Bret Bernal did the seeming-impossible. He wrote to ask me a question about Jack Kirby that I don't think anyone else has ever asked me. And then he asked me another one which others have and I'll get to it. But first, here's the one no one has ever asked me before…
When you worked in Jack Kirby's studio, do you recall him ever disliking a batch of the 2-ply bristol board publishers sent him? Obviously, the King could draw on a paper bag and it would look astounding, but I'm curious if mediocre paper would slow him down or distract him in any way?
When Jack went to work for DC Comics in 1970, they shipped him a ream of their drawing paper — all cut to the proper size — and he hated it. Absolutely hated it. And it slowed him down because as he applied his favorite pencils to it, it kept smudging and he had to draw more carefully and occasionally erase and redraw something he'd smudged, plus he had to get up and wash his hands more often than he liked. He wound up drawing some of his work during this period on leftover Marvel paper but he had only a limited supply of it.
So he asked if Steve Sherman and I could find him better paper. He gave us one of the last remaining sheets of the Marvel paper — which he thought was great — and we went down to a hallowed art supply store in downtown Los Angeles called McManus & Morgan. It was opened in 1923 and it's still in business.
There, we were waited on by a gentleman who treated the selection of drawing paper like the Royal Sommelier choosing a fine wine to serve to His Majesty. He rubbed his fingers expertly over the Marvel paper and pronounced it "mediocre, at best," then brought out samples of three different styles of two-ply drawing paper. We took them back to Jack who did a little drawing on each one then selected his favorite. We then went back to McManus & Morgan and bought a lot of it for Jack. They cut larger sheets of it into the size Jack needed and then Steve and I each took half the stack and ruled margins in pencil on each page for Jack.
For a while after, our duties for Jack included trips down to McManus & Morgan when he was low on paper. Actually, Steve — since he had a car and I didn't then — did the later paper runs and he ruled the margins off until one day, Jack said, "You don't have to do that for me. For some reason, I enjoy it."
One Saturday, Joe Kubert was in town with his family and they dropped by the Kirby home. Joe, in addition to being a writer, artist and editor for DC had been one of the people who'd chosen the paper stock DC supplied to its artists and he and Jack got into a friendly argument over it. Joe loved it but Joe worked in a different manner than Jack. Joe would do his initial penciling with light blue pencil and he suggested Jack try doing that. Jack was a little peeved (just a little) at the suggestion and he said something like, "I've been doing it the way I do it for over thirty years and I'm not going to change now."
So this might be the answer to Bret's other question which was as follows…
And if he were alive today, do you think he’d ever tinker with digital drawing?
I don't think so. Jack was working, as he did for the rest of his life, on a very old, worn drawing table with a pretty ratty taboret next to it. People kept suggesting he get something newer or offered to get him something newer — and he said, "Thanks but I like what I have." He had many, many visions of the future, some of them amazingly accurate. But I think he always thought of that as the future of generations later than his. I have trouble even imagining Jack with a GMail account.
Getting back to the paper: At some point, DC had some printed on a different stock and Kubert urged Jack to give it a try. He did and he was happier with it so we no longer had to go buy him drawing paper. After he stopped working regularly for DC or Marvel, he drew a lot of the things he drew on whatever kind of paper he could find and it wasn't always great paper — for him or for the inkers. Occasionally, some of his later work was on one-ply drawing paper which wasn't bad for inkers who worked mainly with a brush but it caused problems for inkers and letterers who worked with pens.
Thanks, Bret. Always nice to have a new question to answer.
In 1970, when Jack Kirby moved from Marvel to DC, he became the writer-editor-artist of his work. There was some criticism of his drawing, though most of that went away when Mike Royer became his inker. What was left was mainly folks who simply didn't like Jack's style…or were horrified to see Marvel-style art in a DC Comic. There wasn't much he could do about that.
The dialogue and captions in his DC work, which definitely did not sound much like Stan Lee, proved to be more controversial. Some folks loved it. Some did not. I gave one interview in which I said some negative things about it and I can't for the life of me understand why I said that. I didn't really feel that way and in the years that followed, I came to really love the unique voice that Jack put into his work.
My pal David Seidman sent me this question to be answered here…
How did Jack Kirby respond to criticism of his work? I'm particularly interested in the criticism of his dialogue. From the 1970s to this day, readers have said that Kirby was a visual genius, but his characters spoke in ways that were too cornball, old-fashioned, or overblown even for the hyper-stylized world of costumed heroes. Did Kirby know about this viewpoint, and did it affect him?
As I said, some people liked it and some didn't. I think those in the "didn't" group would be shocked at how many there were (and now are) in the other group. I feel quite certain that over the years, the tide has swung wildly in his favor. There was a time there where it felt like DC was calling me every few months because they were reprinting that material again and wanted to consult with me and/or have me bang out a foreword. You don't reprint something that often unless people love it.
Even at the time Jack was doing that work, he got plenty of praise for his writing, much of it from people within the industry that he respected. What criticism he got from within DC was from the same folks who insisted that he should try to draw more like Curt Swan. In some cases, he felt (as did I) that the folks offering that criticism just wanted that end of his job for themselves.
I think what bothered Jack was that the folks saying he couldn't write were under the impression that writing a comic book was only about writing dialogue. When I discuss this with people, I'm reminded of something that screenwriter William Goldman wrote in his book about his craft, Adventures in the Screen Trade. The following excerpt is edited somewhat to get to the point quicker. Goldman was talking about a lesson he'd learned while writing one of his early scripts…
…I was approaching what I believe to be the single most important lesson to be learned about writing for films and this is it:
SCREENPLAYS ARE STRUCTURE.
Yes, nifty dialog helps one hell of a lot; sure, it's nice if you can bring your characters to life. But you can have terrific characters spouting just swell talk to each other, and if the structure is unsound, forget it.
Writing a screenplay is in many ways similar to executing a piece of carpentry. If you take some wood and nails and glue and make a bookcase, only to find when you're done that it topples over when you try and stand it upright, you may have created something, but it won't work as a bookcase. The essential opening labor a screenwriter must execute is, of course, deciding what the proper structure should be for the particular screenplay you are writing.
If you read the rest of that book and/or listen to some of Goldman's interviews, you'll see that he divided the role of screenwriter into two parts: (1) Writing the Dialogue and (2) Everything Else. And "Everything Else" included the plot — what the story was about — and what should be established in each scene in order to tell the story…in other words, The Structure.
I doubt Jack ever read Goldman writing about writing but it was clear to me that Jack looked upon writing a comic book in much the same way. I'm not sure that in his entire career in comics, he ever got any criticism whatsoever for the part of writing a comic book that he felt was most important — i.e., The Structure. So he was satisfied he was doing his job well. And he was annoyed that there were people who talked about "the writing" as something that did not include The Structure.
I believe I am the only person alive — and one of the few who ever lived — who worked for both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I liked both of them but I was sometimes disappointed in Stan for, to put it bluntly, taking credit for things that others did. Jack never disappointed me in any way and I believe he was the major creative force behind the Lee-Kirby creations. Even Stan would sometimes admit that, though not in print or anywhere it could be heard by those who might keep him employed or negotiate his future contracts.
Jack, who was born this day in 1917, was the greatest creative force in comic books…or at least the kind of comic books he did. And the kind of comic books he did turned out to be the kind of comic books most people did, following the influence of Jack and often working on characters and concepts that began with him. That influence was not just confined to super-heroes. When I walk around a comic book convention these days, I see Kirby everywhere — not just books he started or the way he drew anatomy but his whole approach to design and storytelling and infusing energy into any kind of creative work.
He was also an amazingly nice and ethical man as well as being the hardest worker I've ever known. He could have made way more money in comics if he'd spent less time drawing a page and less time thinking about what could appear on that page that would thrill readers and boost sales for his publishers. He was not always paid or credited for that extra effort but "knocking it out" would not have taken comics to the next level and that's what Jack was all about: Taking things to the next level. When I hear someone say, "Well, I liked the way Someone Else drew the Silver Surfer better," I think, "This person is missing the whole point of Jack Kirby." Jack didn't just draw the Silver Surfer.
If it sounds to some of you like I talk about Jack constantly, that might be because I do. I certainly think about him every day. He had that kind of impact on my life as he did on so many others, including many who never had the honor of meeting him. But the work sure endures. Even comics he did that were proclaimed failures at the time are in their umpteenth printing, often with the kind of fancy reproduction and binding that Jack predicted would happen. He really was an extraordinary man.
I've read on a couple of websites that in 1970 or around that time, DC discussed having Jack Kirby do a James Bond comic book and they also apparently discussed it with Alex Toth. You are usually cited as the source of this information so I wonder if you could tell us more about what sounds to me like it could have been a spectacular project. Do any preliminary sketches or plots survive?
No preliminary sketches or plots survive, at least by Kirby or Toth. That's because none were done, at least by those two men. I can't swear DC's head honcho (then) Carmine Infantino didn't have someone else do something before the idea was abandoned…but the talk with Jack and later Alex was just talk and not very much of it. Infantino had some sort of option on doing a 007 comic book as a result of a one-shot comic they did in 1963. I wrote about it here.
Well, now that I think of it, let me add this: Infantino said they had some sort of option. That's a long time for that kind of option. I suspect he found out that they'd had such an option once and it had expired…but knowing about it prompted some discussion about maybe getting it back. Whatever, he asked Jack if he thought it was a good idea and if Jack would like to do it.
Two men who kept doing the impossible.
Jack loved the Bond films — at least, the ones he'd seen as of 1970. He said he thought it was a good idea but that it shouldn't be a regulation 15-cent comic on cheap newsprint, which was then what DC published. What he described sounded more like what we'd call a graphic novel today. That format would enable them to reach an older audience and also to have the book contain the kind of sex 'n' violence that consumers expected of a Bond novel or movie.
He also wanted to edit it but not draw it…though I assume he could have been persuaded to do the first book. The name of Alex Toth came up but I don't think Jack especially wanted to work with Alex. I have a vague memory that he told Carmine, "Toth would be great but if you've got him, just let him do it on his own. I don't need to get involved with that." Later, Carmine did talk to Alex and maybe others but nothing came of it. I don't think DC would ever have done it in the format Jack wanted and it's possible it would not have worked, no matter who did it, as a 15-center with cheap printing and Comics Code approval.
It especially might not have worked if they didn't have the right to make Bond look like Sean Connery…and that was probably not available. At the time, Diamonds Are Forever was in pre-production and it was widely believed that it would be Connery's last time in the role. Roger Moore had not yet been selected to take it over…so what would Bond look like in a comic book then? It was not to be but it sure is an intriguing "What if?"
I'm not sure I've ever told this story anywhere in public. Forgive me if I have…and please, as you read it, keep in mind that I was eighteen or so at the time. At any age, it's possible to say something off the top of your head that comes across as rude (when you didn't intend rude) and/or seriously meant (when you intended it as a joke). And it's more likely at that age when you're kind of an adult and kind of not-an-adult and not quite sure how to be either.
People always ask me what my pal Steve Sherman and I did on those comics where we "assisted" Jack Kirby, as on his Fourth World comics and Jimmy Olsen. The honest answer is "very little." We did some production work. We wrote some storylines, a few of which he used some of. Our greatest contributions might have been when we listened to him describe a story he was about to start working on and we said something like, "That sounds great, Jack!"
Once in a while, when he then wrote and drew that next story, it would even wind up resembling the story he'd told us.
I sometimes had an added duty. If Superman was in the story, Jack would usually not draw in Superman's chest insignia as he went along. He never quite "got" the way it was supposed to look. It was not the kind of thing Jack Kirby could have cared a lot about and the folks back at DC Comics in New York treated it as a major defect in the work. The inker or one of the guys they had on staff back there could have fixed all the emblems in one story in, literally, about three minutes but this was somehow a big issue.
At times, it felt like given the choice of an exciting, dynamic story with chest emblems that needed some correction or a boring, hackneyed story with proper emblems, they'd have preferred the latter. So Jack would leave Superman's chest barren until such time as he was ready to send the story off to New York.
If — and only if — it would not delay delivering the job much, he would wait for a day when Steve and I were there and Jack would have me draw in all those "S's" throughout the story. It was the only thing — and I mean the only thing — I could draw better than Jack. He'd go outside for a breath of canyon air, I'd sit at his drawing table and do it, and by the time he came back in, it would all be done.
If, however, we weren't coming out to work in the next day or two, he would draw them in by himself, ship the story off to New York and then brace himself for the inevitable phone call from someone: "Jack, you're getting Superman's emblem wrong again…"
So one day, Jack was an hour or two from finishing a Jimmy Olsen story and we were there. I was doing busy work, waiting for my moment, sneaking glances at whichever page he was working on. Jack did not do his best drawing when someone was watching. I noticed he had drawn Superman in a certain pose I'd seen him use many times before. It was the pose on the two images below and every Kirby fan reading this can probably recall other places he used it.
I opened my big, fat mouth and said, "Oh, you're using that old pose again!" It sounded funny in my head, but I realized as I said it, it sounded pretty damned smartass rude coming out of my mouth. If I'd said that to Alex Toth or a dozen other great, experienced comic book artists I've known, I would have gotten and probably deserved a scolding that began with something like "Who the f word are you to…?"
Jack said nothing of the sort. In fact, he said nothing. He just picked up his eraser, completely eradicated that lovely drawing of Superman and replaced it with another equally as fine (or maybe better) of Superman. In a different pose.
An hour or two later, I'd done my little insignia-drawing and Steve was packing the artwork up to go to the post office the next day. Jack came over to me and said in a sincere tone, "Thanks. You helped me there."
I said something like, "Hey, if you're ever ready to end your career, we could trade jobs. I could draw the story and you could draw the Superman emblems! We'd both be out of the business within a week."
Jack chuckled and said, "No, I meant about telling me I was overusing that pose. Any time you see me doing something like that, please let me know."
I think that says a lot about Jack Kirby as a creative force. There are lot of things one could nitpick about his work — the way he drew fingers, the way he drew women's hair, the way he even drew Superman's chest emblem when he drew Superman's chest emblem. But if you understood the way he approached that work, you could never say that he did the minimum effort necessary to get the check. The job did not leave his studio until he was satisfied he'd done his best work.
I learned a lot of things about comics from Jack but I'd like to think I learned even more about being a person.
Jack Kirby was born on this day in 1917. I was trying to think of what I should write this year on this day when I received a message from my friend Kurt Busiek…
I was talking with Paul Levitz about early Marvel and creator influences, and a question came up that I'm not sure I've ever seen you talk about before. Kirby's work schedule sounds grueling — constant, long hours — but he also clearly read books and magazines of interest, since he had inspirations from SF pulps, books on "ancient astronauts," Playboy pictorials, stage shows and more.
How did he fit his reading in around his work and his family life? Did his reading habits change over the years? What got most of his attention?
I'd love to hear about that sometime.
Jack was interested in just about everything. A lot of fans who met him were surprised when he asked them about themselves…about their work and their interests. I did not notice any change in his reading habits over the years though I have the sense that less and less of it was from the boxes of old pulp magazines he had around and that his mind decided it had quite enough science-fiction in it and his reading turned more towards reality.
He read the newspaper and was always up on current events. At a store, he sometimes picked up a book just because it was about something that was totally alien to him.
He had a subscription to Playboy which I believe he got from Harvey Kurtzman back in the late sixties when Harvey was trying to get Jack to work with him, if not on "Little Annie Fanny" (which Jack declined) then on a new feature for Playboy which he also declined. It sounded like an American Barbarella. and Jack, who didn't feel a man with three daughters should be drawing nude women, told Harvey to call Wally Wood….which Harvey would not do.
But I know Jack read Playboy for the articles because he and I sometimes discussed them. I was on a Vonnegut-reading binge back then and we talked about that author and Jack had definitely read at least a few of Kurt Vonnegut's novels.
I'll tell you one thing Kirby rarely read: Comic books by other people. He'd read them if there was a reason…say, when Carmine Infantino asked him to read a certain book because he wanted Jack's opinion of it. Those opinions were rarely favorable but Jack would always ask Carmine not to repeat what he'd said because Jack believed professionals should never criticize one another in any sort of public way. (Obviously, he made an exception for one or two people.)
How did he make time for it? He just did. I think for Jack, reading or watching certain TV shows, was a break from whatever story he presently had on his mind. He also loved looking at magazines with lots of photos in them. I believe a lot of photos in Life or Look inspired Kirby drawings but that if you were to put the photo side-by-side with the drawing it inspired, you'd never see the slightest connection.
I keep coming back to my first answer: He was interested in just about everything. I think he approached a lot of it with the attitude of "Well, let's see what this guy has to say." I have the feeling he was sometimes more interested in the thought processes of the author than he was in the particular subject that author was discussing…but I'm not sure why I feel that way. It was easy to discern that Jack's train of thought was not linear; that it leaped around from place to place, just as many conversations with him did. If you believe that people think the way they read and read the way they think, that might explain a lot.
He really was remarkable and the more he's on my mind — as he is in some way every day — the more I miss those conversations and just being around him.
Every sixteen seconds on Facebook (it seems), a discussion breaks out on some comic book forum about why on those rare occasions when Jack Kirby was called upon to draw a cover or a panel or anything of Spider-Man, his Spider-Man did not look like the Spider-Man drawn by Steve Ditko or John Romita. Some folks seem to think there must have been a reason apart from the fact that Jack was not Steve Ditko or John Romita. Hey, when Frank Sinatra sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," he didn't sound like Tony Bennett.
I don't really know why this gets discussed so much. All the times Jack drew Spider-Man collectively represent about one-eighty-jillion-thousandth of his career. But I keep finding myself discussing it on forums. A few years ago on a now-defunct forum I wrote a long essay on the subject and I just dug it out and thought I oughta post it.
Since this topic is of interest to only a limited number of those who come to this blog — whereas you're all fascinated by every single other thing I post here — I've put this essay over on its own page which you can reach here. Don't bother clicking if you don't care about this kind of thing. Some of us do, more than we should.
Every sixteen seconds on Facebook (it seems), a discussion breaks out on some comic book forum about why on those rare occasions when Jack Kirby was called upon to draw a cover or a panel or anything of Spider-Man, his Spider-Man did not look like the Spider-Man drawn by Steve Ditko or John Romita. Some folks seem to think there must have been a reason apart from the fact that Jack was not Steve Ditko or John Romita. Hey, when Frank Sinatra sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," he didn't sound like Tony Bennett.
A few years ago on an Internet comics forum that no longer exists, I wrote a long post about this and I thought I'd put it up here so from now on when this topic crops up, I can refer people here…
Jack believed that the creation of Spider-Man (or Spiderman) at Marvel began with him walking into Stan Lee's office and saying something like, "Hey, let's do a character called Spiderman!" Whether that's true or not is one of those "my word against his" arguments but I happen to think it's probably true and in private conversations, Stan admitted to me he wasn't sure it wasn't.
But actually, it began years earlier when Jack was working with Joe Simon. A comic was developed called The Silver Spider, who was neither very silvery nor very spidery. There is some question as to how involved Jack was in the project but that's another discussion for another time. The project didn't sell in its original format nor under the name "Spiderman." It did become a comic later when Simon had a deal with the Archie company to develop super-hero comics for them and he suggested Jack adapt The Silver Spider into a comic called The Fly. None of that is really relevant to what I'm discussing here.
Jack drew some presentation drawings of his concept of a Spiderman for Stan. Everyone agreed on what the character looked like and he got the go-ahead to draw the first story. He was five pages into it when he was stopped for reasons that are not, today, clear. This Spiderman was a kid who turned into an adult super-hero the same way Billy Batson turned into Captain Marvel. The character had some similarities to the character we now know as Spider-Man but it was different in that way and others.
There are no known surviving drawings of that Spiderman. None. Any drawings you might've seen of Jack's version of this Spiderman are someone's guesses — or in the case of one done by Steve Ditko, what he remembered decades later. In several cases, someone has taken a Kirby drawing of another character and altered it to look like what they think Jack might have drawn. I have spent years correcting folks who see these drawings and say, "Oh, Jack couldn't draw Spider-Man."
Those are not Kirby drawings and even if they were exactly like what Jack did, he was drawing a different person — an adult, not a teenager named Peter Parker. It's like looking at a drawing of the 1940's Flash and saying, "Hey, that artist can't draw The Flash!" because you were expecting the later, revamped character under that name.
This is a real drawing Jack did in 1969 of Spider-Man. He penciled it, inked it and even colored it.
I have written elsewhere of the reasons why I believe Jack's five pages were discarded and Stan started anew with Steve Ditko. When the name and basic premise moved over to Ditko's drawing table, it became a different character in many ways and Jack no longer regarded it as "his," though he resented that his contribution was forgotten or even that it was dismissed as "Kirby made the character too muscular so Stan gave it to Ditko." I don't think was the case even though Stan later said that. Major changes were made in the character at that point. Stan did not just give the same plot to Ditko and tell him to draw the same story but make the character skinnier.
Jack was drafted into drawing the first two Spider-Man covers and some "guest star" stories because Stan (and the readers) liked the idea of every Marvel character meeting every other Marvel character. Jack was even called up to redraw/retouch some of Ditko's drawings and though he had great admiration for Ditko, he also couldn't (or wouldn't) draw like him, just as Ditko did some odd interpretations of some of Jack's characters. Once when Ditko drew Thor in a comic, Stan felt compelled to put a blurb in the comic acknowledging how "different" Ditko's version was.
Stan was editor and art director at Marvel and as such, he often called for art redraws and corrections on everyone's work. Some of these are not obvious in the published books because they were done cut-and-paste, not as redraws. And sometimes, it was Jack redrawing Jack and John Romita retouching the work of John Romita. We rarely spot such changes unless it was one artist "correcting" another. One should not assume that when Stan requested a redraw, it was because the artist had screwed up.
Stan often requested changes (especially on covers) due to whims or out of nervousness. He had a tendency to look at every cover after it was done but before it was sent off to press and ask, "Okay, what can we change on this to make it better?" John Romita, Marie Severin, Herb Trimpe, John Verpoorten and Sol Brodsky all told me that they did art "corrections" on a lot of artwork by everyone they thought was perfectly fine…or even better before "fixing."
For a long time, Stan was extremely fussy about how Spider-Man was drawn, more so than any other character. He'd go through periods when he thought all drawings of Spider-Man not drawn by Ditko were wrong. Later, it was all drawings not done by Romita. Since Johnny worked in the office, it was too easy for Stan to take a page on which anyone else had drawn Spider-Man and to walk twenty feet to Romita's drawing table and say, "Here…redraw that panel."
He was not consistent about this. On the cover of Avengers #11, he had Ditko repencil a Kirby drawing of Spider-Man. On the covers of Amazing Spider-Man #10 and #35, he had Kirby (with Brodsky inking) redraw Ditko drawings of Spider-Man. It had a lot to do with who happened to be in the office the day he decided something could be improved.
In late 1965 when it looked like Ditko was on the verge of quitting, Stan worried aloud that no one could replace Ditko, and when Romita appeared to be the probable successor, Stan stuck Spider-Man into the Daredevil comic (which Romita was then drawing) for two issues as a test. Romita passed but he had to redo many Spider-Man drawings, in some cases several times. His working relationship with Stan was somewhat different from the way Stan worked with a guy like Kirby or Colan. They worked in their home studios, only came in every week or two…and weren't on the payroll to do art fixes.
Over the years, Stan's attitude about who could draw Spider-Man changed. He came to love what Romita did with the character but Romita was often falling behind on the comic because there were so many demands on his time in the office. Even with getting other artists (some credited, some not) to help out, it became apparent in Romita's first year that they'd need to commission a fill-in.
Ross Andru was selected and he penciled a story that was to have run in the regular Amazing Spider-Man comic. When Stan saw the finished pencil art, he decided it was too different; that Andru's rendition of Spider-Man didn't look enough like Spider-Man. He shelved the story and later, he had Romita do a lot of redraws on it and Bill Everett fixed it further when he inked it. It ran as a "different" kind of Spidey story in Marvel Super-Heroes #14.
Several years later though, when Romita's workload forced him to give up the main Spider-Man comic completely, Stan was fine with Ross Andru becoming the regular Spider-Man artist for many years…and Andru's work hadn't changed. I thought Ross's work was quite good but the point is that Stan had pretty much given up the notion that any artist could not draw Spider-Man. By this time, they had Spider-Man in three or four comics per month so just about everyone drew him.
This was a drawing Jack did in pencil as a proposal for a 3-D poster. The inking was done by an unknown person who was obviously not a professional and who forged (poorly) Jack's signature.
As a Kirby Defender, I have no problem with anyone not liking the way Jack Kirby drew Spider-Man but I think folks oughta remember that, first of all, Jack never for a minute thought of himself as the guy who could make someone else's character look the way that someone else drew it. He drew others' characters because he was asked to and he couldn't get out of it, not because he wanted to.
Secondly, he usually only drew them in pencil. Others who drew Spider-Man in pencil (including Ditko and Romita on their own work) often roughed in the webbing loosely or even left it entirely for the inking stage. So when someone else inked the webbing Jack penciled, they were inking webbing that Jack did not intend the inker to follow exactly.
And probably half of the not-that-many Kirby drawings of Spider-Man around are sketches he did for fans. If you got Jack to draw Superman, he'd draw you a Kirby Superman. He wouldn't try to make it look like Curt Swan's. If you asked Jack to do draw Spider-Man, same deal. He'd draw it his way because he'd figure that's what you wanted.
I could understand all the fuss about how Jack drew Spider-Man if he'd ever really drawn that comic but he steadfastly declined to. According to him, he was asked to take it over when Ditko quit or to at least do layouts for the book, working out the stories. He said he refused to and told Stan to give it to Johnny Romita. Stan denied this and you can believe whichever you want.
The point is that Jack didn't want to do characters he considered "someone else's" and he didn't want to have to make his work look like theirs. One of the things I've come to love about his work is that it's Jack being Jack. If you don't like it, fine. There are lots of popular comics out there that leave me cold.
I just don't get it when someone says "Gee, I wish Jack had drawn this more like Ditko did" or "Gee, I love this guy inking Jack because he toned down the Kirby and fixed all the anatomy." To me, that's like saying "I love Jack Kirby work when it doesn't look like Jack Kirby." And it makes me think that for his own sake, any person saying that shouldn't be reading Jack Kirby comics.
Had he not left us when he did, Jack Kirby would be celebrating his 102nd birthday today. He also would be celebrating that he is increasingly getting the kind of recognition that was frustratingly denied him during his lifetime. Oh, a lot of people — darn near everyone in the comic book industry, near as I can tell — knew that he was more than a great artist; that he was also a writer and a creator and that so many brilliant ideas during the years he worked in comics sprang from his brilliant mind.
They all knew that but it was rarely said aloud by certain parties when it might have led to better contacts and compensation for Jack…and seeing his authorship and co-authorship properly acknowledged while he and his life-partner Roz were around to see it. I would also like it if Jack had lived to see his work — especially his "Fourth World" books for DC (New Gods, Forever People, Mister Miracle, some of Jimmy Olsen) — reprinted and reprinted and reprinted and reprinted constantly, often in high-ticket hardcovers, to fill a demand for work which, at the time it first came out, was dismissed by some as a failure.
Make no mistake about this: Jack knew it would happen. He didn't know when but he knew it would happen. With each passing year, I more appreciate his brilliance, his prescience and his basic decency as human being. I also more appreciate his work but I think that's true of most of us who read it. I don't need to tell anyone how good the stories and drawings he put on paper were. That, you can see for yourself. Just trust me on this: If you liked the work, you would have loved the man who did it. Perhaps you already do.
As I write this, Disney theme parks are festooned with the name of Kirby. Yes, of course, they're promoting a product — the upcoming film of The Eternals, based on a Kirby creation. Like it or not, that's how you get hailed in the world today…by association with something that is very, very popular and therefore very, very lucrative. Disney is also hailing him as a creator or co-creator of most of the Marvel Super-Heroes.
I understand there are those who think it is not enough. I also understand that there are those who think Disney is blurring the history a bit to make it seem like these were Disney creations, not Disney purchases. All I can say is that I believe Jack was severely wronged by folks who owned these characters in the past. They denied him the two things that mattered to him: Proper credit and meaningful compensation for the Kirby family. He has them now. I'm happy and I don't know anyone who actually knew Jack who is not delighted with how things have turned out.
We all have a great deal of trouble talking about what's come to pass without using phrases like "Oh, if only he were here to see it." But like I said, he knew. I don't know how he know but he knew. Happy birthday, Jack. I will never stop thanking you…for all you did for me and for all you did for everyone.
The other day in this message, I solicited questions for this blog and got a lot of good ones, thank you very muchly. Keep 'em coming. Today, to distract myself from writing any more about Donald Trump, here's a question I received from Carl Croom…
I always loved the detail Jack drew in his comics. How did the colorists, or others who had to work on his drawings, feel about having to deal with it. Did anyone ever try to get him to change his style?
Well, a few of the inkers who had to turn his penciled art into inked art dealt with it by leaving things out and simplifying. It is quite possible for an inker to improve art that way but that can also be a nice excuse for not spending as much time on a page as you could or maybe should have.
With the colorists…well, if you have to color an intricate machine, you can expend the effort necessary to color each part of that machine separately or you can just color the whole thing light purple in one or two strokes of the brush. Some opted for the former, some opted for the latter and some weren't given the time to do the former so they had to do the latter. In the days before computer coloring of comic books, the colorists were paid quite poorly and were often expected to color entire issues overnight.
There's a whole debate which occasionally pops up in the industry about how much effort one should put into one's work with respect to the page rate. Ideally, a devoted artist will spend as much time on a page as he or she feels is necessary. Alas, that devotion can be exploited. Publishers can and sometimes do think, "Hey, we don't have to pay that guy too much. He'll work his butt off no matter how much we give him." For the most part though, Jack's best inkers — guys like Mike Royer, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia, Chic Stone, Bill Everett and others — loved the work that was entrusted to them and worked real, real hard (regardless of compensation) to do justice to it.
Jack did have at least one inker who urged him to simplify his pencils and Jack responded by getting that inker removed from the assignment. For the most part though, pressure on Kirby to change his style came from editors and especially the folks in DC Production Department when he worked for that company. It was never a matter of how much detail he put into a page. As far as Management in comics was concerned, the artists should spend as much time on every page as possible as long as they met their deadlines. But there were those who didn't like that Jack drew like Jack with all the eccentricities that comprised his style.
At DC back then, they wanted more polish and realism, and they often spoke of a "company look," which meant having all the artists drawing somewhat alike. In 1970, my then-partner Steve Sherman and I paid our first visit to the DC Comics offices in New York. We were Jack's assistants then and almost immediately, the head of the Production Department, Sol Harrison, sat us down and urged us to get Jack to tone it down and draw more like, say, Curt Swan. This was a lot like if I asked you to try and get your cocker spaniel to say, "Polly wants a cracker!"
Mr. Harrison took great pride in what was to him an obvious superiority that the DC books had over Marvel's, especially in terms of art. I'm not sure anyone not on the DC payroll thought that way…but it sure bothered Sol and a few others that with Jack's return to DC, the company was about to begin publishing books that looked like Marvel's. There were some attempts made to drag Jack over to "The DC Look" but for the most part, they were not successful. Fortunately.
Yesterday, I was a bit tardy getting to the Kirby exhibition at Cal State Northridge. Here's why. I went first to visit a friend in the hospital, then got in my car and told my GPS to take me to Cal State Northridge. I pretty much knew how to get there without the GPS but I like having it suggesting streets to me and tracking how close I am to my destination.
It told me to take a left on Tampa instead of a right and I thought, "Huh? Well, maybe it knows some better route to me that's not obvious." Every so often, it helps me that way. So I followed its directions for about five minutes and I kept thinking, "This is taking me in the wrong direction."
Then I noticed. From the hospital to Cal State Northridge should have been about fifteen minutes. The GPS was telling me I was 65 minutes from my destination.
I pulled over and checked it. It had the right address but somehow there was a disconnect between the address showing on the screen and address to which it was taking me. I was being steered to a totally different location out in the hills of Agoura.
I canceled it out and programmed in the address again: 18111 Nordhoff St. Sure enough, my GPS pointed me to an address that seems to somewhere out on Lindero Canyon Road in Agoura. What to do now? Well, even though I don't think there's any such address, I programmed in 18113 Nordhoff and — wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles — it gave me correct directions to the actual campus of Cal State Northridge. Weird.
As it turned out, I didn't even follow that route. I figured out my own. If you're going to go see all that peachy Jack Kirby artwork, don't bother with any address on Nordhoff. Get to Reseda Boulevard and then go east on Plummer St., which is about a half-mile north of Nordhoff. Drive east on Plummer and it'll take you past the Art Gallery. Park in the lot to the right of it.
And never — never! — follow your GPS mindlessly. You may think it's guiding you to the Lincoln Memorial in our nation's capital when it's really taking you to some address on Lindero Canyon Road in Agoura. I have a feeling that's the home residence of some guy who designs GPS devices and he has his daughters outside selling overpriced lemonade to hot and bewildered Cal State Northridge students.
That's Jack Kirby, dancing with his beloved Roz at a surprise birthday party some of us threw for him in 1987 when he turned 70. He was born in the not-so-affluent part of New York on August 28, 1917 so he could have been 97 today.
I have written thousands of pages and articles about Jack and somehow, it never seems to be enough. There are people out there who think he was just a great comic book artist and the co-creator of some of the world's most popular fictional characters. That would have been enough to warrant all the honors and accolades he achieved in his life…and the recognition of him has only grown since we lost him in 1994.
But Jack was more than that and it's tough to put it into words. I used to use "visionary" until it came to be applied to everyone who ever thought of anything. "Genius" isn't bad but Jack's uncanny ability to understand and prophesize didn't span the galaxy like so many of his stories. His mind raced about from topic to topic, leapfrogging over some to land in the darnedest places. He would start talking about the future and take you there via a load of yesterdays and even a couple of todays. If he sounded disconnected, it was partially your fault for being unable to bridge the gaps as he vaulted from one thought to another.
He knew he was the best in his field but somehow, he was amazingly humble about it. When one of his comics or stories met with disapproval somewhere, he wasn't bothered. He just said, "You watch. One of these days, most people will come to appreciate it." And more often than not, that's exactly what happened. It's why his work — even work which at the time was deemed a flop — is constantly reprinted, much of it in very fancy volumes.
I loved the sheer, non-monetary value of being around him. There was so much to learn and somehow, when you talked with Jack, you came away feeling more talented and energized. That was because he treated you as an equal so some of the sheer imagination within him was absorbed by osmosis. You didn't have to actually meet Jack to be inspired by him — you could do that by reading darned near anything he worked on. But meeting him sure helped. It reminded you that human beings could do things like he did and that he thought you were fit to breathe the same air.
Happy Birthday, Jack. It's hard to miss you when there's so much of you surrounding us. But miss you, we do…
