Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Proof positive that we live in a Kirby comic, the Pentagon just confirmed they attempted to build a pheremonal/chemical "gay bomb:"

http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.html (http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.html)

What troubles me the most is the chilling failure of science fiction and comics to predict this particular gizmo  Science fiction writers predicted the atom bomb, why not the gay bomb? Why didn't Nick Fury use a "weaponized gay gun" or something like that? I can totally see the Forever People, Lex Luthor, or the Hairies blasting folk with homobeams.

On the other hand, I've seen bigger gaysplosions on this forum, and they cost considerably less than $7.5 milion.

Way to go, military! This raises the frightening possibility, however, the Russians might get an edge on us in homonuclear weaponry.

At any rate, this whole idea is a cross between Kirby and an especially immature teenage wank fantasy (yes, I'm aware of the irony in that statement).

Amazing: a make-love-not-war bomb. Of course, the proposal rather ignores the fact that homosexuality was encouraged in the Spartan army, because it serried the ranks - and let's face it, you wouldn't want to get on the Spartans' bad side.

I guess the point isn't so much that it changes your orientation, but that it makes your comrade look so darn hot you'd rather jump his bones than fight the enemy.  Frankly that sounds nuts to me since I'm betting the "fight or flight" impulse is the one thing stronger in humans than the sex drive.  So I'd expect them to maybe shoot first and make out later.

This ranks right up there with the plot to make Castro's beard fall out so his people would lose respect for him.  ???

We're not living in Kirby's world, though...just today I've seen about 20 people with faces that looked different from each other, and not a one of them had squared-off finger tips.

(http://www.davidmorefield.com/stuff/gaybomb.gif)

It's a Kirby world depends on who's inking. 

Hopefully, Joe Sinnott and not Chic Stone. ;)

The sad thing about this "gay bomb" is it seems to play into the US military's homophobic assumption that gays aren't capable of being good soliders, or that they're oversexed... hmph.

Wonder if Canada or the UK wastes taxpayer money on coming up with stuff like this...

Here in the UK, we waste all our money on exploding pens and cars for James Bond.

They didn't "just confirm" this.  It was news in early 2005 that was resuscitated.  What prompted its attention enough to request it via FOIA was it being part of a marketing CD in 2000-2001.  Here's the actual document, with other "speculative" ideas as well:

http://www.sunshine-project.org/incapacitants/jnlwdpdf/wpafbchem.pdf

As subtle as a howitzer, Nightwing.

Exactly. That's exactly how subtle Kirby's work is. Thanks for the assist, Aldous.

Actually, I wouldn't mind driving a Kirby vehicle though a city full of Kirby architecture to get to a job using Kirby technology.  Just so long as everyone's head is redrawn by Murphy Anderson.

Nice try, but no cigar. And behave yourself.

Your contempt for Kirby's work is mystifying. (I didn't say dislike; I said contempt.)

I love Kirby's art, and his faces:

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v489/kirbyblog/ee78521d.jpg)

Hey, I don't hate Kirby, at least not early Kirby.

I'm currently reading "Showcase Presents: The Challengers of the Unknown" and it's beautiful stuff.  In fact, I've jumped ahead to read the Bob Brown stuff at the end of the book quickly, so I can go back and savor the Kirby/Wood stories when I can devote the time they deserve.

I am frankly in awe of Kirby's compositions, camera angles, figure poses, technology, vehicles and architecture and the sense of authenticity (if not exactly "reality") he imparts to just about everything, from ancient cities to the wildest gizmos of the future.  His figures have weight and when they defy physics, or just gravity, you feel like it's because they're bigger than the laws of nature, not because the artist just doesn't "get" them.  In fact I've spent a ridiculous amount of time just admiring how garments hang on his figures (I love the looser outfits he gives the Challs, compared to the standard spandex look of later artists).

It's just that, for my money, Kirby's at his best with an inker who can preserve his strengths while glossing over his weak points.  Joe Sinnot springs to mind, with his smooth curves, spot-on use of blacks and a knack for glamorous faces that makes him, for me, the Marvel version of Murphy Anderson.  Wally Wood was probably Kirby's best inker -- he shared Sinnot's knack for glamour but also shared Kirby's genius for making fake technology look legit, and figures look weighty and "3-D".  Their collaboration on the Challengers and the earlier "Sky Masters" newspaper strip was arguably some of the most gorgeous work ever produced for comics.

BUT...there's always a but...I grew up in the Bronze Age and my perceptions of Kirby will always be filtered through that lens.  In the 70s, "Kirby" meant Devil Dinosaur, Captain America, Black Panther...and later there was SuperPowers and Captain Victory and so on.  I found all of those repulsive, not to put too fine a point on it.  Besides the fact that Kirby wrote the books, and writing was NOT his thing, to me all the characters were ugly and weird, their bodies twisted to impossible poses, often for no particular reason, their noses tiny little things beneath their beetle brows and their foreheads and cheekbones highlighted with a "squiggle" that suggested their epidermis was encased in lucite.  And, as most artists tend to do if they hang on long enough, Kirby developed a series of stock poses that appeared again and again in his later years.  My opinion was "been there, seen that, didn't like it the first time."

It took a lot of time for me to "discover" Kirby -- the King -- as he was in his earlier work, and now I'm enough of a fan to have bought a good number of "Kirby Collector" magazines, all the Fantastic Four Essentials and Masterworks I can afford, and so on.  Once or twice, I've decided that my aversion to Kirby in the 70s was simply the result of being a Neal Adams fanboy, obsessed with "realism" and too unschooled to appreciate true genius.  But then I pick up trade paperbacks of those Cap or Black Panter stories and I have to admit, "Nope...still hate it."

So, am I guilty of taking a cheap shot at Jack earlier in this thread?  Sure, but that's what I do.  :D  Does it mean I have contempt for Kirby?  No.  If nothing else, I've developed a respect for him that modifies my youthful distate.  Where I once saw him as a hack who phoned in his work, now I believe he was just a very unique talent whose work never stopped evolving as long as he was working (which was pretty much until he died)...the trouble is it eventually evolved into something I no longer had a taste for.  And I certainly wasn't alone in that.

I love his 1970's and 1980's work just because it was so insane.

I think Kirby's faces are one of his strengths.  The heroes look strong, the villains hideous, and all the women are beautiful.

(http://superman.nu/images/kirby-chick-face.jpg)

Wasn't she in La Cage Aux Folles?

Creepy left hand, otherwise she's passable.  In fact if you fixed the hand by putting a tambourine in it, you'd have Linda McCartney.

...who was the punchline of the 1970s joke "What do you call a dog with Wings?"

Kirby's women are good looking? Well, maybe if he's paired up with Joe Sinnott, but otherwise...well, take a look at the Barda shower scene in MISTER MIRACLE. I can hardly think of a less sexy shower scene in human history.

And it SHOULD be sexy. It has Barda, a big, Greek-looking girl. It has nudity and splashing water. But it isn't! That's like having nuts and ice cream and making horse manure. In fact the entire scene is so weird, it's like the sex scene in KINDERGARTEN COP where he-man Arnold looks less like he's making love and more like he's oiling the lady up to fire her out of a giant bazooka at bad guys.

Incidentally, Nightwing, I gotta agree with you about a lot of Kirby's 70s Marvel output. I reread BLACK PANTHER recently, and...yikes. Midgets, collectors? I can see why Chris Priest retconned this out of existence as a brain-damaged alternate future version.

But on rereading Kirby's CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON, I'm actually impressed. I formerly despised it, but I guess that's because it is so very different from the Englehart run that preceded it. It's like someone giving you a coke and telling you it's a milkshake.

It's possible to like two things for mutually contradictory and different reasons. Englehart's Cap is still the definitive Cap for me, but Kirby's contributions were weird and loud, with bright Car Dealership-sized flags, and weirdly religious (something even Evanier doesn't touch on).

The Jewish symbology of Kirby is especially apparent here with Arnim Zola. Qabbala teaches that the reason the human body looks as it does is not because of practicality. "After all, if it was, wouldn't the head be better off in the chest, where it would be protected?" (Actual quote.) The head's elevation above the body represents its importance in guiding human action (for this and other reasons, most religious Jews wear the yamulke).

(Incidentally, I always read a spiritual perspective on C.S. Lewis...but until I met other fans and learned more about the guy, I assumed it was Jewish, not Christian! The Lion, after all, is a Jewish symbol, not a Christian one. And having our identifiable characters persecuted outsiders but called to a special purpose in existence is likewise Jewish. I loved Lewis as a kid, but today I find the most complicated, smart fantasy is outright hostile to religion: Michael Pullmann and Michael Moorcock.)

Whoa, not so fast! I know about the honey and all that, but the lion appears everywhere, including on my passport.

I'd have to agree.....In the Colosseum, the Lions/Christians rivalry was a big draw

He did what???!!!???

In religious terms: blasphemy!  King Solomon's Frog is one of the high points of western civilization, as far as I'm concerned.  A classic.  Or maybe you think we will all be reading the collected Christopher Priest in 30 years instead?


Interesting about kabbala in Kirby's 70s Cap!  I should reread some of those Mad-Bomb/Nightglider/Bicentennial epics.

Comics are my religion but I like Phillip Pullman too.

    The Celestials always seemed to (to me, anyway) to be inspired by the Kabbala.  Ever notice how some of Kirby's "biggest fans" seem to be Siegel/Shuster haters or outright antisemites?  Funny thing is Kirby always gave Jerry & Joe credit for creating the super-hero genre.  One thing that always angered him was the assumption (by some) that he had turned his back on his jewish heritage. 

What is up with the knocks on Kirby women?  Come on - Crystal was a babe.  So was Medusa.  Even Barba had some decent moments.  What about the pretty Latina Cap teamed up with in the Arnim Zola story?  So he's no Frazetta (his women make me melt - don't snicker), or Romita, or Buscema, heck even Swan (his girls had that "next door quality") - but Kirby's girls weren't too shabby.

It does go downhill round the mid-70s for sure - but heck, again, there were still a few highpoints.  I thought the human girl character (Freedom?) he made to hang around Kamandi wasn't all that bad either.

Some of my first conscious prurient thoughts were inspired by 70s comics, I'm sure.  Not just things like the image of a naked Wasp strapped to a table by Ultron, but also things like the hair-covered Eve in Devil Dinosaur.  Consequently, I'm really not fit to be an objective judge on the relative sexiness of Kirby's women.  But Criadoman's point about Crystal and Medusa is a good one.  To that short list I would add maybe the Enchantress and Hela.  The 70s FF cover Kirby did featuring Thundra, Tigra, the Thing, and the Impossible Man is a highly potent symbol of my youth, as well.

In 30 years, if man is still around and not enslaved by giant glowing eyed cockroaches, Chris Priest will probably be read.

Of the three comics that made me a “regular” comics fan in the 1990s, namely, Busiek’s AVENGERS, THUNDERBOLTS, and Chris Priest’s BLACK PANTHER, the Priest BP was the coolest.

It was like if Quentin Tarantino directed the BOURNE IDENTITY, and put in robot panther tanks and flying subs. Priest defied the idea that books about ethnic heroes don’t appeal to the mainstream, because his Panther was so competent, so mysterious, that his appeal transcended race.

Priest’s Panther is one of the few fictional characters that, on reading about him, I find myself saying "man I wish I was him" (along with Howard’s Solomon Kane and Steven King’s Gunslinger).

The Panther was dignified, quiet and cryptic. He always behaved according to a plan. The book was narrated from the perspective of the Panther’s sidekick, a Young Republican Alex P. Keaton type that was the world’s whitest white man.

And the Panther’s amazing stuff. His teenage karate chick sidekicks, the energy-daggers, the vibranium soles that let him fall sixty stories and land safely on his feet. The book had mysteries and international conspiracy. In short, a must-read.

I'm going to have to see if I can find back issues now, because you make it sound pretty good; you know, I don't think I picked up a single Marvel Comic during the 90s. Except Daredevil. I always picked up Daredevil. They can say what they like, but they can't say I didn't always pick up Daredevil.

Never saw that cover.  However, speaking of purient thoughts, I have to say that John Buscema's one shot of "Lyta" if I'm not mistaken (done in B&W - for Marvel's magazine line) was an Amazon from the alternate future United Sisterhood Alliance (USA) story was just plain wonderful.  Boy, would he have been a great artist on Wonder Woman.