jack kirby collector #35
DESCRIPTION
It's our nail-biting, death-defying "Great Escape" issue of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR! #35 headlines the incomparable Mr. Miracle, and starts with covers inked by MARSHALL ROGERS and STEVE RUDE! In addition to extensive coverage of Kirby's super-escape artist Mr. Miracle, there's: Kirby's escape from New York's Lower East Side! A look at the escape themes in Michael Chabon's Kirby-inspired, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY! A comparison of Kirby's and Harry Houdini's backgrounds! The 2001 Kirby Tribute Panel (featuring WILL EISNER, the late JOHN BUSCEMA, JOHN ROMITA, MIKE ROYER, and - believe it or not - JOHNNY CARSON)! Plus there's the usual array of uninked Kirby pencils, shown at our huge TABLOID SIZE, and more!TRANSCRIPT
Mis
ter
Mir
acle
TM
& ©
2002
DC
Com
ics.
It’s the great Kirby
“BUST-OUT!!”
C o l l e c t o r
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KIR
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GREATESCAPES
NO. 35SPRING
2002
1
THE NEW
C o l l e c t o r
Contents OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
(why was Kirby always running fromsomething or another?)
UNDER THE COVERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4(Steve Rude and Marshall Rogers out-line their respective covers this issue)
JACK F.A.Q.s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6(regular columnist Mark Evanieranswers a pair of Frequently AskedQuestions about Kirby)
BAD GUISE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11(just who was Kirby’s greatest villain?)
WRITER’S BLOC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12(author Michael Chabon offers up a fewwords on Kirby)
HOUDINI & KIRBY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14(a brief look at each man’s approach tothe artistry of escape)
KIRBY AS A GENRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16(Adam McGovern finds the Kirby in afew of his favorite things)
INNERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18(Marshall Rogers chats about MisterMiracle, Kirby, and Batman)
GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26(death traps, dwarfs, and bathingBardas, all shown in pencil)
TRIBUTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44(the 2001 Kirby Tribute Panel, featuringthe late John Buscema, John Romita,Mike Royer, Will Eisner, and some guynamed Carson)
DECONSTRUCTING HIMON . . . . . . . . .58(three different writers take apart one ofKirby’s finest tales: “Himon”)
IN CLOSING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72(an examination of Kirby’s secondMister Miracle series)
COLLECTOR COMMENTS . . . . . . . . . . .76(escape the humdrum letter columns ofother mags by perusing these missivesabout our last issue)
PARTING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80(on the way out, take a quick look atJack’s final Mister Miracle page)
Front cover inks: MARSHALL ROGERSBack cover pastel art: STEVE RUDEFront cover color: TOM ZIUKO
Photocopies of Jack’s uninked pencilsfrom published comics are reproducedhere courtesy of the Kirby Estate, whichhas our thanks for their continued support.
COPYRIGHTS: Batman, Bekka, Ben Boxer, Bernadeth,Big Barda, Bruce Wayne, Darkseid, Female Furies,Forever People, Funky Flashman, Granny Goodness,Himon, Houseroy, In The Days of the Mob, Jimmy Olsen,Joker, Kamandi, Kanto, Komodo, Lashina, Losers, MadHarriet, Madame Evil Eye, Metron, Mister Miracle,Morgan Edge, Oberon, Orion, Renzi, Scott Free, ShiloNorman, Silver St. Cloud, Stompa, Superman, The Lump,Tigra, Virmin Vundabar, Young Scott Free TM & ©2002DC Comics. • Annihilus, Black Panther, Captain America,Daredevil, Devil Dinosaur, Eternals, Falcon, FantasticFour, Galactus, Human Torch, Invisible Girl, JasperSitwell, Moonboy, Mr. Fantastic, Nick Fury, Dum-DumDugan, Silver Surfer, Thing, Thor, Ultron TM & © 2002Marvel Characters, Inc. • Jacob & The Angel, JupiterPlaque, Stereon, Street Code TM & ©2002 Jack KirbyEstate.
#35, SPRING 2002
(above) Uninked pencils from Mister Miracle #5, page 4. Characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.
The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 10, No. 35, Spring2002. Published quarterly by & ©2002TwoMorrows Publishing, 1812 Park Drive,Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor.Eric Nolen-Weathington, Production Assistant.Single issues: $13 postpaid ($15 Canada, $16elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $36.00 US,$60.00 Canada, $64.00 elsewhere. All charactersare trademarks of their respective companies. Allartwork is ©2002 Jack Kirby unless otherwisenoted. All editorial matter is ©2002 the respec-tive authors. First printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.
ack Kirby was running from something all his life. Okay, I know that statement might sound strange to any
number of longtime Kirby fans, but bear with me aminute, and I’ll explain what I mean.
This issue is all about the theme of “escape” inJack’s work, and so it naturally will feature lots ofMister Miracle, Kirby’s super escape artist; butwhile the rest of the issue will deal with some ofthe “close calls” that character experienced onthe comics page, I want to delve into what mayhave made Jack so inclined to submerge him-self in this particular brand of escapism calledcomic books—what I term “The Great KirbyBust-Out!” (to borrow a line from the cover ofMister Miracle #9).
Escape was a part of Jack’s life, frombeginning to end. To demonstrate mypoint, I’ve compiled a list of what I consid-er to be Kirby’s top ten biggest real-lifeescapes, in chronological order:
Escape from the Lower East Side (1930s).As a son of Jewish immigrants, Kirby spent
his childhood in one of the poorest neighborhoodsin New York. Daily gang fights were the norm, as fewkids on his block had much else to live for; but Kirby sur-reptitiously kept his imagination and artistic talent alive andflourishing through reading, movies, and drawing, and insteadof following in his father’s blue collar footsteps, used his talents
to find a way out of the slum.
Escaping anti-Semitism (1940s).Early in his career, Jack chose to legally
change his name from Kurtzberg to Kirby (muchto his parents’ dismay). Although he neverturned his back on his faith and ancestry, heopted for the new name for commercialreasons, undoubtedly feeling it couldhelp him avoid any anti-Semitic back-lash in his search for work.
Escape from death (World War II).After enlisting in the Army,
PFC Jack Kirby was assigned tonumerous life-threatening sit-uations as an advance scout.
The experience would be great fodder forfuture comics stories, but he barely lived totell them. After scraping by alive in Patton’sarmy, he was discharged with frozen feet, andnearly had them amputated. WWII was a profound influence on his life—as anyone who met Jack in person (and
heard a war story or two) canattest—and unlike a stagemagician’s act, his death-defy-ing feats were the real thing.
Escape from a dying industry(1950s).
After the end of hisMainline company (and partingways with Joe Simon) as thecomics industry looked to becollapsing, Jack picked up what-ever work he could find. Hemay have seen the writing on
the wall much earlier, because from the late 1940s-onward, he was constantly pursuing his dream of land-ing a coveted syndicated newspaper comic strip. The
opportunity finally arose with Sky Masters, and itspromise of a better, more secure living and greater
prestige; but the strip waned after an impressivestart, and Jack found himself trapped backworking for a comics page rate just to survive.Arguably, the desperation of the situation ledto the development of the Marvel Universe,
which in turn helped save a dying industry,but it also propelled Kirby squarely
back into it. So in some ways, hisescape to newspaper syndication led
him right back to a trap ofhis own making.
Escape from New York(1969).
After more than 50 yearsliving in the city of his birth,
Kirby uprooted his familyand moved to the
other side of thecountry. Jack
claimed theCalifornia
clime wasbetterfor hisdaugh-ter
Lisa’sasthma,
but nodoubt the
freedom ofbeing 3000 miles
away from an edi-tor made the
decision all theeasier. Thechange inscenery
appears to have started new ideas brewing in his mind,which would lead to some of his most mind-bogglingconcepts making their way to the comics page.
Escape from Marvel and Stan Lee (1970).Perhaps the biggest career move he ever made, the
switch to DC Comics meant he was leaving behind thesuccess of 1960s Marvel Comics, for a chance to prove
(next page, bottom) The finalpanels of several comics Jack“ran from” (usually not of hisown choice): Eternals, ForeverPeople, Jimmy Olsen, OurFighting Forces, CaptainAmerica (in pencil), and DevilDinosaur.
Celestials, Capt. America, Falcon, DevilDinosaur, Moonboy TM & ©2002Marvel Characters, Inc. Forever People,Superman, Jimmy Olsen, the LosersTM & ©2002 DC Comics.
(inset) Convention sketches ofBarda and Mister Miracledone for Al Milgrom.
2
Opening Shot
JJ
The Great Kirby “Bust
(background) A map of NewYork’s East Village, highlight-ing where celebrities grew up,including Kirby (as shownbelow).
(top) An artist’s representationof Kirby’s neighborhood (at thecorner of Suffolk and Delancystreets) as it stands today;Jack’s home would’ve been tothe left, where a parking lot istoday.
3
himself without a collaborator to share the credit with. From this point on, with rareexceptions, Jack wrote and edited his own stories (usually sending in completely letteredand inked work), and never again worked “Marvel method.”
Escaping DC (1975).Although what waited for him back at Marvel ended up no better than
what he was leaving behind, Jack chose not to renew his contract atDC Comics when it expired. The failed Fourth World experi-ment and a string of unsatisfying post-New Gods series lefthim looking for somewhere, anywhere else to ply histrade. For better or worse, Marvel Comics was the onlyother game in town, so he jumped ship yet again inhopes of a better situation.
Escaping the comics industry entirely (1978).Just when things seemed hopeless in the comics field he helped
pioneer four decades earlier, the animation industry came calling.With higher pay, more respect, and much-needed health benefits as heentered his declining years, Jack ironically ended his career where it began;only instead of doing in-betweening for Popeye cartoons, he was a muchsought-after concept man (creating thousands of ideas that will likely never beseen by the public), and scoring a major hit with Thundarr the Barbarian.
Escaping the “Big Two” (1980s).Jack’s final major foray into comics, rather than for DC and Marvel, wound
up being for independent publishers. Freed of the constraints of company-wide continuity and editorial dictates (which he experienced one last time on DC’s 1984Hunger Dogs Graphic Novel), Kirby produced wild, frenetic work like never before.Some loved it, some hated it, but no one could deny his unchained imagination was working at full speed on such projects asCaptain Victory and Silver Star.
Escape from obscurity (1990s).After years of no new Kirby work on the stands, and a gradual lessening of attention being paid to Jack (including smaller
crowds at conventions, where younger readers flocked to the Image creators), Jack experienced a resurgence of popularity in the1990s. The debut of Phantom Force (with Kirbyconcepts combined with Image inkers) and the Topps Secret City Sagabooks, as well as the release of The Art of Jack Kirby (and not one, but twofanzines devoted to Kirby) helped bring him back to the forefront of fans’minds (although his place in comics history was undoubtedly assuredanyway).
Is it any wonder then, that Jack was destined to make his mark in afield of escapist entertainment? While he may never have mastered theintricate escape techniques of a prestidigitator like Houdini, he certainlyworked his own brand of magic in comics; and the personal chains thatencumbered him throughout his life and career were every bit as difficultto surmount as anything David Copperfield and co. have ever dreamedup for their acts. ★
-Out!”
Under The Covers
4
teve Rude didn’t waste a second when we asked him if
he’d ever done a Mister Miracle #1 cover recreation that we
could run on this issue’s back cover. Although he hadn’t, he
immediately offered to give it a shot. (We thought Steve was a
particularly appropriate choice since, on the the original cover of
#1, Mister Miracle is saying the villains “are in for a RUDE shock.”)
We assumed “The Dude” would do a traditional pen-&-ink
version, and were totally stunned
when a gorgeous pastel drawing
arrived less than a week later.
Steve had this to say about the
creation of the piece:
“Some of you may befamiliar with a magazinecalled Step-by-Step. ThoughI collected it solely for“Methods of the Masters,” asection devoted to vintageillustrators, I have yet tolearn a thing from any of theStep-by-Step articles. MaybeI’d have to be there watchingover the artist’s shoulder, orphysically work alongside them,but for me these articles just don’tseem to work.
“With that in mind, I’ll describe the process of the Mister Miracle
#1 recreation. It was renderedin Nupastel, a hard, stick-like chalk, and done on orange Canson paper. I began by enlarging a copy of the actual Kirbycover and transferring it onto the pastel paper. I juggled some elements around since there wereno logo or word balloons to worry about, and began to apply the main colors throughout.
“Pastel is a new medium for me and is best suited to painting large images where you canuse broad, suggestive strokes. Eventually, you hone-in on details with smaller and smaller
strokes. This is more difficult than it sounds. Pastel smears easily. Likeall mediums, its drawbacks work side-by-side with its charms. At onepoint I dragged my sleeve along an area I’d spent an hour on and smearedthe whole thing. I finally realized the baggy sleeves I was wearing werethe culprit. Instant wipeout. Pastelists have a thing against fixative forsome reason, but it’s the
only sane way to workwith the stuff. (I rolled
up my sleeve after thatincident.)
“For the budding illustrators out there, know
that mediums don’t make anartist. Practice and accumulated
knowledge do. As Andrew Loomis oncesaid, the principles apply to all art regardless of the
medium used; be it oil, acrylic, watercolor, or a stick dipped in mud.
“Problems arise in all mediums as anartist struggles to improve. This situationusually applies throughout our entire lives.
Our job is to become smarter than the medium, andnot let technical things interfere with the fundamentalsthat make a good picture.”
Marshall Rogers took the more conventional route for this issue’s front cover, inking a xerox
of the Kirby pencils shown on the previous page. He had this to say about the experience:
“How does one approach a legend’s work? Jack is so definitive in his linework that thereis little room for interpretation, and yet I consider his style to be representative of formrather than absolute.
“I also feel an artist should bring something of himself to his work. With this in mind,and a personal preference to an “organic” rather than “plastic” look to inks (as I talked about during this book’s interview), I inked the cover you see on this issue.”
We originally toyed with the idea of adding one of Jack’s photo-collages to the front
cover’s background, but after seeing the color work Tom Ziuko added to it (not to mention
the spiffy “planet” detailing by Tom’s pal Scott Lemien), we thought the white background
aided our goal of making it look like the cover of one of those 25¢ 1970s DC 52-pagers
(think Jimmy Olsen #148, among others). ★
SS
5
(left) Kirby cover forMister Miracle #1, inkedby Vince Colletta, and adetail of the word balloonthat provoked us to getSteve Rude to recreate it.
Mr. Miracle TM & ©2002 DCComics.
(below) For those whodidn’t get enough “Rude”in Steve’s pastel interpre-tation, here are a coupleof fan commissions hedid in the 1990s.
Mr. Miracle, Big Barda TM &©2002 DC Comics. Artwork ©Steve Rude.
A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirbyby Mark Evanier
Once again, we attempt the seemingly-impossible: We shall
endeavor to answer not one but two Kirby-related queries in one
long, rambling reply. The first comes from Kirk Groeneveld, who
writes:
“I’m not Jewish, but I wonder how Jack Kirby’s faith interfaced withhis continuing theme of hidden races being genetically manipulated.How did he feel about the assignment to “Have the FF meet God” inFantastic Four #48-50?”
And the second comes from someone who signs their e-mail
“Washing2000lb,” which I guess means their name or their locale
is Washington. Anyway, he, she or it writes:
“What’s the deal with Mister Miracle? Everyone says it was based onSteranko but that Big Barda was based on Roz taking care of Kirby.Wouldn’t that make Jack Mister Miracle?”
irst, to Kirk: I’ve always been skeptical about that “meet
God” anecdote, as I see absolutely nothing in those issues to
suggest that Galactus represented a view of the Almighty on
the part of either Mr. Lee or Mr. Kirby. Think about it: Galactus
was an intergalactic force who created nothing, gave life to no one
and left each world he visited a barren, lifeless wasteland. How
does he
relate to
any inter-
pretation of
God that has
ever been
enshrined in any
book, any teaching,
any religion? Last I
heard—and I doubt this has
changed—God was supposed to foster life, not destroy it for his
own enrichment.
Yes, I know a few “scholarly” essays have sought to read
between the panels and make the case, but I remain uncon-
vinced. My suspicion is that Stan said to Jack—or maybe Jack
said to Stan—“Let’s have the FF fight someone who’s supremely
powerful” and somehow, that suggestion was later recalled as,
“Let’s have them meet God.” Obviously, just because a comic
book character has awesome might, it does not mean that he in
any way corresponds to his authors’ vision of you-know-who.
Just what was on Stan’s mind, I can’t say. He does not recall
individual issues well and the one time he and I discussed that
story arc, he didn’t have much to say about it. Neither did Jack,
but I did come up with a theory as to what he was thinking at the
time he worked on
that little epic. To
explain it, I need to
detour and answer
the question from
Washing2000lb....
Almost every-
thing Jack wrote
(or plotted) had
autobiographical
elements. In some
cases, they were so
obscure and dis-
guised that even he
didn’t recognize
them in the final mix.
But just as an actor
utilizes personal
sense memories in
acting, Jack used his
own emotional expe-
riences throughout
his work. When he
drew a scene that
involved anger, he
was usually thinking
about something that
had once angered
him, and so forth. In
some cases, the ref-
erence points are
even slightly visible.
Here’s one example
of many: Last issue
in this magazine,
there was a mention
of Jasper Sitwell, the
young, college-
educated S.H.I.E.L.D.
agent, as clearly
being based on
Dudley Do-Right.
Jack F.A.Q.sMark evanier
(next page, top) Photo ofRoy Thomas and FloSteinberg, circa 1965,shortly after Roy startedworking at the House ofIdeas. The similaritiesbetween the RascallyOne and Jasper Sitwell(see inset) are prettyevident. Photo courtesyof Flo Steinberg.
Jasper Sitwell, Nick Fury, Dum-Dum Dugan TM & ©2002Marvel Characters, Inc.
(next page, bottom)Jack did a later, lessflattering parody of Royas Houseroy, flunky toFunky (Stan Lee)Flashman.
Funky Flashman, Houseroy TM & ©2002 DC Comics.
FF
6
(below) A 1980s fan commission drawing, featuring Galactus.
Galactus, Silver Surfer, Fantastic FourTM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.
(Acclaimed author Michael Chabon was born in 1963, and grew upreading comic books. He’s penned several books, but the one of mostinterest to Kirby fans is undoubtedly The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel dealing with theGolden Age of Comics and escape artistry as its themes. In the midstof his extremely hectic schedule these days, Michael took time out toconduct the following interview in March 2002, via e-mail.)
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What were the first Kirby comics
you read? Did you read Mister Miracle when Kirby was working
on it in the 1970s?
MICHAEL CHABON: Absolutely. Mister Miracle was my favorite
of the Fourth World books. I was a devoted reader of DC books
in the very early ’70s, as a seven- or eight-year-old. I really didn’t
care for the Marvel books. I suppose they went over my head.
Writer’s Bloc
12
(this page) Mister Miraclebattles the Lump fromMister Miracle #8, theissue that made Chabon alifelong Kirby fan.
Mister Miracle, The Lump TM &©2002 DC Comics.
(next page, top) Dust jack-et for the hardback versionof Michael Chabon’s TheAmazing Adventures ofKavalier & Clay, featuringhis character TheEscapist—a characterwho, according to pub-lished reports, is gettinghis own series from DCComics soon (gee, maybethey’ll team him up withMister Miracle!).
©2002 Michael Chabon.
(next page, bottom) Panelfrom Kirby’s autobiograph-ical story “Street Code,”done in pencil. Kirby fanswho’ve never experiencedthis remarkable 10-pagestory can read it as part ofTwoMorrows’ trade paper-back Streetwise, availableelsewhere in this issue.
©2002 Jack Kirby Estate.
(next page, left) Photo ofMichael Chabon by PatriciaWilliams.
© Patricia Williams.
A Few Words From
They had a frenetic, sweaty quality to them. The DC
books were cool and mannered and the values
were easy to comprehend. Little kids really
do believe in truth and justice and the
American way.
So I didn’t know from Kirby. Then
all of a sudden those banners started
appearing in the DC books: “Kirby Is
Coming!” and then, finally, “Kirby Is
Here!” I had no idea who Kirby was. I
thought it might be a character—some
vague association chiming in my mind
with the Rip Kirby newspaper strip. Then
my dad brought me home the first few
Kirby Jimmy Olsen books. That was always a
book prone to bizarre flights of fancy, but—
whoa. I don’t think I knew quite what to make of
Kirby at first.
The book that really, truly, permanently blew my mind was the issue of MisterMiracle in which he fights the creature from the Id [#8]; a big, pink, comatose but
sentient wad of bubblegum. There’s this incredible double-page spread of the
Female Furies killing time in their barracks. That panel just completely unhinged
me. The dynamic layout, the wealth of figures and the variety of their costumes,
the air of violence and sexuality, the bizarrely stilted dialogue. From that point on
I was a confirmed Kirbyite.
TJKC: Did any characters or scenes from Mister Miracle influence your novel? For
instance, could a parallel be drawn between Joe Kavalier’s mentor Bernard
Kornblum, and Himon from Mister Miracle? How about between Joe Kavalier’s
own escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, and Scott Free’s escape from Apokolips?
MICHAEL: There may very well be underpinnings of Mister Miracle in my book.
I’m sure there are; but if so, I was totally unaware of them at the time. You could
toss in that the ‘fictional’ character of Max Mayflower who trains the Escapist is a
bit like Thaddeus Brown, the original Mister Miracle. And I guess that makes
Sammy Oberon!
The surest connection, and the one that I really was conscious of, was between
my guy and Jim Steranko. It was reading about Steranko’s first career as an escape
artist that encouraged me to develop the motif of Houdini and escape artistry that
was very lightly emphasized in the first few drafts. And Steranko also underlies
Mister Miracle. So that’s the strongest link, I think, between my book and JK’s.
TJKC: Your novel features a who’s who of Golden Age comics creators making
cameo appearances, from Stan Lee, Joe Simon, and Gil Kane to Will Eisner and
others; but Kirby seems conspicuous by his absence, not actually appearing as a
character in the novel. Was this intentional, and if so, why?
MICHAEL: Well,
I guess I just sort
of felt as if this
book was, in a
way, for Jack
Kirby, or ofhim—as much
as, in a very
different way, it
was for and of
my dad (to whom
I dedicated it).
Having him also
appear in it
might have
seemed like too much, somehow.
TJKC: On page 100 of the hardcover edition, it’s revealed that Sammy Clay’s
mother fell in love with Sammy’s father in “Kurtzburg’s Saloon” on New York’s
Lower East Side in 1919. In what other ways was the novel inspired by Kirby’s
own escape from his Lower East Side upbringing?
MICHAEL: There was no direct inspiration from Kirby’s life; not really, except
insofar as Kirby’s history mirrored so closely the history of my own grandparents
and great-grandparents, many of whom settled in the Lower East Side, too.
TJKC: An underlying theme of Kavalier & Clay seems to be “Comics are escapism,
but there’s no getting away from real life.” Is that an accurate assessment, and is
there a message there for comics fans?
MICHAEL: I don’t see it that way. I might restate it thus: “Comics are escapism,
and thank God, because without escapist art there really would be no getting
away from real life.” By the way, I believe that all great literature is, in part,
escapist. When you inhabit the life of a fictional character or characters, you are
given a taste of what it might feel like to be somebody else—to escape, if only for
a moment, the prison of your own consciousness.
TJKC: Can you elaborate on the theme of “escape” in the novel? An example that
seems to fall under the theme is Joe Kavalier’s journey to Antarctica during the
war to escape his past and his brother’s death.
MICHAEL: I read this sequence as more in the nature of an escape in itself; that
is, Joe is locked away in this great frozen box of death, a trap that kills everyone
but him, and he alone escapes; and yet, at the same time, learns that the trap of
memory, of guilt and remorse and shame, is one that he cannot escape, not even
by taking revenge.
TJKC: Another is the Escapist’s secret identity of Tom Mayflower; of course, the
Pilgrims escaped persecution on their ship, the Mayflower.
MICHAEL: Interesting. I just wanted
something that sounded super-WASPy.
TJKC: Help us get into your mind as a
writer. Are those types of occurrences
coincidental or planned? Do you con-
sciously set out to develop these ideas
from the start, or do they evolve, and
come to you as you write? What are
some other areas in the novel that tie
into the “escape” theme?
MICHAEL: Theme is absolutely the
very last thing I consider. I start with a
character, a setting, or a story idea; an
interesting event or episode or sequence
of events. Then I start writing, and I try
to use my ability to manipulate language
to the utmost, hoping to make these
characters, this setting, this story, come
13
Michael Chabon
GREAT EVASIONShose keeping score will remember that an all-humor column was promised for this space; the amount of material to go
through, and the small avalanche of other verbiage I haveunloaded on this issue (check out my Simon/Cap summationand my Mister Miracle discourse, plug, plug), have pushed thattheme to next time. So this issue we’ll revisit some favoritetypes of comics, and particularly-admired specific series, covered in our run to date. The timing was right as thesebooks came to my attention, came to a sad close, or ran verypertinent current story arcs—and if my previously-announcedtiming was off, well, it’s a poorly-kept secret that I aspire toprofessional comics scripting, and if I’m really serious aboutpursuing that career I gotta start missing some deadlines.
Wonders Never CeaseAs we did in our inaugural column examining Tom
Scioli’s 8-Opus, we begin our return to roots by spotlightingsome of the indie newcomers whose emulation of the Kingshows how fundamental his style is to the vocabulary ofcomics, and how spontaneous is the positive reaction to itnot only in the halls of entertainment giants mindful of itssalability, but the hearts and home studios from which thenext generation of creators will come.
A fan counterpart to the professional cast-of-thousandsKirby tribute Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Comics
Magazine, ModernMyths is an exuberantand enjoyable homageto the Lee/Kirby hey-day mastermindedby California-basedwriter and artistJuan Gonzalez. AsErik Larsen didwith the WGCMproject,Gonzalez laidout the entirefirst issuefor himselfand other artiststo complete; like Larsenand then some, he plot-ted and wrote the wholething himself, without acollaborator. The resultis an introductory taleof the “WonderWarders,” an FF-liketeam of super-scientists protectinghumble humanlives in strugglesof cosmic scale.Characters walka line betweenpostmodernarchetype andtoo-recogniz-able pastiche,
but all are done with love andsome hit the heights of Kirby’s own wordplay
(like the Thing-esque enforcer “DavidGoliath”). Some of the artists are more ready-for-prime-time thanothers, but the design is inspired throughout, with many a closeapproximation of Kirby’s great sense of psychedelic tech and space-operatic costumery. Gonzalez chooses the exhilarating, joined-in-progress narrative structure of a Lee or Kirby tale—we feel as ifwe’re coming in on issue #15 of a classic series—and while thissometimes makes the smoothness of the exposition slip out of hishands, it necessitates a brevity which is usually executed well.Gonzalez’s storytelling instincts, while action-packed, tend moretoward dramatic reconciliation than bombastic fisticuffs, and this isone of many refreshing approaches that make him and most of hiscohorts talents to watch. (For a copy, please send $2.50 [$3.70 inCanada] to: Juan Gonzalez Publishing, 1112 Orchard St. #1, SantaRosa, CA 95404 [email: [email protected]].)
Goodnight, Bitter PrinceWelcomed in our very first column, we must now bid a fond
farewell to Walter Simonson’s take on Kirby’s Fourth World saga,Orion. Fourth World continuations seem to be as short-lived as theyare frequent, and that’s too bad in the case of this elegant and
A regular feature examining Kirby-inspired work, by Adam McGovern
Adam McGovern
Know of some Kirby-inspired workthat should be covered here? Send to:
Adam McGovernPO Box 257
Mt. Tabor, NJ 07878
16
T(right) Simonson splashpage from Orion #5. Ahh,Walter, how we’ll miss ye.Characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.
(below) Chapter splash forModern Myths. ©2002 Juan Gonzalez.
(next page, top) Example ofrecent Black Panther art byJorge Lucas.Characters TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.
(next page, bottom) Lucaspays homage to Kirby’sAnnihilus (right) in thispanel from The UltronImperative (inked by MikeRoyer).Characters TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.
As A Genre
Conducted by Jon B. Cooke, transcribed by LongBox.com Staff
(Marshall Rogers burst on the otherwise dull comic bookscene of the mid- to late 1970s, and caused a sensation
with his work on Batman in Detective Comics, Dr.
Strange for Marvel Comics, and others; but it was his4-issue revival of Mister Miracle that impressed Kirbyfans, and is still fondly remembered. This interviewtook place by telephone in March 2002, and was copy-edited by the artist.)
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: How far back do
you recall Jack Kirby’s work?
MARSHALL ROGERS: I grew up with Kirby’s work.
He’s probably the reason I wanted to get into comic
books.
TJKC: What work
specifically?
MARSHALL:Everything, but it wasn’t
until he started working
with Marvel that I knew
what the man’s name
was. Then, once I real-
ized who the guy was
drawing that work, I
realized I had probably
first read him when he
had done either the
Shield or the Fly. I don’t
remember exactly which
of the two, but Jack’s
work was so distinctive
that even as a young kid,
I recognized it: “Hey,
this is the same guy that
did the Fly.” I went back
and I checked it out and
looked at the art and
realized, yeah, this was
the same guy.
TJKC: What was it about
Jack’s work that was
compelling?
MARSHALL: The
dynamics, I guess, would
be the best way to say it.
Jack brought the work
to life for me. It made it
seem more than two-
dimensional to me. One
thing that I remember
noticing was when some
villain would uproot a
building from a New
York City block, the pipes
and the guts of the
building underneath
were dangling down, as
compared to Superman;
when he lifted a building
up, it had this nice clean
flat surface, you know—
as if it was a toy placed
on a chess board or something—but there was always rubble and
junk coming out of Jack’s buildings whenever they were lifted up.
TJKC: Were you into his Atlas monster work? Did you look at
those—like Tales of Suspense, Strange Tales, you know—the pre-
Marvel hero stuff?
MARSHALL: A little bit, but I don’t honestly remember seeing it
straight off the shelves. I was collecting comic books as a young-
ster, but I didn’t get right in on the very beginning of Marvel. I
ended up running around the neighborhood trading to get back
issues, so I don’t remember exactly if I started out with some of
the monster books and had seen them, or had picked them up
during trades, etc.
TJKC: Have you looked at the monster stuff since? Did you find
anything of interest in there to this day?
(above) Photo ofMarshall Rogers fromthe late 1970s.
(right) Rogers pencilsand Terry Austin inkson a page fromDetective Comics#468, featuring BruceWayne’s encounterwith an old Kirbycharacter, MorganEdge.
Morgan Edge, Batman,Bruce Wayne TM & ©2002DC Comics.
(next page) Kirbypencils from MisterMiracle #6, featuringJack’s thinly veiledparodies of Stan Leeand Roy Thomas.
All characters TM & ©2002DC Comics.
18
INNERVIEW
Marshall Rogers Inte
MARSHALL: I guess, really, the mon-
ster genre was not my favorite genre,
but I looked at everything and any-
thing that Jack did at one point, that I
could lay my hands on.
TJKC: You were born in 1950, right?
MARSHALL: That’s right.
TJKC: So, generally speaking, you
started picking them up around ’62?
Were you about 11 or 12 years old?
MARSHALL: No, I was reading comic
books earlier than that.
TJKC: I meant the Marvel stuff specifi-
cally. You said you didn’t get in on the
ground floor necessarily.
MARSHALL: I just missed it because a
friend of mine had Amazing Fantasy#15 that Spider-Man first appeared in.
Then I ended up buying the second
issue of Spider-Man, but it wasn’t like
I was hitting the newsstand every
week to get them, so it was hit and
miss in the beginning.
TJKC: Did you find Fantastic Fourcompelling the minute you encoun-
tered it?
MARSHALL: Yeah, and actually X-Menwas one of my favorite titles. That was
the one I think I really glommed onto
because I always felt I had large feet
and I really related to the Beast.
(laughter) I wanted to be able to walk
up the sides of a building. That was
one of the things about Jack’s work,
particularly in the beginning, that I
think was the most attractive thing to
me. The situations were more down-
to-earth. They weren’t as fantastic as
the DC stuff. It was Jack creating
characters that would walk up the
side of a building or shrink to the size
of an ant. It was more basic fantasy
elements rather than the fantastical
type of elements. The Fantastic Fourwas certainly a departure from that,
but his other stuff was even more compelling to me,
and Thor would not necessarily be included in that.
I think the work of his I found most compelling
were the simple fantasy elements, like shrinking
down to a real small size or being able to swing
around a building as if you were on a jungle vine.
TJKC: Did you also clue into Stan Lee’s contributions
to it?
MARSHALL: In the beginning I was attracted to the
artwork. I realized Stan’s name from the signatures.
When I got a comic book, I would basically flip
though the pages just to see the artwork and then
go back and read the story later on. Particularly
with Jack’s work, you could tell what the story was
without having to read the captions.
TJKC: The X-Men was a title on which he later did
quite loose breakdowns. Could you still see the
Kirby through the guys who inked and finished the
penciled stuff?
MARSHALL: I could, and I was able to quickly tell
as soon as Jack stopped contributing to it as a
ghost, because the layout and dynamics just took a
vast turn, and became very different.
TJKC: Prior to Marvel, did you collect comics? Did
you save them or were you a reader?
MARSHALL: I was a reader.
TJKC: And once you got bit by the Marvel bug, did
you continue to read DC comics or did you pass
them by?
MARSHALL: I always went back to Batman, hoping
to see that “something” that I’d always wanted to
see, but—.
TJKC: You didn’t see it.
MARSHALL: No, I never did, you’re right.
TJKC: So did you remain with Marvel pretty much
throughout your teen years?
MARSHALL: Well, I don’t know; about 15 or 16 I
started getting interested in girls and losing interest
in comics. Then once I got into college, I started to
take up the interest again. It coincided with a serious
interest in getting into the business.
TJKC: Were you losing interest in the comics just as
Jack was getting into the Galactus trilogy, for
19
rview
26
GalleryOn the following pages are a plethora of pencils from various Mister Miracle issues, as follows: Issue #5 (pages 26-28),#6 (pages 29-33), #7 (pages 34-37, including a “Young Scott Free” story), and #8 (pages 38-39 and 42-43). Our centerfold (pages 40-41) features the two-page spread from Mister Miracle #11, inked by Mike Royer. All characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.
27
Held at Comicon International: San Diego on July 22, 2001(Featuring Will Eisner, John Buscema, John Romita, andMike Royer, moderated by Mark Evanier, transcribed byBrian K. Morris)
MARK EVANIER: Good afternoon. Welcome to the
Eighth Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, and my eleventh panel
of this convention. (applause) I’m probably Mark Evanier
and I’ve made a rule that I do not go to any convention
that will not let me host a Jack Kirby Tribute Panel.
Actually, in some cases, that’s superfluous because we’ve
been talking about Jack on half the panels I’ve done here
so far. I just did a Russell Myers panel and we brought
him up in there, too. Jack was an amazing gentleman.
You all know that, and many of you had the pleasure of
knowing him and meeting him. Let me introduce the
dais of people we have assembled and I’ll talk to them
about Jack for a while, then we’re going to show a video-
tape that is not one of the happier moments of Jack’s life,
unfortunately, but which is part of the historical record.
It is a two-part tape, the first part of which is Johnny
Carson libeling Jack Kirby, and the second half is Johnny
Carson apologizing to Jack Kirby. (applause)Jack liked pretty much everybody in comics. I don’t
44
TRIBUTE 2001 Kirby Tribute Panel
(top to bottom) The panelists:the late John Buscema, JohnRomita, Mike Royer, and (nextpage) Will Eisner.
(right) Pencil page from MisterMiracle #6.
All characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.
remember ever hearing of a writer or artist he didn’t
like, the lowest being those people whose books
he felt were highly derivative or who he felt were
just imitating or tracing other people’s works.
That certainly did not apply to any of these
gentlemen. He could not mention Johnny
Romita without the phrase, “the guy who
saved Spider-Man.” When Jack went over to
DC, one of the things he very much wanted to
do was a very sophisticated romance comic.
Eventually, the idea got dumbed down into that
True Divorce Cases/Soul Love thing which we did
that Jack never really understood. Through it all, he
kept mentioning how much he wanted to get this man
to work with him. He truly admired his work; Mr. Johnny
Romita, ladies and gentlemen. (applause)Another artist for whom Jack never had anything but the highest regard was
the gentleman who followed him on the Fantastic Four and Thor. My first ques-
tion, when we get to him, will be, “Just what’s it like to follow Jack Kirby on
Fantastic Four and Thor?” (laughs) Those of us who felt a certain loss when Jack
left those books were more than delighted to see the expert handiwork of
Marvel’s supreme penciler, Mr. John Buscema. (applause) And if you said to Jack,
“Who do you really admire in comics?”, the first two names heard would be Bill
Everett or this gentleman, whom he especially admired, not only as an artist but
as a role model. I think Will was almost a father figure, in a way. He was in the
business about an hour before Jack. (laughs) And we’re going to talk about that a
little bit. But actually, this man finally achieved something the other night when
he actually won an Eisner Award. (laughs, applause) Is that your first Eisner? I’ve
got three of them, and that’s your first?
WILL EISNER: I hate to tell you what it took to get one. (laughs)
JOHN ROMITA: You didn’t know the right people. (laughs)
EVANIER: So you’ve finally done work that lives up to the standards of Will
Eisner. (laughs)
EISNER: I lied about my age. (laughs)
EVANIER: And here to my left is a gentleman that Jack handpicked as his favorite
inker for the last twenty years of his life. I don’t think people realize how hard this
man worked. To ink everything Jack Kirby did, alone... well, a lot of people could
not have done that, even badly. To ink it and letter it so well under those time
constraints for that rotten money was an amazing achievement. We owe an awful
lot of thanks to Mr. Mike Royer. (applause) Let me also introduce in the audience
a couple of people very briefly. When I was working for Jack, I had the pleasure of
having as my friend and colleague and partner and co-conspirator, a gentleman
who did an awful lot of work for Jack personally and professionally, and was a
lifelong friend of the family, Mr. Steve Sherman. (applause) And Jack’s other
favorite inker in the last decade or two of his life, and a very close member of the
Kirby family—I mean “family” in the very best sense of the word because he was
practically almost blood over there, Mr. Mike Thibodeaux. (applause) I also do
see one other person here. Jack had an amazing ability to get into trouble, usually
not of his own making, and he had two attorneys throughout most of the Eighties
and Nineties who were dealing with these problems. One was a man by the name
of Steve Rohde who is now a high muck-a-muck in the ACLU. He spends one hour
a week making money as a lawyer and fifty hours a week protecting civil rights.
His former collaborator and partner is now in his own practice and I knew him
mostly as a voice on the phone, dealing with all of Jack’s problems, calling me in
exasperation at whatever stupid thing Marvel was claiming this week. This is Mr.
Paul Levine over here. (applause) I’m going to start with Mr. Eisner—and, by the
way, you all bought this, right? (holds up Eisner’s book Shop Talk to wild applause) I
know you’ve told this story before but you never told it at one of these panels,
about hiring Jack Kirby and his coming to work for your studio—and at some
point, you’ve got to tell the towel story. (laughs) Tell us about the operation that
Jack came into.
EISNER: Well, the company was Eisner and Iger. I former a company with Jerry
Iger who’d been formerly the editor of Wow, What A Magazine that collapsed after
two issues. We owned a shop producing, or packaging, comics. In those days, the
pulp magazines were dying and the publishers who were still trying to survive,
were looking for other things to publish. They were publishing comic magazines,
as we called them in those days. They weren’t called “comic books.” Then, as it
came to pass, into my shop comes this kid named Jacob Kurtzberg. Whatever
happened to him, I don’t know. (laughs) He kind of looked like John Garfield to
45
A French Kirby Exhibition (or nearly)!by Jean Depelley and Philippe Jecker
The 2002 Angoulême International Comics Festival (which took placelast January 24th-27th) was a nice opportunity for European comics fans toadmire a wonderful display of originals from the greatest US comics artists,and the King was not forgotten!
The CNBDI (standing for National Center for International Comics) is aone-of-a-kind museum in France, since it presents original comics art onlyand has been doing sothese past twelveyears, as well as orga-nizing important the-matic exhibitionsfocused on the nomi-nated artists once everyyear during the Festival.Although it usually dis-plays a wonderful col-lection of classic FrenchBelgium “bande dess-inée” (including art fromHergé, Jijé, Franquin, and Moebius), US comics are also well-represented,with samples from the Golden Age of comic strips, EC, underground, and
mainstream super-hero comics. The 2002edition celebrated nominated artist MartinVeyron’s sophisticated, Parisian humor, but itwas the US artists’ exhibition that definitelycaught the public interest.
The museum authorities (aroundJean-Pierre Mercier and Thierry Groensteen)decided to open their holdings, and dis-played a fantastic selection of art “made inthe USA,” with a very original scenographycreated by Marie-Annick Beauvery whichoccupied two floors of the CNBDI. First, thevisitor was introduced to American comicsby a comic book store reconstruction (muchdifferent than our French shops!), beforeadmiring samples of modern independent
artists (featuring art by Jill Thomson, Jeff Smith, Mike Mignola, and others).Then, upstairs began a real feast for the eyes: a wonderful Kirby Torch poster(statted from a Kirby original)welcomed the fan! The tone wasset; pages of the greatest artistswere showcased under themoody lights of the museum,including George Herriman,Charles M. Schulz, GeorgeMcManus, Robert Crumb, HalFoster, Alex Raymond, BurneHogarth, Joe Kubert, Jack Davis,Barry Smith, Jeff Jones, as wellas a special exhibition of WillEisner’s Spirit! (Will was attend-ing the Festival as guest ofhonor and, by the way, he likesTJKC! ) In the middle of thesetreasures, three wonderful Kirbypages, intelligently chosen toshow different inkers on Jack’swork, were presented:
• Fantastic Four Annual #1, page 28 from the “Sub-Mariner Vs. The HumanRace” story, inked by Dick Ayers (from which the Torch art had beenswiped for the poster)
• Thor #130 page 5, (not too badly) inked by Colletta
• Fantastic Four #97, page 4, inked by Frank Giacoia
One complaint: the frames made it impossible to read Jack’s margin notesand give a clear shot on the Marvel method, but the art spoke for itself: bril-liant, energetic and inspiring! If consideration was proportional to the amountof art displayed, Kirby was really honored in Angoulême as he had as manypages displayed as Foster or Hogarth, and actually more than anyone else!
All c
hara
cter
s in
thes
e im
ages
TM
& ©
2002
Mar
vel C
hara
cter
s, In
c.
me at the time. I think he thought he was John
Garfield, and he got to working in the shop. He
was one of the hardest-working guys in the shop,
very serious, and... the towel story. (laughs)
EVANIER: The story that Jack told me was that
he saw Wow and he wanted to be part of it. He
went to the address in the magazine and it was
out of business. Someone there told him about
Eisner and Iger and sent him up there.
EISNER: And actually, the shop resembled an
Egyptian slave galley. We were out in the Nile,
guys are sitting all around and I’m sitting at the
head, beating the drums, (laughs) but it was such
a new field that, really, anything you did was
innovative. Jack sat on the right-hand side of the
wall and drew in some miniature room. The pen-
ciling guys were sitting alongside the wall—Bob
Powell, Chuck Mazoujian, and George Tuska. At
my big desk, I would sit down and rough out the
initial characters and pass them down the line
and back up, almost like an animation studio.
We were trying very hard to make it profitable
because we were getting five dollars a page for
the work. I was being very innovative from a
production point of view because, in those days,
people were working on salary. They were not
working freelance because I reasoned that if I
was going to get any quality work out of them, I
had to have them on salary. It’s very difficult to
tell a freelancer to change panel three and move
it over to panel five because it’s going to cost
money. The guy who’s getting salary, he’d be very
happy to change it. Jack was very accommodating,
very easy to work with. A lot was going on and
the shop grew. It started out with, maybe, five
people. We were up to about ten or fifteen people
at the time. We got to move to a larger office on
42nd Street, right across the street from the
News Building, and we had two offices, two
rooms; one great, wide one where all the artists
worked and a little front room. For the artists, it
was a big office building. Therefore, we decided
we needed a towel service. So we subscribed to a
company that would bring in towels every two or
three days, changing them. Of course, we didn’t
ask questions. Well, one day, I was in the office
and Iger, who was my partner at the time, came
in to me and he said, “Hey, there’s this guy out
there who wants to come in and talk about the
towel service.” He said, “You’re in charge of
production,” meaning I
was the partner
in charge of pro-
ducing. Iger was
the businessman.
He was maybe
thirteen years older
than me. Therefore,
he was the business-
man. So I went out
and there stands this
guy, straight out of a
Mickey Spillane movie,
with a black hat and a
white tie and a black
shirt, looking like he broke
a nose, speaking “like dis.”
He said, “I’m in charge of
the towel service,” and I
said, “Well, we want to change
the towel service. We’re not
happy with your company because the towels
are not coming out white,” and so forth. “Well,
you know,” he said, “we got the franchise
here.” (laughs) So I said, “Well, I know you
have but I called a couple of other companies
and none of them wanted to take on our
account. They said, ‘It’s not our territory.’”
So he said, “Look, we don’t want to have
no trouble with you. We want everything
to go nice, see?” (laughs) So he says,
“You tell me what your problem is, I’ll
try to fix it.” So I said, “Well, I want
more towels.” He said, “I can’t get you
more towels. Only four towels.” By
the way, his voice is getting a little
stronger and I’m getting a little
worked up. I was getting a little angry
and suddenly, out of the back,
comes Jack. This guy is about 6' 2"
and Jack’s about 4' 3". (laughs)Jack says to me, “Hey, boss.” He
always called me “boss.” Even
through all of his life he always called
me “boss.” He said, “Both of you, just a minute. I’ll
take care of this,” and he looks at this guy and said,
“What do you want, you big ox?” The guy looks with
terror at this little guy. Jack says, “Look, we don’t
want any of your crap from you. We don’t like your
damn towel service. Now, get the hell out of here.”
(laughs) Now I figure I’m going to be mopping up
the blood off the floor. (laughs) To my amazement,
to my astonishment, this big guy turned around
and walked out. (laughs) Jack says to me, “He comes
back again, call me. I’ll take care of him.” (laughs)That was Jack. He changed his name very shortly
from Jacob Kurtzberg, or whatever it was, to “Jack
Curtiss.” He was doing the Count of Monte Cristostory at the time. Then he changed it later on to
another one and became “Jack Kirby,” but it was
always a joy to work with this guy. I always enjoyed
working with him. I didn’t see him after he left and
joined up with Joe Simon, I didn’t see him until
many years later, here at this convention, where we
were really going to talk to each other; and this
interview that I tried to do with him [for Spirit
Magazine #39, conducted circa 1982], more than any-
46
Surely he couldn’t be dispatched as easily asDarkseid did in the Hunger Dogs graphic novel(and with as pedestrian a means as a gun; talkabout a scene that rang hollow. Himon would certainly have utilized a “follower” to stand in for him, as he did so many times before).
Regardless, it’s amazing that a character who
only appeared in one Fourth World issue—andnearly two years after the epic began—could besuch an important part of the tapestry. So for thisissue, we resurrect the “lovable old rascal” whotaught Scott Free his craft by having three writersgive their take on one of Kirby’s most personal (andfan favorite) sagas: Mister Miracle #9’s “Himon.”
How Do You Kill The Man Who’s Died A Thousand Deaths?
59
Himontary
Than
ks to
Adr
ian
Day
for t
he lo
go tr
eatm
ent!
Charles Hatfieldimon—master of disguise, escape artist par excellence, and
\ above all the “master of theories”—is Kirby’s embodiment
of imagination. A protean genius, Himon has a disconcerting
tendency to “phase” in and out of everywhere, and the power to
shake off bodies like dry husks, thus to sidestep death again and
again. Kirby suggests a prosaic explanation for Himon’s impossible
escapes (apparently he can create convincing replicas or stand-
ins for his own body), but, finally, Himon is a metaphor; every
literal-minded explanation of his powers falls short. He is imagi-
nation personified—the inspiration for designers, craftsmen,
dancers, artists—and his visionary energy threatens Darkseid’s
suffocating, totalitarian world order.
On Apokolips the free exercise of the imagination carries
terrible risks: Himon’s students often die for dreaming. When
young Scott Free witnesses this firsthand, when he sees dreamers
tortured and destroyed, he cracks, and finally, fully, commits
himself to breaking free. For him Himon becomes no longer
merely a source of furtive escapism, but a genuine means of
escape. The story of “Himon,” then, is about the horrors that
break Scott’s conformism and harden his resolve for imaginative
freedom—as the cover says, the great “bust-out.”
The tale is unpleasant, yet exhilarating. Its setting is a night-
mare, and its pervasive violence is cold,
appalling. After decades of reuse, Apokolips
remains one of Kirby’s best and most fright-
ening ideas: a blotted, smoking, industrialized
hell that makes mythology out of the author’s
formative experiences, fusing Lower East Side
squalor with visions of a thumping, jackbooted
technocracy. “Himon” depicts this worldscape
without much grandeur but with an astringent,
unsentimental, and brutal clarity. (There are
few dark places in Kirby’s oeuvre that can match
it: the City of Toads, perhaps, from Eternals#8-10, or the chilly dystopia of OMAC #1.)
The story metes out torment and death,
indeed a surplus of outrageous violence, with
steely matter-of-factness.
When I look at the pages of “Himon,”
these are some of the things I see:
I see signs of Kirby’s overarching ambitions
for the Fourth World saga. Page 1’s explanatory
caption links this story with “The Pact” (NewGods #7) and assumes a knowing audience
that is following Mister Miracle and New Godsat the same time. At several points, Kirby
foreshadows how Scott’s escape from Apokolips
will factor into, perhaps spark, a new war; the
darkly prophetic dialogue of Himon and
Metron hints that Scott’s moment of decision
may also be a decisive turning point in the
whole saga. These hints suggest just how
much narrative and thematic material Kirby
was holding in his head at the time, and how
meaningful the larger tapestry of the Fourth
World had become for him at this decisive
point in his career. This was a new and complex
undertaking for a yarn-spinner whose work
had most often been driven by the tyranny of
frequent deadlines, and whose degree of
engagement (not his work ethic, which was
tireless, but his artistic interest) would so
often vary even within a single month, waxing
and waning according to his imaginative
sympathy with the material. Here his engage-
ment was at its fiercest, and his maintenance
of continuity (so often a trouble spot for
Kirby) most deliberate.
I also see effective scripting. Admittedly,
Kirby’s pounding urgency is often hard to
take—his scripting is prone to overkill—and
even here there are times when his captions
are momentarily confusing; but “Himon”
boasts an elegance and compression that are
rare in Kirby’s scriptwriting, and the cadences
of the text are hypnotic (dig the incantatory
rhythms of pages 1 through 3, or the relentless
(throughout this article)Scenes from Mister Miracle#9’s story “Himon” in pencil.
All characters TM & ©2002 DC Comics.
HH
60
here came a time when the Fourth
World cycle, Jack Kirby’s symbolic war
of cosmic forces, benefited from a
much more mundane contest. A battle for
newsstand supremacy between Kirby’s
then-publisher DC and the other industry
giant of those days, Marvel, led to an
increased page-count for several issues of
each series in Kirby’s trilogy. This gave his
saga the space it seemed most suited for.
“Himon” in Mister Miracle was one of the
longest episodes of that title’s run (though
it appeared in the first issue after the page-
counts came back down, presumably pro-
duced by Kirby before he saw this coming).
However, this most momentous and moving
story of his career is remarkable not for
spectacular sprawl but expressive economy.
Like “The Pact” in New Gods, “Himon”
flashed back in Kirby’s modern-day mythos
to give the nightmare-fairytale background
of how the saga’s apocalyptic celestial con-
flict—which mirrored the real-life super-
power struggle of the time—came to pass.
The enlargement of the preceding few
issues had serendipitously created the most
favorable conditions for this tour de force,
carving out pages for some establishing
chapters in the life of “Young Scott Free”
(though in a sure sign of Kirby’s concision,
these three installments themselves totaled
10 pages). While lacking the poetry of the
full-length conclusion, their mise en scène is
thoroughly imagined, and they let Kirby
dispense with all needed exposition before
the psychodramatic main event.
That finale reads as Kirby’s most
poignant and personal tale, and it can
scarcely be coincidental that it is his most
distinctly Jewish. Himon is a sympathetic
reinvention of a literary icon with infamous
anti-Semitic overtones (Fagin), and his name
is a phonetic equivalent of the Hebrew one
most ridiculed in English (Hyman, a.k.a.
Hymie), though it translates as “Life.” Scott’s
story is clearly a Moses narrative, though
in keeping with the corrupted times it
reflects, the hero is not saved by his family,
nurtured by their enemy, and destined to
become a prophetic liberator, but is instead
sacrificed by his own kind, brutalized by his
foster society, and consumed with rebuilding
his own life as a haunted refugee. The
entire cast’s dog-eat-dog relations recall the
dehumanized pecking order among WWII
concentration camp inmates, or the Darwinian
strife of Kirby’s own childhood in the ethnic ghettos
of early 20th-century America.
That last point is central in distinguishing this
story from much of adventure fiction. The tale is so
riveting that the reader might not at first realize how
decisively it diverges from the conventions of its
genre. It is stunning to note, for instance, how little
“action” the story contains—or at least how little in
the forms pop-culture consumers are conditioned
to expect it. There is violence aplenty, but mostly
of the kind we turn to fiction to forget: guerrilla
war-style peasant slaughters; attempted political
executions; senseless torture; petty assassinations;
haggard fugitive flights. In an acute understanding
of the essence of terror, we are given scares by much
more than we actually witness: we don’t see the
shocks administered to Auralie; we don’t see Willik’s
club connect with Kreetin; we see few of Himon’s
sentences carried out to the end, and Willik’s fate
Adam McGovern
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Adrian Day“Darkseid, Highfather and the rest of the cast have always been sincereexpressions of my feelings—reactions to all the things I knew were outthere in the night, like the scrabbling of an unseen army of claws, orthe beating of wings in nocturnal vigilance over sleepers in repose.”
Jack Kirby
’m a survivor,” Jack once said of
himself, then thinking for a
moment quickly revised his state-
ment. “I’m a master survivor!” It was
a defining statement for a man who, in
the latter part of his career, saw survival
as the theme of his most serious work.
It should be no surprise then that when
Jack chose to align himself with one
of his own creations, the character he
chose was also a master survivor, or
in Jack’s words, “the master techni-
cian, the master of swiftness and tem-
peratures, the ultimate escape artist.”
To the best of my knowledge, Jack
never acknowledged any kinship
between himself and the central figure
of Mister Miracle #9, yet the similarities
are striking. They are so striking, in
fact, that not even a quote from Kirby
to the contrary could convince me otherwise. Himon vacillates
between a caricature and a serious portrait of Jack, both physically
and spiritually. Even within the context of the story, the references
made to Himon are equally fitting as epithets for Jack.
Our introduction to Himon has a wonderful mixture of the
farcical and the dramatic. When an attempt is made to exterminate
him in the slums of Armagetto, he appears as a formidable shad-
owy figure in a wall of flame. His humorous side is quickly
revealed when his escape attempt, via Mother Box, lands him
inside a wall due to faulty circuitry. Scott Free comes to his aid and
saves him from being imbedded there permanently. Their relation-
ship in this scene is reminiscent of W.C. Fields and Freddie
Bartholomew in Cukor’s David Copperfield, a story that also played
no small part in the inspiration for the Mister Miracle series.
Even Himon’s most serious moments are tempered by the
mischievous pranks of the trickster. His escapes are underscored
with a sense of humor, when Himon resurfaces in a crowd as a
spectator to his own execution. The elimination of Wonderful
Willik by way of an exploding dinner tray, when Himon avenges
the deaths of his pupils, is something out of Looney Tunes.
Through all this, it is an image of Jack that
we see in this unlikely hero.
The meeting between Himon and
Metron, near the story’s climax, reads
like some imagined exchange between
Jack and a young Roy Thomas. Metron
greets Himon as the “master of theories,”
an appropriate title for Kirby. Himon
calls Metron the “master of elements”
which Roy unquestionably was in his
heyday at Marvel, when the best of his
efforts involved a masterful weaving of
storylines previously established by Jack.
When Metron declares, “the wonders I
build are born in your brain! The roads
that I travel are opened by your massive
perception!”, he makes a statement to
which every writer and artist following
Jack in the field of comics is heir.
Symbols of Duality in the Fourth WorldOf all the stories within Jack’s Fourth World series, “Himon”
is the most mature and central to the greater theme concerning
the duality of God in the consciousness of man. “Himon” is a
masterful allegory about making a choice of which God or power
we will attach ourselves to and the rewards and consequences
that come with either choice. These ideas, which are subtext
throughout Jack’s other tales, are the focal point of the plot here.
Himon and Darkseid represent the opposite sides of that
duality. Scott Free is in the middle, finally confronted with his
moment of decision. This is the theme laid out for us since NewGods #1 where the setting for the Fourth World conflict was
established with New Genesis and Apokolips on either side and
Earth (man) as their battleground at the center. The internal
struggle represented by this duality and the dark side of human
nature are very much at the heart of Jack’s story and a key to
understanding Darkseid and what he symbolizes.
As Jack explains, “Darkseid never told a lie. He never deserted
his son. When he meets this old man with his grandson in
Happyland, he says, ‘When you’re asleep and you have a nightmare,
I’m the guy you’re seeing—the other side of yourself.’ Because the
other side of yourself is insecure. It’s villainous, it’s treacherous—
and don’t tell me that there may not come a time, in considering
your life against someone else’s, you would betray him.”
Himon, in counterpoint to Darkseid, is all that is noble within
us. He is an indomitable spirit that, to the frustration of Darkseid’s
minions, proves indestructible. He dares to have an imagination.
He dreams beyond Darkseid, an act that on Apokolips is
unthinkable and perilous. The freedom that he shows Scott Free
is in reality an internal one. Scott’s physical escape is merely that
final act of commitment to a choice he has already made.
The Source of InspirationMany understand the New Gods books to be stories about
war and to be Jack’s statement on the nature of war. Certainly,
those elements are there. When the series was produced, the
Vietnam War was still raging and much of the sentiment of the
times filtered through Jack’s stories. His views on the futility of
war can be found throughout the New Gods. Kirby, himself a
veteran of World War II, had seen firsthand the worst in human
nature. Apokolips, without question, is the logical extension of
the Nazi Death Camp, encompassing an entire planet. Kirby was
also well aware that Scott Free’s infraction of military guidelines
for aero-troopers in growing his hair long would resonate within
the culture of American youth who were in opposition to govern-
ment and war. These examples notwithstand-
ing, Jack’s vision was much broader and the
evils he was attempting to uncover were more
subtle; indeed, more personal.
Kirby saw the fires that feed an Apokolips or
an Auschwitz burning in the normal situations
of everyday life. He saw destroyers like Darkseid,
seeking an equivalent of the Anti-life Equation,
operating at every level of our existence. These
were the themes and convictions closest to
Jack’s heart when he embarked on his Fourth
World series. Said Jack, “I felt there was a time
that a man has to tell a story in which he felt,
not anybody else, in which he felt there was
no bullsh*t. There was absolute truth.”
In “Himon” and the like, Jack had an
opportunity to tell that truth. It is the convic-
tion that Jack didn’t pull any punches with
these tales that convinces me the inspiration
(above) Next-issue blurbfrom Mister Miracle #8.
(below) The “master oftheories” meets the“master of elements.”
(next page) Himon madehis final appearance inthe Hunger Dogsgraphic novel, to plagueDarkseid one last timebefore his eventualdemise.
All characters TM & ©2002 DCComics.
70
“I“I
Parting ShotKirby’s final Mister Miracle page (from #18), still in pencil form. Other than some statues, and the flashback scenes in issue #9’s“Himon” story, this was Darkseid’s only actual appearance in Mister Miracle—on the last page of the final issue of the series.
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