before, I had similarly passed over some of Frank Robbins' Cap issues, the reasons you'll recall in my 2004 Dec. 14 & 21 blogs. Where was Hydra? The Serpent Squad? To Jack's credit, he didn't jettison The Falcon when he came on board. In Jack's hands, Falcon looked like a Kirby creation with his symmetric uniform. Towards the end of his run, Kirby used The Red Skull quite cleverly, possibly nudged by the late Amiable Associate Editor Archie Goodwin (basically, the liaison between west coast Kirby and east coast Marvel management). This role of Archie's is pure speculation on my part.

   While I stopped buying Cap's regular title, I gleefully grabbed Marvel Team-up # 52, because Sal Buscema got to draw Cap again, plus the writer made the effort to tie in Cap's current book to regular continuity. One of those creepy Kirby demons appeared in Manhattan and Cap and Spidey had to get past Batroc to shoo the demon home.

   All that said, I just finished Marvel's reprint of Kirby's 1970's Black Panther. And you know what? I enjoyed the heck out of it. Kirby tells a great pre-Indiana Jones-type story of T'Challa getting coerced into finding a relic his grandfather once owned, King Solomon's Frog. After that, T'Challa gets jerked around by events which, while exciting, could happen to any adventure character. Other than occasionally mentioning that he's royalty, his uniqueness isn't apparent. I had similar problems with Kirby's return to Cap. The first Madbomb story aside, where the target was the USA, Cap could have easily been replaced with T'Challa in their wacky adventures into lost civilizations. Also, when it comes to dialogue, Kirby gave every character the same strident, declarative tone. In some panels, you're not sure the characters are having the same conversation.

   My other complaint with Kirby's Panther treatment, again, was no acknowledgement or research of the elaborate Wakandan environment that T'Challa's previous writer Don McGregor had established. In fact, McGregor spent years giving The Panther something he never had previously: A supporting cast and a map of Wakanda. In this collection, reprinting Black Panther #1-7, T'Challa is away from his homeland until the end of #7, suggesting Kirby simply didn't want to deal with all that. He always looked forward. While that's an admirable approach, it's tough to ingratiate yourself to the fans of a existing character. McGregor's run, in Jungle Action, had only ended months prior to Jack's first issue.

   I must stress that the stories are good reading, but if you're looking for a story unique to The Black Panther, you'll be disappointed. Just as Jack's Cap stories were great, just not great Cap stories. More often than not, the title character finds himself a bit player in his own book.

   What really helps Kirby's self-scripted stories, despite the clunkiness of the dialogue, was that he was clearly a well read man, and his understanding of the unpleasantness of human nature is incredibly insightful. I guess that was another thing that turned me off as a kid. I wasn't ready for Kirby's ugly life lessons. I wanted my heroes shiny and romanticized, and Kirby couldn't turn the clock back to cater to my naivete'. I liken it to my new-found appreciation of early Neil Young as well as early country music legends such as Hank Williams and George Jones. I hated all that 'corny stuff' as a youth, but now I understand the hard truths they communicated through song, as Kirby did through his writing and art.

   Anyway...Webmaster Chris is adding a new commission piece to page 3 of the commissioned work page. We're up to five pages, seven per, but somehow I screwed up and only had six on that page. I've decided to add this unpublished Spider-Girl cover to page 3 to balance things out.

   Plus, there's a new page of Rarities, as I rummage through my sloppy filing system. You'll see some nice samplings of Kevin Maguire, Greg Land, Matt Haley, Scot Eaton and others.

   Even though, as I announced last week, that I'm now represented by Fanfare Sports & Entertainment, there will still be occasional commission pieces posted here. I've a backlog of convention pieces from several clients that'll see the light of day soon.
 
To be continued...
 
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