Articles with the Tag Jack Kirby

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 27: Fantastic Four vol 03

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Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 3
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and friends
Reprints: Fantastic Four #41-63 and Annual 3-4 (August 1965 – June 1967)
Get this for: Lee and Kirby at the peak of their game — Five stars

Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 2 ended with the Battle of the Baxter Building, in which a powerless Fantastic Four, with the aid of a blind man, Daredevil, had to defeat their most dangerous enemy Doctor Doom. That was a great story to end the volume with and hard to top, yet Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 3 almost as strong with the return of the Frightful Four who kidnap and brainwash the Thing to use against his partners. That story leads into the wedding of Reed and Sue, followed by the coming of the Inhumans, spanning no less than five issues. But that’s just the start, as the FF have to immediately face the threat of Galactus and the Silver Surfer. Perhaps the best story Lee and Kirby ever did together, but the very next issue has another strong candidate for that title: “This Man… This Monster” in which an unnamed embittered scientist takes over the Things powers and learns just in time the true meaning of heroism — Stan Lee’s sentimental instincts honed to perfection. All this only takes us up to #51, with the rest of the volume also seeing the introduction of the Black Panther, the continuing struggle of Johnny Storm to rescue the Inhumans from their prison, the menace of Klaw, Doctor Doom stealing the Silver Surfer’s cosmic powers and more.

As I’ve said before, The Fantastic Four started out as relatively realistic series, in as far as a series starring an orange rock monster, a rubber man, invisible woman and a human torch can be realistic and then slowly started to abandon that realism for more grandiose, imaginative visions. You could already see this happening in the first two volumes, but here Lee’s and especially Kirby’s imagination has been completely unshackled. Great big chunks of the Marvel Universe are seen for the first time here: Galactus and the Surfer, the Inhumans, the Black Panther and his home country of Wakanda, Klaw, Blastaar, the Negative Zone and so on. All these would be further developed later on, both by Lee and Kirby themselves as by other writers and artists but the core concepts were created here.

With this enormous burst of creativity came an expansion in story length. Had earlier FF stories been either single issue or rarely double issue in length, here not only do stories run for three, four or even five issues, they flow into each other, with subplots being carried over and developing for the best part of a year or longer. It’s still possible to pick up a given issue and know what’s going, if only because of the inevitable recaps Lee gives at the start of each issue, but it definitively helps to have been reading the series for longer. Again it’s Lee and Kirby pioneering a style of storytelling that would become ubiquitous at Marvel in the decades since.

Also evolving because of the greater length, complexity and grandeur of the stories, is Kirby’s art. He started out subdued and realistic back in volume one, was already starting to experiment in the next volume but here he has unshackled his imagination. His old strengths are still there, but they’re now coupled to a sense of design that few since have equalled. His characters are fluid and constantly in motion, he’s still the master of fight scenes, equally adept at illustrating the more quiet scenes, but he really comes to live when he gets to create a new civilisation. Both the Black Panther’s Wakanda and the Inhumans great refuge are places of super science, but you could never mistake the one for the other.

In short, this is Lee and Kirby at their very best and if you can get only one Essential Fantastic Four volume, get this one.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 21: Essential Uncanny X-men Vol. 1

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Essential Uncanny X-men Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Werner Roth, Roy Thomas and friends
Reprints: Uncanny X-Men #1-24 (September 1963 – September 1966)
Get this for: The X-Men before they were famous — three stars

The X-Men debuted in the same month as that other Marvel superhero team, the Avengers. But whereas the latter team featured five heroes already known from their solo adventures, the X-Men, also with five members, had never been seen before. What’s more, unlike every other Marvel hero the X-Men had no origin, but where born with their powers, socalled mutants. From the start they were different, using their powers not to fight crime, though they did, but to protect the world from evil mutants, to find those mutants still unaware of their powers and to show normal people that mutants could be trusted. It was a far more science fictional approach than Lee and Kirby had tried in any of their other titles, even in the Fantastic Four.

I’ve read many of the earliest stories in this volume before and always found them a tad on the tedious side. This is sadly still the case now. The premise of the series is good, but how it’s worked out is not so much. As you know, there’s professor Xavier’s school, where he trains the X-Men and is on the lookout for potential mutants or mutant threats. The first eight-nine issues all follow the same pattern: some mutant menace makes himself known or is found by professor X, the X-Men try to defeat it but are outmatched, are rallied by Prof X and overcome it. So the first issue has the X-Men going after Magneto, in the second they tackle the Vanisher, in the third the Blob, in the fourth it’s Magneto again, with new allies the Brotherhood of Evil, followed with Magneto teaming up with Namor and so on.

Character wise, especially at the start the old prof is the most annoying character in the series: either the deus ex machina that solves every difficulty at the end of an issue, or the distant trainer/mentor exhorting his pupils to do better. The focus on the X-men’s training in the first seven issues or so doesn’t help either. Another annoying character is Scott Summers, pining for fellow student Jean Grey and whining endlessly about his deadly powers and how he needs to keep his self control.

Things liven up a bit when the The X-Men move into the double figures. In issue ten the X-Men find the Savage Land and meet Ka-Zar, in issue eleven the Stranger, followed by the introduction of the Juggernaut in a fine two part story. The introduction of the Sentinels comes straight after and takes no fewer than three issues to be told. This shift towards longer, multi issue stories works well for the X-Men: they’re much more fun. Gone is any pretence at the original mission of the X-Men though.

What also works out well for the X-Men is the shift in artists, from Jack Kirby to Werner Roth. Roth’s art style is somewhat cruder than Kirby’s, but suits the X-Men better. Kirby never seemed to get a good handle on them. His artwork is always no worse than good, but doesn’t gel the way it does with e.g.
the Fantastic Four. Roth’s artwork doesn’t have the same technical proficieny of Kirby’s, but his fluid lines do seem to work better here. Another newcomer, Roy Thomas, gets to handle the writing duties from issue twenty, which also helps to freshen up the series. Unfortunately they’re only just starting to get up to steam together when the volume ends…

The X-Men was never the best Marvel Silver Age title and this is certainly not an essential volume. Interesting enough to read, but I won’t reach quickly for this again.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 19: Captain America vol 02

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Essential Captain America vol 02
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, Gene Colan and friends
Reprints: Captain America #103-126 and more (July 1968 – June 1970)
Get this for: Steranko and the old guard changeth — Four stars

Essential Captain America vol. 2 starts where the first volume left off: with slam bang action by Lee and Kirby. They put poor old Cap through his paces, fighting the Red Skull and his band of Nazi cutthroats, Batroc, the Swordsman and the Living Laser, a robot double of himself, the mighty Trapster and his own worst fears manipulated by Dr Faustus. Lee and Kirby fit a lot in every issue, but keep the subplots to a minimum, the only continuing storyline being the romance of Cap and Sharon Carter. You feel they have a formula here for old Cap that, while not as original as Fantastic Four or Spider-Man could be kept up indefinitely. But then everything changes with #110, when Jim Steranko comes aboard.

You could call Steranko the first Image artist, the first one to make his art more important than the story. If you look at Kirby, even his wildest experiments here or elsewhere are always in service to the plot, with even the splash pages determined by it. With Steranko this is no longer the case. In his just four issues of Captain America he has more splash pages almost than Kirby had over his entire previous run, all more concerned with the Rule of Cool than the demands of the story. In fact, in some cases they work actively against the story, as with the Big Reveal in his last issue. But damn if it doesn’t look gorgeous.

Steranko gets away with that sort of stuff because he’s such a good artist. You remember his covers and his splash pages, but his other pages are gorgeous too. Much more than Kirby or any other artist working back then he also consciously designs his pages and panel layout as a whole. So in the opening page of issue 113, he translates the recap of the previous issue into a television report on the death of Cap, with a page filling shot of the camera man and reporter, a line of inset panels in the shape of tv screens through the middle. Later on he has Madame Hydra recalling her origin, with one big panel at the top of the page showing her in control of HYDRA, followed by a quick succession of smaller panels closing up on details of her face as she looks at the horrifically scarred right hand side of her face (only hinted at), to explode in the last panel, short but wide, as we see she has shattered the mirror. Steranko is great at establishing mood this way, using cinametic influences on the comics page in a way that nobody else does at the time. It brings a grandeur to these somewhat silly stories not seen before or since.

Not that the artist coming after him are bad. There’s two fill in issues by John Romita and John Buscema respectively, before Gene Colan takes over, another great mood artist. He stays around for the rest of the issues reprinted here, which means he’s around for the introduction of the Falcon, another pioneering Black superhero and actually the first proper African-American superhero. He’s introduced here without fuzz, without calling out his Blackness, but just as an ally for Captain America at his very lowest, with the Red Skull holding the reality warping Cosmic Cube, having swapped bodies with him and dropped him back on Exile Island, where his old Nazi “friends” are itching to kill who they think is the Skull. Falcon rescues Cap, Cap returns the favour by training him into a superhero and together they defeat but the Nazis and the Skull…

On a certain level these stories are on the dumb side, pure entertainment without the sophistication of Marvel’s flagship titles. To me that’s part of their charm though. About the only thing that really annoys me here is Cap’s attitude to Sharon Carter, his love interest and SHIELD field agent, who he wants to give up her dangerous work to protect her from suffering the same fate at his old partner Bucky. Male chauvenist pig.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 17: Fantastic Four vol 02

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Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 2
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and friends
Reprints: Fantastic Four #21-40 and Annual 2 (December 1963 – July 1965)
Get this for: Lee and Kirby gathering steam — Five stars

The second volume of Essential Fantastic Four opens with a story that should not work, but does. The Fantastic Four fight a new villain, the Hate-Monger, who is stirring up race hatred, class hatred and religious hatred throughout the country and even manages to set our heroes against each other. Which is bad luck for Nick Fury, who needs them to stop the rebellion in San Gusto which the Hate-Monger is also behind, but with a bit of trickery he manages to get all the bickering members to the little South American country. Of course they manage to defeat the Hate-Monger in the end, overcome their differences and reveal who he really is: Adolf Hitler. Even in 1963 this was corny as hell, but somehow Jack and Stan manage to make it work.

It’s a good example of their growing power as storytellers both individually and as a team. In the first twenty issues of Fantastic Four they were finding out what did and did not work, with some misfires along the way and here they’re building on that foundation. The basics are in place, they know who the characters are, what they can and cannot let them do, how they react to a given situation. Was for e.g the Thing in the first volume still a figure of menace, somebody who could erupt at any moment and become a true monster rather than just looking like one, here he has mellowed to still grumpy but essential loveable, still inclined to lash out in anger, frustration or irritation but never with the intent to hurt anyone. Mr Fantastic in the same way has evolved from the brainy, detached scientist to somebody with deep seated passions normally kept hidden, who scares even his team mates and friends when these passions are unleashed.

Villains too get more multidimensional, with both Doctor Doom and the Submariner becoming more sympathetic in the process. The latter was always more an antihero than a real villain and his own moral code is developed further here, to the point where the Fantastic Four end up fighting alongside him against the menace of a real underwater tyrant, Attuma. Doom on the other hand never becomes an ally of the Fantastic Four, but is made a tragic figure through his origin, told in the second Fantastic Four Annual. It turns out he’s a gypsy, whose mother was killed when he was still a baby and whose father died fleeing for his life from a local baron when he was a small boy. He swears vengeance, starts studying the black arts of his mother, as well as educating himself into science (no finer distinction really necessary in an universe in which a biochemist can create a malevolent artificial intelligence from scratch), gets a scholarship at the same university as Reed Richards and Ben Grimm, tries to contact the netherworld and gets blown up, is thrown out, travels the world and ends up with a mysterious sect of monks in Tibet and becomes Dr Doom. Even the Skrulls when turning up again turn out not to be all bad.

The stories in this volume are in essence midway between the realive realism with which the Fantastic Four started out and the wild, unrestrained imagination Kirby especially would bring to the title in its more mature years. The stories are based around some supervillain or other menace threatening the team or the world or both and the Fantastic Four defeating it. There’s a healthy dose of soap opera as well, revolving around the Thing and his desire to become Ben Grimm again, become human again and his fear that this will mean losing Alica Masters, his girlfriend, as well as around Mr Fantastic and the Invisible Girl and the love they share but are afraid to speak out. The Invisible Girl at the same time also evolves both in power and personality, getting to be a somewhat less stereotypical comics girl, though still vulnerable to being a professional hostage at times.

On the art front, Kirby’s art gets wilder, more experimental, as he integrates photographic backgrounds in his art, develops ever more baroque looking weaponry, vehicles and scientific equipment. His figures and the way they stand and move gets more exagerrated too, underscoring the theatricality of many of Stan Lee’s scripts. The effect of reading a concentrated dose of Kirby art is, as I’ve mentioned before that I start seeing those Kirby Poses and Kirby Figures in real life. Watching sport is especially good for this…

As good as the first volume of Lee/Kirby Essential Fantastic Four was, this volume was better. One of those times when essential is no hyperbole, but the honest truth.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 16: Essential Avengers 01

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Essential Avengers Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Don Heck and friends
Reprints: Avengers 1-24 (September 1963- January 1966)
Get this for: Kang and Cap’s Kooky Quartet — three stars

The Avengers was one of the weaker Marvel Silver Age titles. Though created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, it’s neither’s strongest work and neither’s heart seems to be in it. Of course Stan Lee was running Marvel comics at the time as well as writing the other nine series they were then putting out, so it’s no wonder he would take it easy on certain titles. And whereas The Fantastic Four from the start had its own voice, The Avengers put together five heroes with their own titles and not that much in common as a somewhat belated Justice League of America knockoff. If you then have Kirby leaving after only eight issues to be replaced by an uninspired Don Heck you have a problem.

Which is why it was a bit of a slog getting through The Essential Avengers Vol. 1, as quite a few of the stories in here are dull. The origin story is an example. Loki is looking for a way to get back at Thor, spies the Hulk and manipulates him into smashing up a train bridge. Rick Jones and his Teen Brigade attempt to contact the Fantastic Four but Loki redirects their signals to Thor, but what he doesn’t know is that Iron Man, as well as Ant Man and the Wasp have received his message as well. Off they all head to New Mexico to find the Hulk, a big fight breaks out which ends as Thor reveals the real villain. As a story it doesn’t really gell and the Hulk never really fits in with the Avengers. His replacement by Captain America in #4 is a great improvement.

But even then the stories remain a bit dull. Having Rick Jones hang around isn’t helping, as he’s just annoying. Let’s not even mention the Teen Brigade. Then there are the villains. I’ve never liked Loki, the Space Phantom in #2 is alright but not spectacular, then there are two issues with Namor, followed by no less than three issues with Baron “Help my mask is glued to my face! Curse you Captain America!” Zemo. Or there are the Lava Men, yet another subterranean menace. Or the Red Menace threat of the Commissar, slightly later on. As threats, these are all strictly from dullesville.

All is forgiven however with the introduction of Kang the Conquoror in issue eight. Now there’s a real threat, with his mastery of future super science, so confident of his victory he receives the Avengers in a lounge chair. He completely overclasses them at first, defeating the Avengers with ease. He does get his comeuppance of course, but he’s one of the few villains here you could imagine winning. Another great early issue, the next issue in fact, is that which introduces Wonderman, another villain who seems to easily get the upper hand over the Avengers before he has a change of heart.

I felt that The Avengers only reached their stride once the original members had buggered off, leaving Captain America only with three novice heroes, each of which actually started out as a villain: Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Now that Lee only has to deal with one member with his own title, it gets much easier for him to get some character development going on. Granted, much of it is somewhat artificial as Lee squares off old square Cap against young hotheads Hawkeye and Quicksilver, which is again somewhat tedious. But on the whole much better than the first ten issues or so.

Artwise, while Kirby at this time was incapable of turning in bad stories, it didn’t compare favourably with his work on e.g. Fantastic Four. His replacement with Heck works in the title’s favour, once Heck has found his style. I like his slim, streamlined figures here, as well as the touch of glamour he brings to them, especially to the Scarlet Witch. In general Heck keeps improving over this volume.

Overall this volume shows a title that started out bad, got slightly better after Captain America joined, but only started really improving with “Cap’s Kooky Quartet”. This volume does not show the Avengers at their best, but ends just as they start getting better.