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.
