It's no great secret that Thor was one of the earliest super heroes introduced during the beginnings of the Marvel Age of Comics, and that it was likely Jack Kirby who first proposed the idea of making a super hero out of an ancient god. Kirby had an abiding interest in mythology and in folk tales … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED #16
YELLOW CLAW was one of the strangest series published by Marvel, then Atlas, in the 1950s. it feels like a throwback to an earlier time, an era when "yellow peril" adventure stories about Dr. Fu Manchu and his many knock-offs were big business in the pulp magazines of the day. Having done a little bit … Continue reading The First Marvel Mutants
So after last week's piece on STRANGE TALES #103 where we tried to work out who might have been behind the story therein, Larry Lieber or Jack Kirby, I received, as you'd expect, a lot of pushback from the "Everything Kirby" contingent, who believe that Jack did at least 100% of all of the stories … Continue reading Lee & Kirby & Lieber & Hartley & Sinnott: Examining JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #89, 90 & 91
I believe that it's inarguable that, when it comes to the creation of the early stories and characters of the Marvel Universe, Jack Kirby was for many years denied his rightful due, reduced to the level of a mere penciler of other people's stories and ideas. Clearly, Kirby was more than that--he was an equal … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Provenance of STRANGE TALES #103
When we talk about the forces that came into play in the creation of the original Marvel super heroes, in particular the Fantastic Four and attempt to apportion credit (or blame) between the two men who worked on those early strips, one earlier feature that is inevitably invoked is Jack Kirby's series for DC, CHALLENGERS … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: When Challengers of the Unknown Presaged Fantastic Four
You never know what's going to turn up in the world of comic books, even after decades have gone by. So I was astonished to see the page I'm about to share with you turn up at one of the comic book auction sites recently. It's an amazing thing unto itself, but it also provokes … Continue reading Lee & Ditko & Orlando & Rockwell: A New Discovery in the Multiple Car Crash of TALES TO ASTONISH #61
There were a bunch of different moments during Jack Kirby's final year at Marvel any one of which might have been the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of his continuing employment with the firm. By this point, Kirby had already failed to come to an agreement with Marvel's new owners concerning what … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Desecration of CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #4
The original artwork for classic stories is always of interest to me. There's a bunch of information that we can discover from it. And even apart from that, it's often fun just to see how these stories were originally drawn, without the added intermediary step of them having to be reproduced and printed in a … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The First New Captain America Story – From The Original Art
FIGHTING AMERICAN is a well-remembered series produced by the Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Studio in the 1950s. It started out as a reaction to the revival of Simon & Kirby's best-selling patriotic super hero at Atlas Comics, Captain America--they figured that if the public wanted that kind of a character, they were better suited … Continue reading Simon & Kirby: When Fighting American Stole From Starman
In the latest issue of the fantastic magazine THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR published by TwoMorrows Publications (and available at this link: ) https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_57&products_id=1562&zenid=b1816d55c0c77183a6dd6e0571fa38f5 ...writer and comics historian Will Murray contributes a piece taking a closer look at INCREDIBLE HULK #1. Murray's contention is that the character of the Hulk originally had a different name, which … Continue reading Lee & Kirby: The Mysteries of INCREDIBLE HULK #1
The Tom Brevoort Experience 