I especially wonder if there was any friendship and interaction between Kirby and Steve Ditko, because they had the identical problem at Marvel (with Stan Lee, and not getting full credit and control of the stories and characters they created)in the 1960's. Both Kirby and Ditko were introverted recluses.
In addition to that, Kirby and Ditko were a penciller/inker team on a number of stories from 1959-1964. Including FANTASTIC FOUR 13, April 1963.
And a sequel to that in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 8, Jan 1964. The last Kirby/Ditko collaboration I'm aware of.
And on many pre-Marvel mosters stories. Here's "We Met In the Swamp", from TALES TO ASTONISH 7, Jan 1960.
Kirby and Ditko at least must have had an opinion of the other's work, and on their collaborations. But it's entirely possible they did not meet personally, and just worked on each other's pages, given by editor Stan Lee. But I find it hard to believe with the shared experience Kirby and Ditko had at Marvel that they did not seek out each other and have conversations about that. And perhaps other social get-togethers, outside of Marvel.
I especially wonder if there was any friendship and interaction between Kirby and Steve Ditko, because they had the identical problem at Marvel (with Stan Lee, and not gettin full credit and control of the stories and characters they created)in the 1960's. Both Kirby and Ditko were introverted recluses.
In addition to that, Kirby and Ditko were a penciller/inker team on a number of stories from 1959-1964. Including FANTASTIC FOUR 13, April 1963. And the "FF meet Spider-Man" story in FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL 1, Sept 1963. And a sequel to that in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 8, Jan 1964. The last Kirby/Ditko collaboration I'm aware of.
And on many pre-Marvel mosters stories. Here's "We Met In the Swamp", from TALES TO ASTONISH 7, Jan 1960.
Kirby and Ditko at least must have had an opinion of the other's work, and on their collaborations. But it's entirely possible they did not meet personally, and just worked on each other's pages, given by editor Stan Lee. But I find it hard to believe with the shared experience Kirby and Ditko had at Marvel that they did not seek out each other and have conversations about that. And perhaps other social get-togethers, outside of Marvel.
From what little I know about their personal lives and political views, I doubt they would’ve liked each other at all. There’s also the fact that Ditko was not happy about Kirby’s attempts to claim creator credit on Spiderman
Wow, I hadn't thought of the Kirby claim to have created Spider-man and how Ditko would have reacted to that. But by Stan Lee's account in ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS, he was the genius who came up with everything, and just farmed it out to Ditko to draw Lee's preconceived vision. I'm sure Ditko has a very different view of that. Ditko, at least later on, was very active in plotting and developing characters, and likely from the beginning, beyond the lack of credit acknowledged by Stan Lee.
Kirby said he came up with a similar character years before, and I've often seen an unpublished cover for it from 1954, titled NIGHT FIGHTER, that Kirby alleges was re-packaged into what became Spider-man. This much is true, Kirby did the cover for Spider-man's first appearance in AMAZING FANTASY 15. So who's to say that Kirby might have had additional conceptual contribution to Spider-man early on. But I suspect this is either defective memory on Kirby's part, or his early ideas were vastly changed by Lee and Ditko.
You bring up a great point that Kirby was very liberal/left, whereas Ditko was on the polar opposite end of the spectrum, as an ardent conservative and Ayn Rand/Objectivism follower. But I have many friends who are liberals despite my own conservatism, and you can share many other interests while disagreeing politically, or even just not discussing politics. In the far more civil (relatively) 1990's, I had a very liberal friend who was a news reporter, and we had lunch several times a week together, and I actually consider him my best friend from that period.
I think that Kirby and Ditko were introverted and not particularly social would have been a more likely barrier to their being friends. But it's still possible they were friends. They were the two giants of their time at Marvel, from roughly 1958-1966, and in Kirby's case 1958-1970. It was only when Ditko died that I realized how many characters he's created, at both Marvel and DC, as well as at Charleton and other companies. I think Ditko is the only other artist who has created characters on a scale as prolific as Jack Kirby.
It cites Stan Lee's denied story credit and payment for stories reprinted in FANTASY MASTERPIECES by Kirby, Joe Simon, Carl Burgos (creator of golden age Human Torch), Wally Wood (denied plotting and creative credit on his then-current DAREDEVIL run), Steve Ditko (similarly denied story and creative credit on SPIDER-MAN and DOCTOR STRANGE), and Bill Everett (denied story credit and compensation on reprints of golden age Sub-Mariner stories).
So it wasn't just Kirby or Ditko who were denied credit, denied compensation or denied creative control of the characters they created for Marvel. They were even shorted credit and payment for licensing, comic book reprints for licensing, and Merry Marvel Marching society profits and t-shirts! The 80,000 Marvel t-shirts alone sold on Stan Lee's college lecture circuit, if you estimate the t-shirts sold for $5.00 each, that's $400,000 in gross profits. And then shorted from that, Kirby had to borrow $2,000 from Martin Goodman for his moving costs to California, that took him years to pay back!
Also interesting how Stan Lee went from staeling the glory from Wood for his contributions on DAREDEVIl, compelling Wood to resign in disgust, and Stan Lee just went on to swiping ideas and shortchanging credit from the next artist to draw the series, no lesson learned or better treatment of co-creators going forward.
I didn't know till now that Captain Marvel and the Kree was begun in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES 12, or that Kirby (again uncredited) created the concept. The timeline through 1970-1971 explains a lot about how Kirby''s stories in AMAZING ADVENTURES 1-4, SILVER SURFER 18, ASTONISHING TALES 1-2, and CHAMBER OF DARKNESS 3-4 came to be created. And toward the end, a lot of editorial changes and creative harassment by Stan Lee, showing his bad treattment and perhaps deliberate harassment of Kirby at the end. I was blown away that Kirby did a Silver Surfer story in FF 74-77, and then right after SILVER SURFER 1 by Lee and Buscema came out the next month, and Kirby was kept completely in the dark about the Buscema series until right before it came out! His own creation. "Kirby felt he had lost creative control of his own character." Yeah, you think?!?
Again, everything Kirby was cheated out of, is now given without reservation in the standard contract for Marvel writers and artists. And if given back then, Kirby would likely have spent the rest of his career at Marvel.
I especially wonder if there was any friendship and interaction between Kirby and Steve Ditko, because they had the identical problem at Marvel (with Stan Lee, and not getting full credit and control of the stories and characters they created)in the 1960's. Both Kirby and Ditko were introverted recluses.
In addition to that, Kirby and Ditko were a penciller/inker team on a number of stories from 1959-1964. On many pre-Marvel monster stories. Here's "We Met In the Swamp", from TALES TO ASTONISH 7, Jan 1960.
And a sequel to that in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 8, Jan 1964. The last Kirby/Ditko collaboration I'm aware of.
Kirby and Ditko at least must have had an opinion of the other's work, and on their collaborations. But it's entirely possible they did not meet personally, and just worked on each other's pages, given by editor Stan Lee. But I find it hard to believe with the shared experience Kirby and Ditko had at Marvel that they did not seek out each other and have conversations about that. And perhaps other social get-togethers, outside of Marvel.
I love the Kirby/Ditko collaborations, so I updated the links and re-posted this one so you can easily access them. Since the RKMB crash a year or so ago, I can't edit the old posts, and this is the way available for me to update it.
Their collaboration brings out a nice new edge in both of their work, they mesh well together.
Interesting account of Colletta's entire career, beginning on romance comics of the 1950's, Colletta's transition from being a penciller/inker, into becoming exclusively an inker. And the period he was inking Kirby's art. Colletta primarily inked Kirby on JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY/THOR 106-177 and 179 (less a few fill-in issues by Frank Giacoia or Bill Everett), from roughly 1964-1970. Their longest run together. I agree, I thought Colletta brought a nice visual style to Kirby's THOR run, but it's undeniable that he erased art and turned huge areas into silhouette, to cut corners and do the inking fast. How Colletta actually erased pencils, and turned huge areas of background art into blacked-out silhouette. I know Mark Evanier has railed for years in print and online about how awful Colletta was to Kirby's art, and it's revealed here how Evanier was instrumental as Kirby's assistant at DC in 1971 in having Colletta removed as inker on Kirby's Fourth World books.
After, Colletta became art director in the 1970's at DC, and hired a lot of great talent like Marshall Rogers, Michael Golden and Frank Miller. And I was a huge fan of Mike Grell's THE WARLORD for its entire 50 issue run. Grell pencilled and inked the first 14 issues, Rubinstein inked issue 15, and from 16-50 Colletta inked every issue except for 41, 43, and 45-47. This explains what I didn't previously know, that Grell hated Colletta's inks on his work, and wanted him off the book. When he went back to Marvel and got work due to his friendship and loyalty to Shooter, and with Shooter's firing got the axe as well, he wrote a vitriolic letter to Marvel's editors, that was hilariously played out in a dramatic reading here, by someone in a British accent, to class it up and add to the drama of it. Hilarious!
Much of this about Colletta I knew to some degree, a lot of it I learned many details here for the first time. It was rumored for years that Colletta had shady dealings with organized crime, and it's revealed here that his father was believed to be a mafia figure, who fled from Sicily to the U.S., before also bringing in his wife and children. Not mentioned here, Neal Adams (n BRAVE AND THE BOLD 81) and John Byrne (in SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN 58) each had one story inked by Colletta, and were furious about it, and each gave orders that Colletta never be permitted to ink their work again. In Adams' case, after Colletta inked it and Adams saw what was done, Adams completely re-inked away as much of Colletta's work as he could on the pages before they were sent to the printers.
I also love the story about how Stan Lee ran several pages of photos of everyone working in the Marvel bullpen staff (MARVEL TALES ANNUAL 1, Sept 1964) and parents wrote in and complained because they thought Vince Colletta looked like a mobster. Shooter ribbed Colletta about it in a Bullpen Bulletins interview in the page that ran in May 1983 issues. Also undisclosed in the video, apparently it was a great trauma for Colletta to be fired from Marvel, he died only a year or two after his departure. For all his cutting corners, he apparently gained a lot of fulfillment and identity from his work, and having his career ended so crushingly really took a toll on him. I'd agree with Colletta that after Shooter was fired from Marvel, the work quality there sunk down to hack garbage for many years.
... by artist Tom Scioli, who has done other works in comics over the last 20 years or so in the Kirby style. It's a roughly 200-page biography in comics form of Kirby's life, from his birth and early formative years, and through every stage of his life and career. As much as I already knew, I still learned a lot of backstory I wasn't previously aware of.
It even goes into one of my earlier questions, about what Kirby's personal relationships were with Steve Ditko and others. Kirby and Ditko did have a friendship and socialize outside of Marvel with Steve Ditko, and they did discuss their similar frustrations and deprivations working for Stan Lee. Ditko even tried to convince Kirby to leave as well and offered Kirby work and creative freedom at Charleton, but Kirby has a wife and 5 children, and couldn't afford the pay cut he would get moving from Marvel to Charleton. Ditko likewise moved to DC, and was likewise disappointed with his lack of creative control of the characters he created at DC, abruptly quitting from the BEWARE THE CREEPER and HAWK AND THE DOVE series he created. Similarly, Kirby was promised a great deal at DC, that never came to fruition. And Kirby (after Infantino cancelled his Fourth World books in late 1972) similarly after that only stayed till the end of his DC contract in Dec 1975, before returning for another 3 years at Marvel, and then leaving to work in animation after Dec 1978.
I was unaware that Kirby had an earlier heart attack in 1987/1988 and "couldn't even hold a pencil", and from that point forward projects he sold like PHANTOM FORCE for Image, and the SECRET CITY SAGA crossover books for Topps, were from much earlier concept drawings and unfinished pages, or in some cases work finished or completely ghosted by artist/friend Michael Thibedeaux.
A photoshopped fake house ad of Kirby characters from THE DEMON, O.M.A.C., 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY, MACHINE MAN, and DEVIL DINOSAUR, that is a nice tribute to the full spectrum Kirby's 1970's work.
A little bit after the fact, but still wanted to commemorate it. I chose the above double page spread from Kirby's SILVER STAR 2, published by Pacific Comics in April 1983. Showing that even at the twilight of Kirby's career when he arguably wasn't doing his best work, he was still capable of producing memorable and impressive pages, on a par with his KAMANDI, DEMON, ETERNALS or BLACK PANTHER work.
With updated image. As we approach Kirby's 106th birthday.
As Kirby's 106th birthday approaches in the next 2 weeks or so, here's an interesting paste-up of what might have been.
Kirby's first NEW GODS story was apparently planned at one point to first appear in a SHOWCASE issue. https://viewcomiconline.com/the-new-gods-1971-issue-1/ And apparently this paste-up was prepared at least 6 months to a year in advance of that, because it includes the Silver Age "Superman, National Comics" logo in the upper left. that ceased to be used after Sept 1970. Kirby's first story for DC in that era was JIMMY OLSEN 133, Oct 1970, that was the first month the "National Comics" logo ceased to be used.
So that proposed SHOWCASE cover must have been prepared sometime prior to that even. And NEW GODS 1 (Feb-Mar 1971) came out 4 months after JO 133.
For comparison, I provided links to both the unused covers, and the ones used in the JIMMY OLSEN series. Incredibly, 6 rejected covers, out of only 15 Kirby issues. Better yet, in a larger size, here are the complete issues of Kirby's JIMMY OLSEN 133-148 for your reading pleasure : https://viewcomiconline.com/supermans-pal-jimmy-olsen-v1-133/
From JIMMY OLSEN 147, with the character "Angry Charlie", one of the creatures genetically bred in the Evil Factory in previous issues,. he Evil Factory was blown up and destroyed in JO 146, but Angry Charlie and other creatures from it survived. Jimmy Olsen was recovering in a hospital room in the opening scene when Angry Charlie burst into the room. In the last few issues this wild bug-eyed monster met and made friends with the Newsboy Legion, and they more or less adopted him as a pet and at times fighting ally. Or as in this scene, a random threat that provides action in the scene. https://onemillioncomics.com/supermans-pal-jimmy-olsen-v1-147/
Like so many other characters introduced, in the explosion of new characters Kirby created in JIMMY OLSEN, Angry Charlie was given limited space due to how many other characters were already in the series. But in the limited space he was given, interesting, and plenty of potential for expansion, maybe even into another series. Along with The Wild Area, the Hairies, the Zoomway, the DNA Project, the new Newsboy Legion, the new Guardian, Dubbilex, a giant green renegade Jimmy Olsen clone, thousands more tiny Jimmy Olsen clones and Newsboy Legion clones, The Evil Factory, Dabney Donovan and his many research projects, the planet Transilvane, monsters around Loch Ness on the loose either created to protect the nearby Evil Factory, or just got loose from it, the seemingly endless range of mutant creatures shown in the Evil Factory's zoo in issues 145 and 146, and even after blowing up the evil factory, thousands of these could be used in future stories as having survived the explosion that destroyed it, as Jimmy Olsen survived. And in the last two issues, Angry Charlie and (patterned in a Jules Verne template) Victor Volcanum and all HIS gadgets and creations, expose yet another vast secret hidden world.
That's all just one 15-issue Kirby series, and not even a complete list of characters and worlds introduced !
Over at Marvel, a similar set of throwaway characters were expanded on and became the core of the Marvel Universe: the Inhumans,their city of Attilan, the Blue Area of the moon, the Watcher and his race, Galactus, the Silver Surfer, the Mad Thinker and his androids, "Him"/Warlock, Dr. Doom and his Latveria kingdom, the Microverse, Black Panther and Wakanda, the Sentry and the Kree empire, the Skrulls, Sub-Mariner and Atlantis, and that's just a small tip of the iceberg.
Like Angry Charlie, just a sample of the torrent of new characters and hidden worlds exploding out of any Kirby series.
I love this photo of Kirby. It poses him as a guy of small stature, who achieves greatness through his art and imagination. Though the creator of many great pages and stories, the man himself, as posed, is vastly overshadowed by the work he created.
Updated, with new link. I think this is the perfect photo of Kirby.
One of many photos of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby together, during their lengthy collaborative years from 1941-1958. After the extreme comics industry recession and market collapse in comics when the Comics Code began in 1955, Joe Simon apparently decided at some point to break up the partnership and try his luck in advertising illustration.
While Kirby made attempts at working for just about every comics publisher remaining in the late 1950's, working for DC initially from 1956-1958, on SHOWCASE, CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, HOUSE OF MYSTERY, HOUSE OF SECRETS, TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, MY GREATEST ADVENTURE , and a Green Arrow backup series in WORLDS FINEST. Up till Kirby and editor Jack Schiff had a dispute over the "Sky Masters" newspaper strip, where Kirby sold it to a syndicate through Schiff's contacts, and then Schiff alleged Kirby shorted him on the compensation they agreed on. Schiff won the case when it went to court, and then Schiff blacklisted Kirby at DC and denied him further work after that, and Kirby did not return to DC until Schiff retired as editor there, and Kirby signed a contract to come back to DC literally the day Schiff left in 1970.
Kirby began doing the bulk of his work for Marvel in late 1958, and while not content at Marvel, he found the most work there. But also did work for Gilberton (CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED publisher) on their WORLD AROUND US series in issues 30-36, that Kirby found very tedious in the amount of historically accurate detail and art changes they demanded on the smallest of historical assignments. At some point I learned that the reason Kirby suddenly found so much work at Marvel is that Stan Lee's primary and most prolific artist up to that time, Joe Maneely, suddenly died, and by chance Kirby approached Lee for work at precisely that time, and by arriving when he did, Kirby filled a huge void at Atlas/Marvel left by Maneely's death. Maneely apparently had very bad vision, and having lost his glasses one night, unable to see where he was going, fell between rail cars on the subway trying to get home.
Also for Harvey, Kirby did a 3-issue series titled RACE FOR THE MOON, about astronauts in space, visually similar to Kirby's "Sky Masters" comic strip previously with Jack Schiff. Most interesting on a number of stories in these 3 issues, Kirby's pencils were finished by Al Williamson. https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Race-For-the-Moon/Issue-1?id=168180
A few years later, Kirby did another one-shot issue in 1965, BLAST-OFF, that also had Kirby/Williamson art. Despite producing an enormous amount of work for Marvel from 1958-1970, Kirby clearly was not content with his work situation a Marvel, and still produced a lot of other non-Marvel work, sampling the waters at just about every publisher during those years.
Simon's work from 1968-1978 all lands squarely in the "so bad it's good" category. But it has an odd charm to it.
But back in the day, in the 1940's and 1950's, the Simon / Kirby team were among the most sought-after comics creators. And Jack Kirby, soon after the Simon & Kirby partnership ended , famously began his long collaboration with Stan Lee, and arguably both did the most acclaimed work of their careers on FF, THOR, HULK, AVENGERS, X-MEN, SGT FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS, NICK FURY AGENT OF SHIELD, a revived CAPTAIN AMERICA series, and a ton of other new characters at Marvel.
The double page spread from ETERNALS 3, in 1976. I posted the opening pages of issues 1 and 2 earlier in the topic. A series that I think instantly re-affirmed Kirby's reputation when he left DC and came back to Marvel in early 1976.
As impressive a way as any to give tribute to Kirby's 107th birthday.
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