Non-Fourth World Kirby DC comics

oh god bought

Never was that thrilled with Kamandi, but I always liked The Demon.

I liked The Losers a great deal. The Losers are sort of supporting characters in their own comic - most issues are psychological profiles of other characters (often enough nazis), who tend to meet a gruesome fate at the end of the issue, falling prey to their own character flaws; Neil Gaiman talks a bit about this in his introduction to the collected run. Also: grotesque faces, big explosions, absolutley apocalyptic devastation.

I've been reading The Demon - Kirby made the original premise up in a very short time, and it feels like the stories kept that spontaneous vibe up - there's a lot in there that doesn't make sense (even by Kirby standards), the ESP stuff is kinda wtf, and there's some blatant cribbing from classic monsters (werewolves, Frankenstein) without using the actual creatures, which feels weird as well. But it's still good fun.

I've got the first Kamandi hardcover but haven't read it yet. Still, I had to be a fan as soon as I saw this:

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._6902269_n.jpg

Klarion's appearence is a good issue. I also like that Jason Blood's romantic interest is (perhaps unintentionally?) often one of the most grotesque characters in the book. Predator would love that skull.

Also, WOW at cupcake holocaust.

I've seen it said elsewhere that as golden as the peak Lee/Kirby books were, there's nothing like Kirby writing his own stuff. It's insane, almost naive art like Rory Hayes or some shit; just Kirby pulling out the stops and "This is pretty fucked up — let's run with it."

If you wanted to be generous you could say that's the effect Miller was going for in DK2. (And there are days when I come close to appreciating it as Miller's strenuous effort to break away from the grim 'n' gritty superhero fare he helped inaugurate in American comics.) Kirby, though...the man's imagination was Brobdingnagian, and when DC pretty much left him alone to create his own worlds the result was like nothing else you were going to see on pharmacy spinner racks in those days.

I mean, just that page with the horrendous carnage over strawberry shortcake. Just wins everything. I don't guess anything DC or Marvel have to offer this year will measure up to those five panels.

"Naive" is right...or half-right. Kirby's solo stuff is a really bizarre mix of naive and sophisticated. As weird and "outsider art"-ish as it seems at times, the Fourth World books took superhero comics to the next level in terms of thematic stuff. I mean, up until that point, the irony of Spider-man being a superhero who was still a schmuck in his everyday life was about as complex as superhero comics got, and at the time Kirby was doing this stuff they were embracing stories where Green Arrow's sidekick became a heroin addict as an exemplar of "adult" storytelling.

Darkseid in particular is a fascinating character who embodies a lot of interesting ideas (for all that most later writers simply reduced him to Captain Evil McEvilstein). Kirby used him to explore the weaknesses and neuroses that lead people to become tyrants--fear of death, pathological lack of empathy, desire for control--and did all kinds of interesting things with him, my favourite being "The Hunger Dogs" where Darkseid ends up as victorious as he's probably ever going to be, and it essentially ruins him.

And he wrapped all this up in a character named "Darkseid" who wore dopey-looking short-shorts and kept refusing to kill his archenemies when he had the chance, for no particular reason.

I love this thread. And it is going to cost me money. And so, when I meet you folks in person, I might hit you. Its not personal though.

There are those who say that Kirby did write the Lee/Kirby books. I'm not sure if it's true, but there are a lot of stories out there of Stan Lee as an inveterate credit hog who simply put his name on things.

Way I always understood it, Lee would give Kirby the basic outline (sometimes very basic), Kirby would draw the issue (sometimes putting in stuff that Lee was surprised to find in there), and Lee would fill in the dialogue. Could be wrong. Wasn't that pretty much "the Marvel way" of doing comics? Dunno if it still is.

Wouldn't be surprised to find out someone like Roy Thomas actually did a lot of the heavy lifting uncredited in later issues credited to Stan.

One thing that makes me suspicious of Lee's level of involvement came when I was reading old Fantastic Four issues from the DVD collection. In a letter column, people were commenting on a Human Torch solo story that had appeared elsewhere, which Lee had supposedly written. In this story, the Torch had a secret identity, which of course he doesn't in FF. If Lee had written both, this seems like the kind of detail that he'd be unlikely to miss.

The official story: most Lee/Kirby collaborations came out of an initial meeting in which the two of them kicked around ideas, then Kirby would run off and draw a story, then Lee would fill in the dialogue. There were no scripts, which makes it hard to nail down the process and who contributed what.

I remember reading an anecdote from someone in the Marvel bullpen--can't remember who--talking about how he was in a car while the two of them were working something out. He claimed that the two of them seemed to be in two separate worlds, with neither really listening to the other. And by Lee's own admission, there were often some pretty huge deviations from their original idea. The Silver Surfer is definitely 100% Kirby's, Lee says he had no idea who this surfer guy was when he saw the pencils for the story. Likewise, I've heard that one of the things that lead to Kirby leaving Marvel was the fact that stories so frequently turned out differently than he intended.

I'm also convinced that Kirby created the Fantastic Four single-handedly, and Lee later massaged them into the personalities we know and love (particularly the Thing, who had a completely different personality in the initial 8-page story). I tend to think Lee's genius was more that of an editor than a writer, and that he tended to massage pre-existing stuff rather than creating a whole lot out of his head (which everything he's every done post-Marvel...or pre-Marvel, for that matter...would seem to bear out.) But of course Lee had his distinctive dialogue on stuff like Spider-Man (another character, by the way, who may have been initially created by Kirby but was completely revamped by Lee and Ditko). I'm not the hugest fan of Lee's dialogue, but there's no argument that it was fun in small doses...not that Lee ever wanted to give anyone small doses of his dialogue...