For a few weeks,
I've been running a series of guest posts from my friends over at
That Comic Smell podcast. The pieces have been any length, style,
whatever. The only brief I gave was to write something about comics.
This time around, it's Fernando Pons.
Happy 100th birthday
Jack!
I didn’t like Jack
Kirby’s art. There you have it, I said it. It’s out for everyone
to read it. So you’re probably thinking that’s fair enough, I
have my own opinion, but... probably you don’t agree.
How could I dislike
Jack Kirby? The creator/co-creator of Captain America, Fantastic
Four, Hulk, Thor, the Avengers, the X-Men, the Inhumans, Galactus,
Doctor Doom, Silver Surfer, Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos, the
New Gods, Mister Miracle, Forever People, Darkseid, Kamandi, OMAC,
The Demon, The Eternals, Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur...
Well, if you have
few minutes and you aren’t bored so far, I’ll explain why.
Let’s go back in
time, Spain 1980. Not much going on in entertainment for a 6 year
old: There were only 2 TV channels, no computers, no videogames and I
lived in a small town in an island in the Mediterranean Sea.
As one of many
modest working family households, we didn’t have much money, but
comics and magazines were cheap are ready available at any newsagent.
T.B.O. , Tio Vivo,
Mortadelo, Zipi Zape, Hazañas Bélicas, Capitán Trueno, Don
Miki..., all of them created in Spain by Spanish artists and writers,
with the exception of Don Miki (the Spanish equivalent to the Italian
magazine Topolino), a magazine reproducing the Disney comics by Carl
Barks, Floyd Gottfredson, Romano Scarpa and Giorgio Cavazzano,
amongst others.
Like many other kids
of my generation, I learnt to read with comics. My parents encouraged
me to read more, and one of my aunties, another comic reader, used to
lend me many of her magazines, in particular Hazañas Bélicas, a
black and white war comic by Boixcar.
Tintin and Asterix
followed fairly soon. Many birthday and Christmas presents were
hardback editions of these 2 European comic giants.
So there you are, no
superheroes, no American comics (with the exception of the stories
from Don Miki), no Kirby.
Let’s move forward
to 1985: La Patrulla-X #8 (Containing Uncanny X-Men 146 & 147),
my first superhero comic.
I had heard of
Superman, Spider-man, la Masa (Hulk)...thanks to the TV series and
the cinema, but not Patrulla-X. Heroes born with special abilities,
mutants hated by the people they are trying to protect. It absolutely
blew my mind. The art was by Dave Cockrum and Josef Rubinstein. The
writer was Chris Claremont. That was the first series I started to
collect.
John Byrne’s
Fantastic Four, Romita JR and Layton’s Iron Man, Mike Zeck’s
Captain America and Walter Simonson’s Mighty Thor followed my
favourite mutants. Then I discovered Arthur Adams in the X-family
annuals and Longshot, and eventually, I managed to read Frank
Miller’s Daredevil. I also tried some DC superheroes: The Teen
Titans by Wolfman and Perez, Batman and the Outsiders by Mike W.
Barr, Jim Aparo and Alan Davis.
The art of all these
comics was amazing. I was mesmerised. I started to follow the
artists. John Byrne was my favourite. I started to collect his Alpha
Flight too. Then I managed to get Byrne’s stint in Captain America
and his Uncanny X-men comics, when Classic X-Men was eventually
published. He was, and still is, one of my favourite artists.
The more superhero
comics I read, the more I wanted to know about them. So I started to
find out about the origins of all these series. Stan Lee was
introducing all the Marvel titles in Spain (“Stan Lee presenta: “),
so his name was familiar. The magazines said that Stan Lee created
practically all the Marvel comics, with the help of someone called
Jack Kirby and another guy called Steve Ditko, but their names were
not introducing any titles on any magazines.
Very occasionally,
the Marvel magazines would publish an article about Kirby. If you
were lucky, you would get 1 or 2 illustrations, or perhaps a cover
and that would be all the art you would see. I was used to the fine
art of the likes of John Byrne, Alan Davis, George Perez, Arthur
Adams, Walter Simonson, Frank Miller...I didn’t like the
defiant-gravity bodies, the massive fists, the big rectangular
fingers or the box-like faces of this Kirby guy. His art wasn’t
refined and his figures weren’t svelte.
“Okay, he was the
first artist to draw them, but things are different now and the
artists I like are better”, I was telling to myself.
Eventually, Comics
Forum (publisher of Marvel Comics in Spain at that time), started to
publish classics Marvel stories, which had been edited or mutilated
by previous publishers, or never seen before in Spain. The
Kree-Skrull war (Thomas & Neal Adams) or the Death of Gwen Stacy
(Conway, Kane and Romita) were some of these stories.
Then, one day in one
of these magazines (Marvel Héroes #35) I found this story written by
Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby. The tale was from Super Villain
Classics #1, which in turn, it was reprinted material from Fantastic
Four #49, Thor # 160, 162, 167 and 169. The story told the origin of
Galactus. This was the comic that made me realise how good Kirby was.
The energy effects (later I found out it was called Kirby Krackle, in
honour to his creator), the shinning armours, the outlandish
machinery, the mythologically influenced aesthetics, the larger than
live characters, the fantastic locations...
With time, my
appreciation for Kirby and his work has been growing exponentially. I
realised how much John Byrne’s Fantastic Four was inspired by Lee
and Kirby’s Fantastic Four. Looking at Walter Simonson's art, I
realised how much influence Kirby had in his art. I also appreciated
how much Miller’s heavy and older Dark Knight had inherited from
Kirby. Jim Steranko was heavily influenced by Kirby’s art, so was
Keith Giffen too, at his stint in The Defenders during the late 70's.
More modern artists have been influenced by Kirby too, for example:
Erik Larsen (Savage Dragon), Jose Ladronn (Hip Flask and
Elephantmen), Tom Scioli (G0dland) or Fabian Rangel (Space Riders).
And many more, but
we don’t have time to go over all of them.
Kirby was a force of
nature, a unique artist, a comic-book genius. The quality of his
workload was outstanding. The volume of work he produced is
incredible; even now we still find some unused cover, poster,
pages... He wasn’t a realist, but his figures exuded energy and
drama. He knew how to project the emotion from the page to the
reader. He was the master of the splash page. He knew how to draw the
reader’s eyes to the character. His big scenes did not lack detail,
not even on the backgrounds.
As a writer, Kirby
brought a mix of slang, science fiction, myth and biblical references
to the reader. Perhaps at the time, this cultural cocktail was too
heavy for the readers, but his vision has lasted. Writers like Jim
Starlin (Dreadstar) and Grant Morrison, amongst others, have been
influenced by Jack Kirby’s storytelling.
All these feats
didn’t make Kirby a prima donna. Fellow artists who knew him say he
was an honest hard working guy, very down to earth, very respectful
to others artists and very respected by fellow artists.
So, if you are
interested in comics, especially superhero comics, regardless of your
age, go and check this Kirby guy, believe me when I say, you won’t
be disappointed.
Happy 100th Birthday
Jack Kirby!
Stan is the Man, but
you were, are and will always be the King.
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