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Post by G on Dec 16, 2007 1:49:26 GMT -5
It would be impossible to make individual threads about creators and not make one on Jack Kirby. These remarks are going to be strictly my own. But here is what I think about him...
When I 1st started collecting in 1978, Kirby was still a prominent artist who was still putting out a decent amount of work. One of my 1st comicbooks ever is Machine Man #1, which now nearly 30 years later, I feel is a great Kirby book. And also, to myself, I feel it was his last great work. He had tons of work for the few years before that and even more for years after that up to his death in the early 1990s. But it was obvious that he was in decline. Machine Man was that last glimpse of what Kirby could do.
Other than Machine Man, I remember early in my collecting life developing a real hate for his work. His squiggly lines and proportions were not living up to the standards being made by other artist. I had even wondered how and why this man was being able to make comic books.
It wasnt until years later when I started digging for deeper back issues that I started to find out the fuss of Jack Kirby. When I got deep into collecting, I started getting into Silver Age. I used to love trading books with the dealers. One day I had like a fine+ ASM #40 that I had picked up at a flea market for $20. A dealer fell in love with it and made me a deal I could refuse. I traded me 10 Silver Age Fantastic Fours in roughly the same condition as my Spiderman. All 10 had Jack Kirby art. This would begin me collecting as many FF's as I possibly could. During my peak, I believe I had 78 out of the 1st 100 issues. Jack Kirby did them all.
This is to me perhaps his finest work that he ever did. I consider Kirby a dated artist. I can always look at his work and figure when he drew it. For that reason, there is a progression for Kirby within FF. He drew issues #1 - #102. To me, they were all great. But one thing you can notice is a natural progression in the quality of his work. I believe the peak of this series is somewhere around #40 - 102. With the real great ones take place probably between 50 and 102. Kirby blew me away in this era. We had the Silver Surfer, Galactus, Black Panther, Dr. Doom, The Claw, Blastar, HIM, The Negative Zone, Wyatt Wingfoot, Agatha Harkness and many more. Truly a great time to read comics.
But the FF only scratches the surface. What was it? Well, for one he created literally a ton of my all-time favorite characters and 2 his buildings, inventions,backgrounds and all out action made up for whatever out of proportion squiggly line characters he drew. His action to me is 2nd to none. When he was on, he could make your eyes move all around the page. You always had a feeling of Action with Kirby.
He also drew just about everything in the 60s. FF, X-Men, Avengers, Captain America, Thor (which was awesome by him), Sgt Fury, Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish. The man was everywhere. Getting so much work done.
Moving onto DC in the early 70s is where I seen his work really start declining. But his 4th World books was giving DC a taste of the great Marvel style. I have many of his works from this era where I still love the covers, yet I notice the work was declining.
You can say what you want about Kirby, but I consider him one of the all time greats. I think the man owned the 60's. His covers were one classic after another. His effect on comics, cannot be dismissed. Although whatever negative comments you may bring to this and I will certainly say....you're right. I cannot go without giving Jack his due. I agree that Jack has earned the title...
Jack "The King" Kirby
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Post by cfs on Dec 17, 2007 0:21:58 GMT -5
It would be impossible to make individual threads about creators and not make one on Jack Kirby. These remarks are going to be strictly my own. But here is what I think about him... When I 1st started collecting in 1978, Kirby was still a prominent artist who was still putting out a decent amount of work. One of my 1st comicbooks ever is Machine Man #1, which now nearly 30 years later, I feel is a great Kirby book. And also, to myself, I feel it was his last great work. He had tons of work for the few years before that and even more for years after that up to his death in the early 1990s. But it was obvious that he was in decline. Machine Man was that last glimpse of what Kirby could do. Other than Machine Man, I remember early in my collecting life developing a real hate for his work. His squiggly lines and proportions were not living up to the standards being made by other artist. I had even wondered how and why this man was being able to make comic books. It wasnt until years later when I started digging for deeper back issues that I started to find out the fuss of Jack Kirby. When I got deep into collecting, I started getting into Silver Age. I used to love trading books with the dealers. One day I had like a fine+ ASM #40 that I had picked up at a flea market for $20. A dealer fell in love with it and made me a deal I could refuse. I traded me 10 Silver Age Fantastic Fours in roughly the same condition as my Spiderman. All 10 had Jack Kirby art. This would begin me collecting as many FF's as I possibly could. During my peak, I believe I had 78 out of the 1st 100 issues. Jack Kirby did them all. This is to me perhaps his finest work that he ever did. I consider Kirby a dated artist. I can always look at his work and figure when he drew it. For that reason, there is a progression for Kirby within FF. He drew issues #1 - #102. To me, they were all great. But one thing you can notice is a natural progression in the quality of his work. I believe the peak of this series is somewhere around #40 - 102. With the real great ones take place probably between 50 and 102. Kirby blew me away in this era. We had the Silver Surfer, Galactus, Black Panther, Dr. Doom, The Claw, Blastar, HIM, The Negative Zone, Wyatt Wingfoot, Agatha Harkness and many more. Truly a great time to read comics. But the FF only scratches the surface. What was it? Well, for one he created literally a ton of my all-time favorite characters and 2 his buildings, inventions,backgrounds and all out action made up for whatever out of proportion squiggly line characters he drew. His action to me is 2nd to none. When he was on, he could make your eyes move all around the page. You always had a feeling of Action with Kirby. He also drew just about everything in the 60s. FF, X-Men, Avengers, Captain America, Thor (which was awesome by him), Sgt Fury, Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish. The man was everywhere. Getting so much work done. Moving onto DC in the early 70s is where I seen his work really start declining. But his 4th World books was giving DC a taste of the great Marvel style. I have many of his works from this era where I still love the covers, yet I notice the work was declining. You can say what you want about Kirby, but I consider him one of the all time greats. I think the man owned the 60's. His covers were one classic after another. His effect on comics, cannot be dismissed. Although whatever negative comments you may bring to this and I will certainly say....you're right. I cannot go without giving Jack his due. I agree that Jack has earned the title... Jack "The King" Kirby Jack Kirby started in animation. He knew how to draw action. I'm not a fan of his style. I'm a fan of his ability to draw poses which jump at you. His perspectives are incredible. I think there are a lot of great artists that owe Kirby a lot. If you are new or trying to compose a panel, all you have to do is go look at a Kirby page to see how he would do it. Kirby also knew what path the eye should take while reading a comic. If I was drawing comics now, I'd want to have all the Kirby knowledge in the Jack Kirby Collector magazine memorized. His art isn't always the prettiest, but he is still an amazing talent. cfs |
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Post by G on Jul 18, 2009 2:30:08 GMT -5
While searching for some Ditko documentary clips I ran into this rather nice Kirby documentary which is about 14-15 minutes when you combine the 2 clips and is told by his protege Mark Evanier and his daughter. What I like besides the dialogue from people that knew him best is the clips of the work he did. I often get stunned looks of bewilderment when I tell people I love Kirby's work and even told by more than a few that they don't dig his style. And I understand those point of views and I even shared those views for a long time. But this captures a lot of what I realized about Kirby as I learned to appreciate him. That he had such a visually Dynamic and Powerful style that to me always looked so classic. I think this video captures a lot of those wonderful moments I found for myself when I viewed his works. I think these clips are best viewed filling your entire computer monitor if at all possible for you. It better helps with the visuals of his art....
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Post by defiant1 on Jul 18, 2009 12:28:47 GMT -5
Good stuff. I assume that is Mark Evanier. Right? Wrong?
Defiant1
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Post by G on Jul 19, 2009 19:20:23 GMT -5
Good stuff. I assume that is Mark Evanier. Right? Wrong? Yeah, I never knew about his great relationship with Jack Kirby and Roz. What a great position to be in! He probably seen the inner workings of Jack Kirby and knew his thoughts on just about anything comics related. Or even better to just sit there and shut up and watch him draw! I like how he points out that Kirby spent literally 12 - 15 hrs a day drawing at some points 5 books a month during the early days of Marvel. And this during an era when I thought he was peaking. He didn't phone it in. He gave you good quality work back then! I would have liked to have spent just a day watching him work. Funny, but its kind of crazy. Sometimes Kirby has the facial characteristics and quirks about him that his own art has. He looks like one of his drawings!  |
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AC
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Post by AC on Aug 12, 2009 18:26:25 GMT -5
Definitely an incredible talent... tho, one that's unfortunately lost on me. Much like my less than enthusiastic look at both Stan Lee's and "Manga God" Osamu Tezuka's work (Astro Boy), Kirby strikes me the same. Right guy in the right place at the right time.
It's a shame that he holds such little presence in today's comicbook society (besides characters he'd introduced, of course).
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Post by cyberstrike on Aug 13, 2009 7:30:35 GMT -5
It's a shame that he holds such little presence in today's comicbook society (besides characters he'd introduced, of course). Jack Kirby has been cited many times over the years of being a major influence for guys like Jim Lee, Marc Silversti, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Jim Valentino, Erik Larsen (aka the Image founders), John Byrne, Frank Miller, Jim Starlin, Barry Wisdor-Smith, Walt Simionson, and literally hundreds more artists and writers. His work is still celebrated by fans across board (I'm 31 and consider myself a Kirby fan) two of my prized books is The Fighting American hardcover published by Marvel in the late 80s or early 90s and The Silver Surfer the unofficial first graphic novel that Marvel did by Lee and Kirby did published by Marvel and Simon & Shuster in the late 70s. Not to mention in the 1990s his short-lived Phantom Force series published by Image and later by Genesis Comics (I think that was name of the second company that published it) and Tops Comics Jack Kirby's Secret City Saga line and his Satan's Six series (which is by far his weirdest concept ever IMHO). He is too my knowledge the ONLY comic book creator to have a magazine called The Jack Kirby Collector published by TwoMorrows Publishing dedicated only to his work. "Little presence in today's comic book society" my ass, Kirby is still a pretty damn big presence in comics. |
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AC
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Post by AC on Aug 13, 2009 20:23:46 GMT -5
It's a shame that he holds such little presence in today's comicbook society (besides characters he'd introduced, of course). Jack Kirby has been cited many times over the years of being a major influence for guys like Jim Lee, Marc Silversti, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Jim Valentino, Erik Larsen (aka the Image founders), John Byrne, Frank Miller, Jim Starlin, Barry Wisdor-Smith, Walt Simionson, and literally hundreds more artists and writers. His work is still celebrated by fans across board (I'm 31 and consider myself a Kirby fan) two of my prized books is The Fighting American hardcover published by Marvel in the late 80s or early 90s and The Silver Surfer the unofficial first graphic novel that Marvel did by Lee and Kirby did published by Marvel and Simon & Shuster in the late 70s. Not to mention in the 1990s his short-lived Phantom Force series published by Image and later by Genesis Comics (I think that was name of the second company that published it) and Tops Comics Jack Kirby's Secret City Saga line and his Satan's Six series (which is by far his weirdest concept ever IMHO). He is too my knowledge the ONLY comic book creator to have a magazine called The Jack Kirby Collector published by TwoMorrows Publishing dedicated only to his work. "Little presence in today's comic book society" my ass, Kirby is still a pretty damn big presence in comics. I think folks being influenced by Kirby is just something a lot of artists say, because they think they should. The only artist I can see with anything resembling Kirby-esque art is Erik Larsen. Citing short-lived titles that didn't sell all that well from the 90's doesn't really make any point. I only meant that it's usually Stan Lee that gets all the credit, with Kirby kind of as an aside. "Stan Lee Presents... yadda yadda" and all. Everybody today knows who Stan Lee is, I think Kirby isn't on as many people's radar as he should. |
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Post by bigw1966 on Jan 26, 2010 11:32:42 GMT -5
Lets just put this into perspective right off the bat.
Jack Kirby created the language of comics. You can point to Eisner if you want, they both worked together in the same Studio for a few years, but Kirby was drawing 4 pages to everyone elses 1 page. He was creating cnew conventions and breaking them all within the same month. To call the man prolific is a gross understatement.
did you know that Kirby drew the first appearance of Shazam? Just say no. His name was not on the book, but its a known fact.
Kirby's artwork was very much in line with the rest of the artists of the 40's But around 1958 he started to get more experimental with it.
All of the great Artists of the time worked at his and Joe Simons Studio. (They primarily worked freelance and supplied stories to all of the companies.
But, Colan, Ditko, Infantino and Schomburg all spent time in the Simon and Kirby Studio.
Kirby's influance is seen on almost every page of comic art put out by any of the better artists over the years. Hell they still do swipes based off of his work today.
Walter Simonson is hugely influenced by Kirby
Kirby drew more pages in a three year period than many artists draw in an entire career.
Marvel returned 2 years of his original pages to him in 91. They gave him just under 3000 pages of art. Guys today are lucky to make 10-12 issues in a year at 22 pages a book. He ran circles around them.
I highly recommend the book KIRBY; The King of Comics by; Mark Evanier (the guy in the video above) This is one of the best biographies about a comic creator ever. It will give you a whole new appreciation of the man.
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Post by bigw1966 on Jan 26, 2010 11:34:57 GMT -5
BTW, Kirby created the following comics genres; Horror, Detective/Crime books, romance comics, Kid gang comics, Cosmic hero books.
He was also the first creator to look at Gods and their relation to Superheros.
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