Did Cary Bates call Kirby a "hack?"

[Klar Ken T5477]

Deceased, he's a giant. Alive, he'd be unemployed.

Sad but true.

[TELLE]

While I love Kirby's 70s output, my one problem is that it often feels like the fact that the story is set using this character is an INCIDENTAL factor. In all fairness, this is not true of his CAPTAIN AMERICA, which had the spirit of the bicentennial all over it, in contrast to the cynical Watergate-era Englehart Cap.

The best example of this is Kirby's BLACK PANTHER. Something as important to the character as WAKANDA (y'know, the country the Panther is the KING of) is not even mentioned until Princess Zanda threatens to blow the place up in issue #5 or thereabouts, and even then, the place isn't even actually seen; the Panther's Kingdom is almost an afterthought. No aspect of the Panther's skill as a scientist is employed. In fact, Chris Priest later retconned away the Kirby BLACK PANTHER by saying that the Kirby stories were set in an alternate future where the Panther had suffered brain damage...and it's hard to argue with this. Considering the incredible world that surrounded the Black Panther created by Don MacGregor in JUNGLE ACTION, not making use of MacGregor's Wakanda and supporting cast is almost criminal.

Of course, Kirby did make use of both Wakanda and a supporting cast/family for T'Challa in those classic issues.  King Solomon's Frog is one of my favorite comic epics of all time, so I'm a little biased.  My characterization of the 70s writers above extends to Don McGregor --his stuff largely just leaves me cold today.

And Steve has had, not just good, but GREAT artists, too - Dick Dillin in his JUSTICE LEAGUE run, in his DOCTOR STRANGE run, Frank Brunner (whose only other Marvel book was, to my knowledge, Gerber's HOWARD THE DUCK), and for the LOVE OF GOD, Marshall Rogers in DETECTIVE COMICS.

Dick Dillin is fun, but the others are mediocre talents (with the possible exception of Rogers' Foozle comics in the 80s).

Whatever happened to She-Thing? One of the more interesting supporting FF characters

 :lol: I'm sorry Julian, but I just can't agree with you on this either.  As a weird hiccup in mainstream comics, I will grant you that She-Thing/Ms Marvel was unforgettable --in a campy/ironic way.  Otherwise, an abomination.  Mostly ugly art as well.


And as for Nightwing's comment, all I can say is Long Live the King.  I would start a company just to publish him.

[JulianPerez]

Speaking of "King Solomon's Frog," Kirby has a way, hardly endearing to me at all, of jumping on a book and making it totally divorced from what it was previously.

BLACK PANTHER, for instance, should have been called ABNER LITTLE AND FRIENDS.

It's apparent in the very first page that Abner Little showed up. He gives the Black Panther a ride in his strange and exotic aircraft.

Now...what was THE VERY FIRST THING EVER that we knew about Black Panther? I'm talking ALLLLLL the way back in FANTASTIC FOUR #52 or thereabouts. It was that the Black Panther built, drove and designed strange and exotic aircraft.

That's like, the very first thing we see of the Black Panther; when he gives the Fantastic Four a magnetojet to visit him in Wakanda.

From the Roy Thomas-penned AVENGERS #85 to the MacGregor book, the Panther has driven jet after jet that would give the Thunderbirds a woody. In fact, come Busiek's AVENGERS run, the Avengers Quinjets were made in Wakanda!

So, why would a known jet jock like the Panther bum a ride off some midget? That's like Speed Racer hitch-hiking.

Obviously the function of Abner's copter was to show that Abner Little, as an eccentric collector, has strange and weird equipment. In other words, Kirby had a choice between characterizing the Panther, who lest we forget is the character the book is supposed to be about, and characterizing some character that he just made up, and he picked the character he just made up.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the story is awful because Kirby got this detail wrong (nor is my point that "King Solomon's Frog" was awful - actually, I love that story and I thought it was fantastic). I am however, zeroing in on this one detail as being typical of one place where...yeah, I can see where Kirby's detractors would have a point: namely, that when Kirby jumps on a book with an "established" character that he is adding his own concepts to, he shouts "ME FIRST! ME FIRST!" and pushes everything else out of the way like a rich guy with a gun going for the last lifeboat on the Titanic.

You know what's even weirder about this?

FANTASTIC FOUR #52, the Panther's first appearance, was co-plotted by Jack Kirby himself!

"But Julian," you might say, "if Kirby created the Panther, can't he write him however the hell he wants?"

To which I say, "No."

If it was a character or strip closely associated with the original creator, like say TERRY AND THE PIRATES and Milt Caniff, perhaps - but Kirby's creation was (and I hate to use this term) a creation of a "committee:" Roy Thomas, MacGregor, Priest, and others, all of whom have made the Panther who he is today.

In such a case, how a character was in the first appearance, or what the vision of the original creator was, is not as important.

[Lee Semmens]

My favorite sermon was Chuck saying, "There are some people in this world that believe that all our problems can be fixed with violence." And my irony-o-meter EXPLODED

Isn't that more or less what Tom Laughlin always said in the Billy Jack movies, just before he beat the crap out of thugs, corrupt officials, crooked cops, and National Guardsmen?!?!

[nightwing]

TELLE writes:

Dick Dillin is fun, but the others are mediocre talents (with the possible exception of Rogers' Foozle comics in the 80s).

Wow! What's the "smilie" equivalent of a spit take?  'Cause I wanna insert one here.

You dig Dillin over Marshall Rogers and Frank Brunner?!  Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.  Dillin was fine on the Blackhawks but he was always an awkward fit at best on superheroes, much as I loved the "satellite era" of the JLA.  Frank Brunner I suppose you could argue was a Neal Adams clone...sort of...but I thought his work on Dr. Strange was gorgeous.  Marshall Rogers, at least paired with Terry Austin on Detective and later Dr. Strange, was wonderful in my estimation.  He's still in the top tier of Batman artists, and considering that character's artistic pedigree that's saying something.

Julian Perez writes:

Kirby has a way, hardly endearing to me at all, of jumping on a book and making it totally divorced from what it was previously.

And in this, if nothing else, Mr Byrne has achieved his goal of being the new Kirby.

From the Roy Thomas-penned AVENGERS #85 to the MacGregor book, the Panther has driven jet after jet that would give the Thunderbirds a woody.

 :lol: Maybe you were referring to the USAF's exhibition flyers, but when I hear "Thunderbirds" I picture the Gerry Anderson version, so that phrase above is a hilarious play on words.

Therefore, I'm stealing it.

[Super Monkey]

And in this, if nothing else, Mr Byrne has achieved his goal of being the new Kirby.

The exception being that Jack's takes are just as good and many times better than how they were before.

I love Jack Kriby's artwork, it is truly original and extremely powerful!

Artists tend to like his art more than non-artists, since non-creative types tend to only like "pretty art" or "realistic art" and normally can't make sense of "weird stuff" and artwork that is a bit out there and super creative. Not, everyonbe, but most people. Kriby's art was weird, wacky, ugly, but all in a very good way.

[JulianPerez]

Maybe you were referring to the USAF's exhibition flyers, but when I hear "Thunderbirds" I picture the Gerry Anderson version, so that phrase above is a hilarious play on words.

Therefore, I'm stealing it.

Heh heh heh. Thanks! Yeah, that was a puppet joke.

So there's a squadron of fighter planes named after that show where puppets discuss matters of life and death? This is almost as awesome a moment as when NASA named the first space shuttle "Enterprise." Didn't know that, actually. You know those kids that were into model airplanes and all that? That wasn't me. I was more into dinosaurs.

THUNDERBIRDS is a model of great unintentional comedy. My favorite moment was when a remote control model car containing puppets (containing a bomb) runs off the side of the road and bursts into flames. I couldn't stop laughing.

And that episode where they have real normal sized alligators, but put them beside puppets and have the puppets pretend they're giants? GENIUS!

And in this, if nothing else, Mr Byrne has achieved his goal of being the new Kirby.

Since we're comparing Byrne to Kirby...

Margaret Mead once said, "be lazy, go crazy."

Kirby and Byrne both took part of her advice. Kirby went crazy, but Byrne got lazy.

Being crazy is a strength when you're a creative type. And while some of the 70s guys may not have dug it, Kirby's CAPTAIN VICTORY is the one comic on the stands in the 1980s that featured a battle with a Fighting Fetus. Of that I'm quite sure.

Being lazy, though, is a much less conscienable crime for an artist. How could a guy like Byrne, who had his flaws, sure, but he could draw one hell of an action scene come Claremont's IRON FIST, suddenly start drawing Wonder Woman, the fantasy of an entire heterosexual male generation, as a thin-necked E.T.-like creature?

You know what they should put on Byrne's tombstone? "Here Lies John Byrne - his old stuff was better."

(Speaking of CAPTAIN VICTORY, what were the exact circumstances surrounding the bankruptcy of Pacific Comics?)

I love Jack Kriby's artwork, it is truly original and extremely powerful!

One strength of Kirby were his layouts. He had these enormous splash pages, especially in NEW GODS and in his war comics like SGT. FURY, that made one feel like the panels were too small for what he was showing. I'm especially reminded of NEW GODS #5, where Kirby shows a scene of Forager leading a charge of bugs into the food source. What a picture, what perspective! It was so three-dimensional you could reach right in there (maybe even fall in if your feet trip).

But I have to say, Nightwing is right when he says that Kirby couldn't make his three-domensional figures less indicational. For instance, take the "fanservice" scene where Big Barda showers, somewhere in MISTER MIRACLE #6, right before being attacked by the Female Furies. Now, how off does art have to be when a dame like Barda in the shower can't get a single woof?

[TELLE]

Help, I'm an old stick in the mud!

What can I say?  Dillin is a clunky, lovably artless craftsman from another era but Brunner and Rogers are too slick and skilled (too 70s?) for my taste.  Not that I think Kirby was either unskilled or un-slick, especially when paired with a great inker.  Just on a higher artistic plane than most others.  And, okay, maybe a bit eccentric.

Reference was made earlier to retconning Kirby's Panther as a brain-damaged impostor but who's to say that Kirby didn't retcon all previous versions of the Panther (maybe including his own) when he took up chronicling T'Challa's adventures again?  Turnabout is fair play when it comes to retcons, explicit or not.

What's interesting to me about Kirby --something detractors seize on as a fault-- is his distance from these characters.  He's not a continuity-obsessed fan but an adult professional and his approach reflects that.  In the long run, as much as I'm obsessed with continuity and trivia myself, radical change and re-starts are probably healthier in terms of audience renewal.  I certainly was not a reader of the older Panther series (or even of the original FF stories) when I encountered Kirby's series as a kid.  I knew the Panther vaguely from a few issues of the Avengers but that was it.  So my embrace of the "new" version was total and unencumbered.

I don't want to get into another "John Byrne is lazy" (or crazy) discussion because I remember how in another thread I was reminded of Byrne's prodigious output and obvious work ethic.  Suffice to say, I still dislike him as a creator, regardless of his draftsmanship.

That's an interesting touch, BTW, the Busiek Wakanda industry thing.  Sometimes continuity can be inserted without intrusion, as a pleasant treat for older/wider read fans.