Chuck Huber wrote to ask…
If Western had gone ahead with a Thundarr comic, do you think Jack Kirby would have been interested in working on it? Would Western have been interested in a Kirby Thundarr, or was he too "off-brand" for them? If Jack had done one, do you think he would have wanted to produce the whole book himself (edit, script, select the inker, etc.)?
To answer your first question: No. Jack wanted to do "his" comics and he didn't consider Thundarr "his" in any meaningful way. Just as he didn't like doing other folks' characters for DC or Marvel, if he took on a new comic book, he would have wanted to create something that was wholly his. He did do the artwork for that proposed newspaper strip of Thundarr but that was done under his over-all contract with Ruby-Spears which paid him very well…and that's what his employer wanted him to do that week.
I suppose if Ruby-Spears had produced the Thundarr comic book, Jack would have been willing to draw it because if he'd done so under his contract with the studio, he would have been getting a lot more per page than he'd ever been paid by DC or Marvel. Western, by the way, paid less.
To answer your second question: I don't think Western would have asked him to draw their Thundarr comic book but not for the reason you suggest. Western was going through a period when they didn't have enough work to keep their longtime freelance writers and artists busy. Remember I wrote about how they had that huge stack of artwork that had been purchased but never sent to press?
Most other companies would not have had a pile anywhere near that height because when they suspended publishing, they would have suspended assignments in order to suspend spending money on work they might not need for a long time. Western kept on commissioning work because they thought they might resume publishing and didn't want to leave their freelancers without work until they absolutely had to.
Quick story. I stopped writing Gold Key Comics around 1974, opting to focus on other markets, but I did the occasional special project for Western's Los Angeles office. One day when I was in, the editor there — Del Connell — sat me down for a little talk. He asked if, as he suspected, I was getting sufficient work elsewhere. I told him I was. He said, "Good. Because I want you to know why I haven't called you to do more for us."
He explained that Western had cut back their line — this was a few years before they stopped publishing altogether — and he wanted to steer the work towards the freelancers who most needed it. One of his writers was dealing with a serious, money-draining illness in his family and Del said, "I'm giving him all the assignments I can." I was fine with that. I wish more companies had more empathy for the folks they buy from.
And when I was up at Western's New York office and looking at that huge pile of work, the editor there told me, "I know you worked on Thundarr, Mark. We would have called you to write the comic but we needed to give preference to our regular folks." Again, fine with me. They would have been pleased with Jack's artwork since it would have made the comic look more like the TV show and made any "approvals" process easier. They just didn't want to give work to new people when their old people didn't have enough.
And to answer your third question: Yes.
