Kirby Saturday: Happy Birthday, King.
Please Note: This is a rerun from last year with very minor edits, but I think it's a decent enough bit of writing.
Monday, as you probably don't know unless you care about this sort of thing, is Jack Kirby's birthday. He would have been 89. It's easy enough to get the basic biographic details, along with some great resources as far as his bibliography, so instead I'm going to tell you all what Jack means in regards to my perception of the medium. To be brief, it's as simple as 'comics=Jack Kirby' in my mind. Yes, there's many, many other excellent creators with long and storied careers, but I simply can't imagine comics without Kirby at Marvel and DC.
The matter of who created what in the early Marvel Universe is, of course, up for a lot of debate. Kirby's own stories varied wildly from having decided to save the company after walking in on Stan Lee crying over the fact that bankruptcy was looming to just accepting the Fantastic Four job as he would with any other western or monster or science fiction story Stan cranked out and not knowing or really caring about the script as long as the check didn't bounce. Here's what is a cold, hard fact, though: without Kirby, we probably would not have had the same Fantastic Four comic that captured so many young hearts and helped make superheroes cool again.
As Stan found himself busier and busier with his myriad responsibilities as editor-in-chief, huckster, and writer, the burden fell on Jack's shoulders (which already bore the weight of a full two-thirds of the company's artistic output) to create more and more from plots that were less and less defined, and create is exactly what he did. The Negative Zone! The Inhumans! Galactus! The Silver Surfer! Annihilus! All of these now long-standing characters and ideas came out of his imagination in a remarkably short amout of time in a single title, and mark the beginning of his most fertile period as a creator. His individual Marvel creations grew much larger than life and his art changed to reflect these concepts and the powers they contained, becoming more minimal while still imparting a sense of scale and urgency to the reader.
It's this near-constant sense of panic and clear depiction of action that defines the idea of what a superhero comic's art should be for me. After departing Marvel for DC's promises of complete control, Jack's storytelling in both scripts and art became more and more epic, showing the boundaries of comics at the time by slamming against them and knocking them a few inches out of place. Only a few of the most ambitious of Kirby's Marvel creations would have fit well into his DC work. Long gone were the petty concerns of Johnny Storm, wondering if his hot rod was going to win the big race next weekend and in their place was a New God's realization that his father was a Space Hitler that made Odin look positively pacifistic. Making sure that we beat the Russians in space seems like a quilting bee compared to a mohawked soldier pumelling his way through a horde of enemies in the World Of Tomorrow.
Even after his DC titles were all canceled and he came back to Marvel in the mid-70s, his creative impulses were still slanted towards the grandiose. It seemed that Kirby wanted to know why, in his absence Captain America duked it out with second-rate villains when he could and should take on a high-level conspiracy armed with something called "Madbomb? " For whatever reason, a lot of the work from this material is derided by the fans, but I find myself capitvated by his ambition: turning 2001 into a psychedelic showcase and remixing Chariots Of The Gods to create The Eternals. Sadly, he didn't quite fit into the Marvel of the time, where Steves Englehart and Gerber were leading a new direction that, while insanely creative, was much more self-aware and sardonic compared the earnest nature of Kirby's work.
It's after this second departure from the house he helped build that Jack's career fell into an irrecoverable retrograde. He tried publishing a few books that never got off the ground wih several companies and even came back to DC to wrap up his own New Gods saga as well as draw the (frankly, mind-numbing) Super-Powers tie-in comic along with a few pinups and occasional stories, but it was never the same for him.
Looking back, though, that decade-and-a half that bridged the Silver and Bronze Ages, when Jack was creating the new each and every month makes a lot of what's happening in mainstream superhero comics seem positively dull. Outside of Grant Morrison, I can't think of a single writer working at DC or Marvel that is intent on creation instead of maintenance, much like the Silver Age Superman stories that would occasionally excel, but most of the time seemed to be a matter of station-holding for the readers and characters.
Some would argue (just as I have, on occasion) that these companies are filling a need: to exploit pre-rendered universes to tell stories that the readers who like said universes will buy. There are some excellent writers who are very good at doing exactly that, but I'm missing Jack more than usual lately, and it's not out of nostalgia. Do I want to read comics stories featuring people aping Kirby's more easily utilized tropes? No. I want people to take the lessons that each page of his best work can give and apply them in unique ways. It's the best way to pay tribute to The King.
Monday, as you probably don't know unless you care about this sort of thing, is Jack Kirby's birthday. He would have been 89. It's easy enough to get the basic biographic details, along with some great resources as far as his bibliography, so instead I'm going to tell you all what Jack means in regards to my perception of the medium. To be brief, it's as simple as 'comics=Jack Kirby' in my mind. Yes, there's many, many other excellent creators with long and storied careers, but I simply can't imagine comics without Kirby at Marvel and DC.
The matter of who created what in the early Marvel Universe is, of course, up for a lot of debate. Kirby's own stories varied wildly from having decided to save the company after walking in on Stan Lee crying over the fact that bankruptcy was looming to just accepting the Fantastic Four job as he would with any other western or monster or science fiction story Stan cranked out and not knowing or really caring about the script as long as the check didn't bounce. Here's what is a cold, hard fact, though: without Kirby, we probably would not have had the same Fantastic Four comic that captured so many young hearts and helped make superheroes cool again.As Stan found himself busier and busier with his myriad responsibilities as editor-in-chief, huckster, and writer, the burden fell on Jack's shoulders (which already bore the weight of a full two-thirds of the company's artistic output) to create more and more from plots that were less and less defined, and create is exactly what he did. The Negative Zone! The Inhumans! Galactus! The Silver Surfer! Annihilus! All of these now long-standing characters and ideas came out of his imagination in a remarkably short amout of time in a single title, and mark the beginning of his most fertile period as a creator. His individual Marvel creations grew much larger than life and his art changed to reflect these concepts and the powers they contained, becoming more minimal while still imparting a sense of scale and urgency to the reader.
It's this near-constant sense of panic and clear depiction of action that defines the idea of what a superhero comic's art should be for me. After departing Marvel for DC's promises of complete control, Jack's storytelling in both scripts and art became more and more epic, showing the boundaries of comics at the time by slamming against them and knocking them a few inches out of place. Only a few of the most ambitious of Kirby's Marvel creations would have fit well into his DC work. Long gone were the petty concerns of Johnny Storm, wondering if his hot rod was going to win the big race next weekend and in their place was a New God's realization that his father was a Space Hitler that made Odin look positively pacifistic. Making sure that we beat the Russians in space seems like a quilting bee compared to a mohawked soldier pumelling his way through a horde of enemies in the World Of Tomorrow. Even after his DC titles were all canceled and he came back to Marvel in the mid-70s, his creative impulses were still slanted towards the grandiose. It seemed that Kirby wanted to know why, in his absence Captain America duked it out with second-rate villains when he could and should take on a high-level conspiracy armed with something called "Madbomb? " For whatever reason, a lot of the work from this material is derided by the fans, but I find myself capitvated by his ambition: turning 2001 into a psychedelic showcase and remixing Chariots Of The Gods to create The Eternals. Sadly, he didn't quite fit into the Marvel of the time, where Steves Englehart and Gerber were leading a new direction that, while insanely creative, was much more self-aware and sardonic compared the earnest nature of Kirby's work.
It's after this second departure from the house he helped build that Jack's career fell into an irrecoverable retrograde. He tried publishing a few books that never got off the ground wih several companies and even came back to DC to wrap up his own New Gods saga as well as draw the (frankly, mind-numbing) Super-Powers tie-in comic along with a few pinups and occasional stories, but it was never the same for him.
Looking back, though, that decade-and-a half that bridged the Silver and Bronze Ages, when Jack was creating the new each and every month makes a lot of what's happening in mainstream superhero comics seem positively dull. Outside of Grant Morrison, I can't think of a single writer working at DC or Marvel that is intent on creation instead of maintenance, much like the Silver Age Superman stories that would occasionally excel, but most of the time seemed to be a matter of station-holding for the readers and characters.Some would argue (just as I have, on occasion) that these companies are filling a need: to exploit pre-rendered universes to tell stories that the readers who like said universes will buy. There are some excellent writers who are very good at doing exactly that, but I'm missing Jack more than usual lately, and it's not out of nostalgia. Do I want to read comics stories featuring people aping Kirby's more easily utilized tropes? No. I want people to take the lessons that each page of his best work can give and apply them in unique ways. It's the best way to pay tribute to The King.
