Jack Kirby: Behind the Lines
“Do I Have the Guts to Defy Odin Once Again?”
If Jack Kirby was still cranking out stories and art at this
unassuming, spartan drawing board he would be 96-years-old today. As
many of you know, Jack died in 1994 which was way before his time. If
he’d lived another 20 years one can only imagine the masterpieces he
would have created — maybe he could have dabbled a bit in other mediums
like sculpture or film. This is a rare example of Jack working with
paint in the late 1960s.
Here’s a photograph of the finished piece from
comicartfans.com.
You can see the colors have faded a bit over the years but it’s still a
spectacular piece of Kirby bio-tech, notice the robotic face on the
right side of the image.
About
700 American World War II veterans are passing away every day — that’s
every single day, not every month. In the next 24-hours about 700
American men and women who fought to defend our liberty in the 1940s
will be laid to rest. Their average age is 94, so by 2020 all but a few
of our WW II veterans will be gone. The loss of these brave, honorable,
hard-working Americans is going to be a devastating loss for all of us.
If you’ve known anyone from that generation, I can almost guarantee you
will agree with me when I say the WW II generation were the most
kind-hearted, hard-working, intelligent, humble group of people
imaginable. Here’s a photo of Jack and his wife Rosalind in Manhattan
(1944), from their granddaughter Jillian Kirby’s website
Kirby4heroes. All the Kirby family photos in the rest of this article are from Jillian’s website.
Today
on Jack’s birthday, I encourage you to not only take a moment to
reflect on the life and work of Jack Kirby, but also please remember all
the American soldiers who fought for our freedom over the years,
especially our few surviving WW II veterans, and their families because
they all played a role in defeating fascism. Here’s another photo of
Jack and his family, an archetypal American middle class family, June
1954.
For the last three years I’ve been doing a daily weblog about Jack Kirby called
Kirby Dynamics which was my version of the
Daily Show meets
Saturday Night Live
focused on the life and work of Jack Kirby — I covered news stories and
analyzed the history while also trying to have fun along the way. For a
bunch of reasons I decided to pull the plug on that project, but as we
move towards Jack’s 100th birthday I still wanted to keep my toe in the
water, so my thanks to the editors of
The Comics Journal for
giving me a chance to do a monthly column I’m calling “Jack Kirby:
Behind The Lines.” It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to honor
Jack’s career here at
The Comics Journal. As long as comics are being written and drawn I’m sure
TCJ will be at the vanguard of comics scholarship and comics journalism. I’ll try not to ruin their website.
The reason I picked the over-used cliché “behind the lines” for this
series is probably going to be pretty obvious. Each month I’m going to
take a look at Jack Kirby original pencils and examples of Kirby
original art — images that reveal information not in the final newsprint
publications. I may also take a look at some scans of Jack’s pencils
from the 70s and compare those to the printed books. Mainly I want to
focus on Jack’s famous margin notes from his 1960s work so we can get a
glimpse into the Jack Kirby/Stan Lee collaboration.
I’m also calling the column “behind the lines” because Jack literally
fought behind enemy lines during the second world war. Jack served in
the 3rd army, 5th division under General Geroge S. Patton. Here is a
photo of Jack at basic training in Camp Stewart, Georgia, July, 1944.
Kirby
was a combat infantryman, and he served as an advance scout — an
incredibly dangerous assignment since each step could result in instant
death from anything from an enemy landmine to a sniper’s bullet. Here is
a Kirby family photograph of Jack in battle gear at Camp Picket,
Virginia shortly before shipping out to Europe, June, 1944.
You
have to think if the Nazis had captured Jack and found out he was the
illustrator of this iconic cover, Jack’s stay in an enemy torture
chamber would have been most unpleasant.
Captain America # 1 (Mar 1941).
Jack
wasn’t just a comic book cartoonist — he was a warrior/artist, a
genuine hero/creator. Not too many of those around anymore. Many of you
may have read Joesph Campbell’s famous book
A Hero with a Thousand Faces (first
published in 1949) where Campbell explored the reoccurring myths that
appear all over the globe throughout recorded history.
I don’t think it would be a stretch to say Jack was a mythmaker in
that long tradition. And because of his prolific output I’d also suggest
Jack Kirby was “The Hero who Created a Thousand Heroes.”
Here’s a quote from Jillian Kirby’s kirby4heroes website next to that photo:
Jillian Kirby: Taken in March 1945, “Home from the
Wars” was the description written on the back of this picture by my
grandma Roz. For you WWII history buffs, I am proud of the medals and
badges pictured on his uniform: Combat Infantry Badge, Rhineland G0 40
WD45 Campaign Ribbon, European African Middle Eastern Theatre Ribbon
with One Bronze Battle Star. I see his patriotism and combat experiences
reflected in many of his comics such as Foxhole and Captain America.
Before I begin this month’s piece, some very quick background: I’m
going to assume most of you have a general understanding of comics
history (if not an encyclopedic one that dwarfs mine), so I won’t rehash
the whole Kirby/Lee authorship debate. If you want an introductory
course in Jack’s margin notes check out Mike Gartland’s series he wrote
for John Morrow’s
Jack Kirby Collector called
“A Failure to Communicate” — Mike was a pioneer in the exploration and analysis of Jack’s margin notes and I encourage you to support
TJKC.
I did a couple series for HiLobrow where I broke down some of the
basics of the Kirby/Lee authorship debate: one was called “Btoom! Kirby
vs. Lee,” the other “Galactus Lives.” Here is a link to all the
installments:
HiLobrow Kirby Close-Up series. I’ve talked about the margin notes at length at
Kirby Dynamics: here is a post
Fantastic Four # 14, page 12
I’d like you to check out (unfortunately the Kirby Museum changed the
settings on their website recently so the format is messed up). This
was an early article where I put forth my theory that from 1959 – 1963, I
suspect Jack was doing the bulk of the storytelling using visuals (Stan
Lee added text to Jack’s stories), then when Jack would turn in the
finished penciled stories Kirby would verbally go through the story with
Lee in his office briefly explaining to Stan what was happening on each
page; Lee sometimes would make tiny notes to himself based on Jack’s
direction. I think the conversational, friendly, even humorous tone in
Jack’s monologue was probably very similar to what you see in Jack’s
margin notes which started appearing in late-1963 and continued all the
way through 1970 when Jack left Marvel to work at DC. After that, Jack
simply wrote text in the word balloons himself as you can see in this
example: a low-resolution pencil scan downloaded from the internet,
New Gods # 8, pg. 20 (Apr 1972).
In the future we’ll probably examine several pages since this is a
monthly column, but for today let’s look at a single piece of art and
see what we can learn from it. This scan was recently posted by Tom
Kraft at his site
whatifkirby.com. Thanks to Tom for giving me permission to use the scan, and thanks to Rand Hoppe at the
Kirby Museum for working to scan all of Jack’s pencil photocopies. This is a photocopy of the pencils for
Thor
# 147, pg. 8 (Dec 1967). To start off, I digitally erased Lee’s
captions, not to eradicate Lee from the record but to show you what the
page looked like when Lee opened the package featuring Jack’s entire
Thor
# 147 story. In the past Lee has said the process of adding text to
Jack’s stories was like doing a crossword puzzle. I encourage you to
read Jack’s notes, look at the art and think about how you might add
text to this piece.
Here’s the complete scan of the page:
The
quality of the source photocopy is exceptionally good. It’s rare to
have all the margin notes intact, usually about 3/4 of them were cut off
in production so only fragments remain. A lot of the scans of Jack’s
pencils are poor, probably because the ink cartridge in the photocopier
was running low, and I don’t think Jack’s home photocopier was that good
to begin with. But this is very high quality — in all likelihood it was
made at the Marvel offices for some unknown reason since they rarely
did that.
You can see Jack’s pencils are strong, confident, and detailed. This
work is almost publication-ready today with digital enhancement. Jack
rarely used an eraser. A lot of artists from that period would not
pencil backgrounds and leave that up to the inker. Not so with Kirby,
and remember Jack was knocking out at least three entire 20-page books a
month in the 1960s, plus covers and annuals so if he wanted to cut
corners he could have left out extemporaneous detail. But I think Jack
was a perfectionist, he realized the backgrounds played an integral role
in the overall composition of each panel so he always made sure to
create an effective marriage of foreground/background. Jack illustrated
at least 10,000 pages in the 1960s so fans always talk about how “fast”
Jack was, and he certainly was, but he still spent about 2 – 3 hours on
each page, so illustrating 3 pages of story would take a full 8 – 9 hour
shift at least. So, yeah, Jack was faster than an artist who spends a
whole day laboring over a single page, but the guy was still working at a
breakneck pace, sometimes 12-hours a day, 7-days a week if he was doing
additional work.
Okay, let’s dive in. We’ll look at each panel individually.
Thor # 147, pg. 8, panel 1
Jack’s
margin notes tend to tell Lee what is happening, where the story is
going, what the characters are doing, and what the characters
psychological motivations are. These notes set the stage for the whole
page. Jack’s directions at the top of this panel for Stan Lee say: “Odin
is now testing the strength of his commands — that’s why Loki is back —
that’s why Sif and Balder are admonished! Are their personal desires
stronger than Odin’s orders — like Thor?”
One thing I’m going to do in this series is highlight examples where I
think Stan Lee follows Jack’s directions in his captions. Here’s the
first example.
Pretty
self-explanatory: Lee has Odin verbally admonish Sif. Visually Jack
makes it clear there is conflict between the characters; Balder pulls
Sif away from the “All-Father” — the visuals obviously influence Lee’s
text. You see Loki is bowing before Odin, raising his hands in a sign of
supplication, ironic because Lee has Balder use that term in his
caption. I doubt Jack would have wanted the final word balloon that is
falling out of the bottom of the panel in the image, it ruins the flow
of a solid left-right composition, and you can see there was barely
enough room for the letterer to add that caption without writing over
Loki’s face or hands. Loki is bowing out of the image, exiting stage
right, the word balloon reminds me of Public Enemy Flavor Fav’s clock
necklace. It’s superfluous.
I’m going to try not to be overly-critical of Lee’s dialogue, but I
don’t think that caption is necessary; it’s obvious in the next panel
that Loki is leaving, so there’s really no need for Loki to telegraph it
with a caption. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but sometimes I
don’t even understand what Lee Thor-dialogue means. For example, Lee
has Loki say: “Now my grateful Loki doth take his leave of thee.” Why is
Loki calling himself “my grateful Loki?” Shouldn’t it be “thou grateful
Loki,” or “thy grateful Loki?” Isn’t Lee’s caption a kind of
double-first-person remark? “I, me.” Lee Thor dialogue is just bizarre
sometimes, but I guess when you make up your own language you have to
fabricate the grammar on the fly; and people do love made-up languages
like Klingon and all the new languages in shows like
Game of Thrones, so maybe Lee was ahead of his time? Now my grateful writer of this column doth take leave of this panel.
Thor # 147, pg. 8, panel 2
Jack’s directions for Stan Lee say: “Loki slinks off / He’s all
hopped up.” Notice Jack separates ideas by dashes ( — ) at the top and
bottom of the page, then on the sides where there is less room, he tends
to use a single line ( __ ). This is a great example of Jack’s margin
notes just filling space, what is happening in the image is obvious and
doesn’t require explanation. Loki is sneaking off to, no doubt, spread
mischief like the archetypal trickster rabbit of ancient North American
mythology. Balder and Sif look defeated, their shoulders slouched, they
walk away conquered. Lee’s dialogue reflects that when Loki says “Balder
and the beauteous Sif have failed.”
One thing I find interesting about Jack’s margin notes: they are very
conversational and friendly, and funny at times even when the subject
matter is serious. Jack is having fun, doing something he loves; it
comes through in the art and the margin notes. I strongly suspect this
is how Jack verbally explained his stories to Lee when they would meet
F2F before Jack started using the margin notes in late 1963. In his own
voice Jack would explain essential elements of his story to his editor,
panel-by-panel. I think the notes on this page capture a playfulness and
humor in Jack’s character you can see in some of these family photos.
The Kirby family band, 1958.
July, 1952.
May, 1952.
Hanukah, Dec 1963.
Thor # 147, pg. 8, panel 3
Jack’s
directions for Stan Lee say: “So Thor is on Earth / without his
god-powers / What a break! / Do I have the guts to defy Odin once
again?”
I circled Jack’s margin notes and Lee’s captions in blue where the
Kirby notes/Lee captions agree — as you can see, inside the circles
Lee’s text mirrors Jack’s directions. But Lee decided to move in a bit
of a different direction in relation to Jack’s other notes — notice
instead of having Loki ponder whether he should defy Odin (as Jack
suggests), Lee decided for Loki to take a more active approach towards
his brother.
A subtle change, but one worth pondering: in Jack’s version, Loki is
cowardly, wondering if he has the “guts” (as Jack puts it) to challenge
his powerful Father. Notice Loki is visually hiding behind a wall —
lurking, scheming. On the other hand, Lee’s text focuses purely on
Loki’s desire to defeat the god of thunder. I think you could argue
Jack’s approach adds more complexity to Loki’s character and fits the
visual, plus in some respects Lee’s caption is redundant because Jack
has Loki turn his sights to defeating Thor in the next panel. This is
just one example of the tug of war that took place between Jack and Lee
on the page itself where both men were trying to put forth their own
vision. There are hundreds if not thousands of examples of this in the
margin notes that survive.
Thor # 147, pg. 8, panel 4
Jack’s directions for Stan Lee say: “Thor is at my mercy — I may never get another chance to nail him like this.”
Jack’s notes suggest Loki knows he may never get another opportunity
like this to destroy Thor, but Lee doesn’t use that idea, instead Lee
has Loki doing typical bad guy ranting. Once again, I think Jack’s
directions add another lost layer of meaning to the page that helps
establish the character — Loki is a conspirator, he knows he has to
seize this rare chance to eliminate his brother immediately, time is of
the essence — in Lee’s text Loki is just raving maniacally.
Thor # 147, pg. 8, panel 5
Jack’s directions for Stan Lee say: “Loki can’t resist break! — he
used trans-dimensional gestures he learned from wicked norn
enchantress.”
This is one of the reasons I wish we had copies of all Jack’s margin
notes. Although Lee didn’t use Jack’s concepts in the captions,
examining a source document like this adds an additional layer to Jack’s
original story — it’s a lot like a footnote, or a behind the scenes
narration a director adds to a film. The reason behind Loki’s gestures
are lost when the page was captioned then printed, but looking at the
pencils we can see there is more going on than meets the eye in Jack’s
imagination. There are many layers to the story in Jack’s mind. But I
think Lee’s decision here to add a simple, small caption is effective in
terms of keeping the story flowing. There was really no need for a
lengthy piece of dialogue or a long caption. Kirby Purists will crucify
me for this, but these types of moments where Lee steps out of the way
and lets Jack’s imagery carry the story are very effective.
But make no mistake, Jack Kirby was what I call “The Principal Author” of
The Mighty Thor # 147.
As the Principal Author Jack wrote the story with visuals and directions for Stan Lee in the margins.
Stan Lee was the “Secondary Author,” who took Jack’s story/art then
added text in the word balloons and caption boxes based on Jack’s art
and Jack’s margin notes. In my opinion, an accurate credit on the front
page of this story should have read:
Writer/Artist: Jack Kirby
Writer/Editor: Stan Lee
That’s a fair description of the chronology as well, the story
started on Jack’s drawing board, it ended with Lee in the New York
offices, and if the True Believers would have found such a designation
of credit confusing, Lee easily could have explained this division of
labor in his letters columns or his bullpen bulletins which appeared in
every Marvel magazine every month.
Here is a scan of the published page.
The colors and printing make a semi-mess of the artwork. Those
seemingly haphazard splotches of sky-blue on Balder’s cape and glove,
the area around Loki’s neck should be yellow, no color in the eyes in
panel 4 — all make for classic, muddled 60s four-color publishing. Vince
Colletta does his job here and makes Jack’s pencils suitable for
publication. For the most part he delineates the images in Jack’s
artwork, but you can see Colletta tends to add scratchy lines to areas
where Jack had drawn solid shading. There is one relatively
insignificant omission on the page. Note the character in the bottom
right corner of the panel below disappears in the published version,
something pretty common in a lot of Colletta-inked Thor. Almost like a
character stepping into the 60s
Star Trek transporter.
Colletta’s decision to delete that Asgardian pedestrian doesn’t
really hurt the page, you could argue it actually helps highlight Sif
and Balder, but Jack put details like that in there for a reason, mainly
to show that Thor’s world is a bustling universe full of diverse
costumed characters and imaginative flowing technology.
That’s all for that page, but we’ll look at several more
Thor
pages in the future. I’m not sure how this column will evolve — right
now I plan to focus on reporting on what we find on the artwork and
analyzing that as opposed to composing satire and making wisecracks as I
did on my old daily
Kirby Dynamics weblog, but as I was writing this article a decision came down in the latest round of the
Marvel vs. Kirby lawsuit
so I did want to make one comment since everybody else on the internet
is weighing in. I’m going to shock you all and say I think this recent
Marvel/Disney vs. Kirby court decision is a good thing. Yeah. That’s
right, I disagree with just about every internet comment I’ve read on
the judge’s ruling: I think it’s fantastic that Marvel stomped on Kirby
like he was a little tiny, eensy-weensie ant and grinded him into the
concrete like he was nothing. Sure, I’d love to see Jack’s family get a
tiny percentage of the billions of dollars Marvel is raking in (and
Marvel might settle with them one day), but to me the decision just adds
to Jack’s status as a true American folk hero.
You had this kid who survived the depression, found a sci-fi pulp in
the gutter one day and started drawing, despite the horrible economy
he was able to find work as an artist, he was there at the dawn of the
animation industry and the comics industry, he graduated from comic
strips to comic books, helped create Captain America, served his country
in WW II where he almost lost both feet to frostbite, he returned home
to raise a family, helped invent the romance genre in comics, totally
reinvented the superhero genre, created the first comics epic with the
Fourth World, produced great work in animation, fought for artists
rights, helped invent the comics direct market, and after he passed away
his family carried on the fight trying to get him well-deserved credit
and compensation. Sounds like that would make a pretty good folk tale to
me — you’d have to think such a character deserves to stand beside the
likes of Yankee Doodle, Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan. True working
class American heroes.
Unfortunately you’d be hard pressed to find 1 out of 100 kids in many
American neighborhoods who could even name all 4 Beatles right now, so
it’s probable that people won’t have any conception of comics or comics
history in the future (or any history for that matter) which means Jack
Kirby may never achieve true folk hero status. What’s far more likely is
that Jack’s 1960s editor Smilin’ Stan (The Man) Lee will end up being
the next great American folk hero – or a Legend like King Arthur or
Robin Hood. If the corporate machine keeps promoting him, Lee will stand
amongst the titans of human creativity, his name synonymous with the
likes of Homer or William Shakespeare. In fact the former already
happened — here’s a new French book on the art of Stan Lee by an author
named Jean-Marc Lainé. The book is called
Homère du XXe siècle.
The English translation of the title is “Stan Lee: A 20th-Century
Homer.” Thanks to Frédéric Cwiécinski from the Kirby tribute site
Kirbyholic for passing along that link.
No
documentário “Com grandes poderes”, que fala da carreira de Stan Lee e
dos primeiros anos da Marvel Comics, o velinho “presepeiro” fala do
quanto ele queria ver mais gente de cor nos quadrinhos e assim decidiu
que iria criar o Pantera Negra. Em momento algum ele mencionou o nome de
Jack Kirby, lógico!
