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Jack Kirby’s Kamandi – The Last Boy on Earth! Omnibus/Kamandi – The Last Boy on Earth! by Jack Kirby volume 1


By Jack Kirby, Gerry Conway, Mike Royer, D. Bruce Berry & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7469-6 (Omnibus HB) (volume 1 TPB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Epic – if not Prophetic – Entertainment… 10/10

This book is huge and heavy: 191 x 56 x 280 mm, 880 slick pages and topping the scales at 2.75 kilos – that’s more than six pounds! Believe it or not, it’s actually worth every second of time you spend on it, but be warned that you’ll need strong arms and sturdy wrists to get the best out of it…

Jack Kirby (28th August 1917 – 6th February 1994) was – and nearly 30 years after his death, remains – the most important single influence in the history of American comics. There are innumerable accounts of and testaments to what the man has done and meant, and you should read those if you are at all interested in our medium.

Kirby was a man of vast imagination who translated big concepts into astoundingly potent and accessible symbols for generations of fantasy fans. If you were exposed to Kirby as an impressionable child you were his for life. To be honest, that probably applies whatever age you jump aboard the “Kirby Express”…

For those of us who grew up with Jack, his are the images which furnish and clutter our interior mindsets. Close your eyes and think “robot” and the first thing that pops up is a Kirby creation. Every fantastic, futuristic city in our heads is crammed with his chunky, towering spires. Because of Jack we all know what the bodies beneath those stony-head statues on Easter Island look like, we are all viscerally aware that you can never trust great big aliens parading around in their underpants and, most importantly, we know how cavemen dressed and carnosaurs clashed…

Synonymous with larger than life characters and vast cosmic imaginings, Jack “King” Kirby was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, prejudice, gangsterism, the Depression and World War II. He experienced Pre-War privation, Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures, but always looked to the future while understanding human nature intimately.

In the late 1930s, it took a remarkably short time for Kirby and his creative collaborator Joe Simon to become the wonder-kid dream-team of the new-born comic book industry. Together they produced a year’s worth of influential monthly Blue Bolt, dashed off Captain Marvel Adventures (#1) for overstretched Fawcett, and – after Martin Goodman appointed Simon editor at Timely Comics – launched a host of iconic characters including Red Raven, Marvel Boy, Mercury/Hurricane, The Vision, Young Allies and million-selling mega-hit Captain America.

When Goodman failed to make good on his financial obligations, Simon & Kirby were snapped up by National/DC, who welcomed them with open arms and a fat chequebook. Bursting with ideas the staid industry leaders were never really comfortable with, the pair were initially an uneasy fit, and awarded two moribund strips to play with until they found their creative feet: Sandman and Manhunter.

They turned both around virtually overnight and, once safely established and left to their own devices, switched to the “Kid Gang” genre they had pioneered at Timely. Joe & Jack created wartime sales sensation Boy Commandos and Homefront iteration The Newsboy Legion before being called up to serve in the war they had been fighting on comic pages since 1940.

Once demobbed, they returned to a very different funnybook business, and soon after left National to create their own little empire…

Simon & Kirby ushered in the first American age of mature comics – not just by inventing the Romance genre, but with all manner of challenging modern material about real people in extraordinary situations before seeing it all disappear again in less than eight years.

After years of working for others, Simon & Kirby established their own publishing house: making comics for a far more sophisticated audience, only to find themselves in a sales downturn and awash in public hysteria generated by an anti-comicbook pogrom. Their small stable of magazines – generated for an association of companies known as Prize, Crestwood, Pines, Essenkay and Mainline Comics – blossomed and as quickly wilted when the industry contracted throughout the 1950s, but had left future generations fascinating ventures such as Boys’ Ranch, Bullseye, Crime Does Not Pay, Black Magic, Boy Explorers, Fighting American and the entire genre of Romance Comics…

Hysterical censorship-fever spearheaded by US Senator Estes Kefauver and opportunistic pop psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham led to witch-hunting Senate hearings. Caving in, most publishers adopted a castrating straitjacket of draconian self-regulatory rules. Crime and Horror titles produced under the aegis and emblem of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised and anodyne affairs in terms of mature themes, political commentary, shock and gore even though the market’s appetite for suspense and the uncanny was still high. Crime comics vanished as adult sensibilities challenging an increasingly stratified and oppressive society were suppressed. Suspense and horror were dialled back to the level of technological fairy tales and whimsical parables…

Simon left the business for advertising, but Jack soldiered on, taking his skills and ideas to safer, more conventional, less experimental companies. As the panic abated, Kirby returned briefly to DC Comics, working on bread-&-butter anthological mystery tales and revamping Green Arrow (at that time a back-up feature in Adventure Comics and World’s Finest Comics) whilst concentrating on his passion project: newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force.

During that period Kirby also re-packaged a super-team concept that had been kicking around in his head since he and Joe had closed their innovative, ill-timed ventures. At the end of 1956, Showcase #6 premiered the Challengers of the Unknown…

After three more test issues they won their own title with Kirby in command for the first eight. Then a legal dispute with Editor Jack Schiff exploded and the King was gone…

He found fresh fields and an equally hungry new partner in Stan Lee at the ailing Atlas Comics outfit (which had once been mighty Timely) and launched a revolution in comics storytelling…

After more than a decade of a continual innovation and crowd-pleasing wonderment, Kirby felt increasingly stifled. His efforts had transformed the dying publisher into industry-pioneer Marvel, but that success had left him feeling trapped in a rut. Thus, he moved back to DC and generated another tidal wave of sheer imagination and pure invention. The result was experimental adult magazines Spirit World and In the Days of the Mob and a stunning reworking of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen – and by extension, all DC continuity. The latter was a prelude to his landmark Fourth World Saga (Forever People, New Gods and Mister Miracle): the very definition of something game-changing and far too far ahead of its time…

Kirby instinctively grasped the fundamentals of pleasing his audience and always strived diligently to combat the appalling prejudice regarding the comics medium – especially from industry insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies world” they felt trapped in. After his controversial, grandiose Fourth World titles were cancelled, Kirby explored other projects that would stimulate his own vast creativity yet still appeal to a market growing ever more fickle. These included science fictional survival saga Kamandi, supernatural stalwart The Demon, traditional war stories starring established DC team The Losers, OMAC: One Man Army Corps and even a new Sandman – co-created with old pal Joe Simon.

However, although ideas kept coming (Atlas, Kobra, a new Manhunter and Dingbats of Danger Street), once again editorial disputes took up too much of his time. Reluctantly, he left again, choosing to believe in promises of more creative freedom elsewhere…

As early as 1974, worn down by a lack of editorial support and with his newest creations inexplicably tanking, Kirby considered a return to Marvel, but – ever the consummate professional – scrupulously carried out every detail of an increasingly onerous and emotionally unrewarding DC contract. Although The Demon was cancelled after 16 issues and he needed another title to maintain his Herculean commitments (Jack was legally obliged to deliver 15 completed pages of art and story per week!) Kamandi – The Last Boy on Earth had found a solid and faithful audience. It also provided further scope to explore big concepts as seen in thematic companion OMAC: One Man Army Corps. Both series gave Kirby’s darkest assumptions and prognostications free rein, and his “World That’s Coming” has proved far too close to the World we’re frantically trying to fix or escape from today…

Kirby’s return to Marvel in 1976 was much hyped and eagerly anticipated at the time, but again proved controversial. New works like The Eternals and Devil Dinosaur found friends rapidly, but his return to earlier – continuity-locked – creations Captain America and Black Panther divided the fanbase.

Kirby was never slavishly wedded to what had come before, and preferred, in many ways, to treat his stints on titles as a “Day One”: a policy increasing at odds with the close-continuity demanded by a strident faction of the readership…

There’s no need for any of that here as DC’s interconnected universe takes a distant back seat to amazement, adventure and satirical commentary for most of Kirby’s tenure…

This frankly monstrous hardback collection gathers arguably his boldest, most bombastic and certainly most successful 1970s DC creation: collecting Kamandi – The Last Boy on Earth #1-40 (cover-dated October/November 1972- April 1976): every issue Kirby was involved with, but not the 19 issues that staggered on after under lesser creative lights once he had returned to Marvel…

Preceded by inker/letterer Mike Royer’s Introduction ‘When Kirby Called!’ and supported by more ancillary features at the end, the magic opens with the introduction of ‘The Last Boy on Earth!’ as he explores a shattered world that has grown from the rubble of Mankind’s achievements and mistakes…

A signature of the series was large panels and vistas, particularly spectacular and breathtaking double-page spreads on pages 2-3 of almost every episode: adding an aspect of wide-screen cinematic bravura. It’s especially effective here as a capable, well-armed teenager paddles through the sunken ruins of New York City. The explorer has recently emerged from total isolation in a hermetically sealed bunker designated “Command D”, where he was schooled by his grandfather and constantly viewed a vast library of 1970s microfilm and news recordings. The boy calls himself “Kamandi”…

Having obliviously sat out the seemingly overnight decline and fall of humanity – in which atomic armageddon clearly played a major but not exclusive role, the boy mentally catalogues unbelievable and incomprehensible change on every level resulting from the mysterious catastrophe now called “The Great Disaster”…

This world is nothing like his education promised. Wreckage and mutant monsters abound, the very geography has altered and humans have somehow devolved into savage, non-verbal beasts hunted and exploited by a number of animal species who have gained intellect comparable to his own… and the power of speech. Most of them are engaged in wars for dominance, fuelled by territorial aggression and fostered by the scavenged remnants of humanity’s technologies…

When the boy returns to the bunker, he finds it has finally been breached and his grandfather is dead at the hands of opportunistic wolves far too much like men. Shocked, furious and now utterly alone, Kamandi ruthlessly fights his way out and sets off to find what else is out there in this scary new world…

When he reaches the remains of the New Jersey Turnpike, the boy stumbles into the new political reality when he is captured by mounted cavalry tigers (horses appear to be one species that never made the evolutionary leap to intellectual comprehension and personal autonomy).

A formal army of conquest, the tigers devotedly serve charismatic leader Great Caesar, who plans to unite Earth AD (“After Disaster”) under his militant banner. Here that means crushing a force of gun-toting leopards, but – well aware that their liege-lord is obsessed with weird devices and strange phenomena from the past – they make time to send the weird “talking animal” back to ‘The Royal City Kennels!’

It’s a mixed blessing all around. The human is preened and pampered but also kicked around by smug tiger soldiers, before he discovers Caesar’s greatest secret. The warrior king has recovered an atomic missile and made “the warhead” the central focus of a martial cult, and is outraged when Kamandi recognises and tries to destroy it…

In the aftermath, the troublesome boy is surrendered to the care of the conqueror’s chief scientist. A dog named Doctor Canus, he plays a deep game: advising the tiger army over recovered artefacts, whilst keeping huge secrets from his paymasters. The biggest one immeasurably lifts Kamandi’s crushed spirits when the dog introduces another talking human he’s sheltering…

However, although he’s rational, erudite and friendly, Ben Boxer isn’t exactly human!

The utterly jam-packed first issue also provides a map of what the Americas have become in ‘Kamandi’s Continent’ after which the series advanced to a monthly schedule with the second issue, as the young wanderer encounters more terrifying wonders in ‘Year of the Rat!’

Supplemented at the end by Kirby’s editorial codicil ‘The Great Earth Cataclysm Syndrome!’, this tale sees Ben and the boy escape Great Caesar’s compound when the stranger displays a secret power. Ben and his missing companions are nuclear mutants who can transition from flesh & blood to organic steel by internal fission, and after overpowering their tiger guards they flee together in a submersible vehicle. As they search the sunken remains of New York City for missing mutants Steve and Renzi, they are attacked by the avaricious evolved rats who took them and the flying craft they came in…

The rats are the ultimate scavenger society, stockpiling humanity’s detritus and exploiting whatever they understand of it. Once they add their two new captives to the pile, Ben and Kamandi react, explosively breaking free and escaping with Boxer’s rescued comrades in their reclaimed “Traveller”…

Great Caesar’s main opposition is a nation of militant gorillas, and #3 introduces them when the Traveller’s southward flight to the mutants’ home of “Tracking Site” pauses to survey what was once Nevada. When Kamandi is separated from the mutants and caught up in an animal round-up, he’s taken to a vast city to be broken for service…

As Ben, Steve and Renzi discover a monster-infested space museum and encounter ‘The Thing that Grew on the Moon!’, recalcitrant Kamandi is rebelling against brutal animal trainer Chaku the Mighty before fleeing into the rubble of Las Vegas where all concerned parties converge for a spectacular showdown…

Issue #4 finds the humans seeking to replenish supplies in the aftermath, only to be separated again when tiger scouts clash with the gorillas. In an extended skirmish Kamandi is captured by the simians, only to stage a mass animal breakout and liberate a tiger in ‘The Devil’s Arena!’ However, Prince Tuftan, son of Great Caesar, seems quite happy to stay a prisoner as the two armies clash. He has his eyes on a lost weapon of the ancients, but it’s one Kamandi cannot allow to fall into any militarist’s paws…

Despite Kamandi’s act of humanitarian sabotage, Tuftan allies with the weird talking animal seeking safety as the battle reaches appalling heights of bloodshed. Recaptured by gorillas, the last boy frees more caged humans and meets one who has the rudiments of speech and enough intellect to follow him and Tuftan as they make a break for friendly lines.

There are none for humans and when they reach the Tigers ‘Killing Grounds!’, the grudge-bearing emperor makes the boy battle an enraged gorilla warrior in a deathmatch…

When Tuftan sabotages that moment of entertainment, Kamandi becomes a state problem until the regrouped gorillas counterattack. With slaughter for all the only prospect, the boy buys his own life by suggesting an honourable compromise to be determined by fate and ‘The One-Armed Bandit!’…

Given his freedom and a fast car, Kamandi rides away and into tragedy with the evermore loquacious girl who calls herself ‘Flower!’ but they are soon captured again. This time it’s lions; however their fate seems to be a blessing as Sultin and his Rangers relocate the strange animals to The Sanctuary: a wildlife preserve in what used to be Texas, where humans can live their days in peace and security. Sadly, the place is a target for poachers and Kamandi’s chance for love and companionship with his own kinds ends in shocking tragedy and grief when a pair of pumas break through the cordon looking for a little fun with guns…

A new direction and increased social commentary comes in #7’s ‘This is the World of Kamandi The Last Boy on Earth!’ Kirby was a skilled cultural bandit and sampler: swiping and recycling contemporary and classic tropes and memes. Here he recasts the story of Kong with Kamandi as Fay Wray and giant mutant ape named Tiny as a beast with passions too big to save him…

It begins as the grieving boy buries Flower and wins the approval and confidence of Sultin. The lion is not only a ranger but a prominent member of a civilised society dubbed the United States of Lions. They trace their rise back to the fabled days of “Washington Zuu” and consider themselves custodians of Earth AD: protecting fabulous anomalies like talking animals…

Sultin’s biggest problem at the moment is Tiny: a simpleminded, skyscraper sized ape that the neighbouring gorilla armies worship as “the Fetish”. Now, as another surprise raid finally frees the beast, Tiny rampages through the region and is besotted and captivated by a small, golden-haired animal…

Although initially rescued, Kamandi is later recaptured by Tiny who terrorises the city of New Capitol until the lions move in with their latest innovation, petrol driven bi-planes…

The satire reaches new heights in #8 as ‘Beyond Reason’ finds the Last Boy and Sultin debating why the ancients made so many statues and images of dressed up animals. As Kamandi examines a museum filled with dead presidents, he grows increasingly angry, but only truly loses control after encountering local leash laws and discovering that Lions use human as pets, service and security beasts…

A creature of rare sensitivity, Sultin realises there’s no place for his friend in society and sets the boy free deep in the wilds where the wanderer can be himself. Roaming mankind’s ruins and follies the boy is soon in trouble again but survives his first encounter with talking bears thanks to ‘The Return of Ben Boxer’ and his nuclear kin…

After months of mystery the lad finally arrives at ‘Tracking Site!’: eagerly anticipating seeing the last refuge of rational educated human-kind. As their ship is attacked by ravenous, super-evolved bats (graced with a stunning Kirby photomontage) Kamandi learns that his hopes were too high as the NASA built experimental base is populated primarily by robots, except for a telepathic freak dubbed ‘Murdering Misfit!!’ – who mind-controls Ben, Renzi and Steve – and a deadly sentient ‘Killer Germ!’

The morticoccus strain wants to eradicate all life, and almost gets its wish when the bats at last broach the walls. With the atomic brothers freed in the ensuing chaos and the Misfit temporarily stymied by Kamandi, the origin of all the post-human beings is revealed before a brilliant flash of inspiration saves the planet in a masterstroke of technological sleight of hand…

An extended storyline begins in #11 as Kamandi is separated from his friends and plucked out of the Atlantic Ocean by an organisation of scavengers led by a ruthless capitalist. This plutocrat is a sentient snake, and the Sacker’s Co roams the world plundering old tech and exploiting new species like ‘The Devil!’ When his flagship “acquires” Kamandi, the leopards who man it are quick to add the talking beast to the inventory alongside their huge mystery cargo, but by the time they dock, the boy has broken free and formed a powerful bond with the huge mutant grasshopper…

The drama intensifies in ‘The Devil and Mister Sacker!’ as Kamandi plunders the merchant mogul’s department store for weapons, prior to trying to ride away on the fast-reacting, long-leaping beast he’s named Kliklak. However, he changes his mind when caught again and meeting Sacker and his favourite pet. Spirit is the spitting image of Flower and also speaks: not too surprising as they came from the same litter and were raised together before Flower escaped…

As the humans grieve her death together, Sacker has an idea and starts to groom the newcomer for a certain purpose he has in mind…

The snake has been domesticating humans for years and many of them talk. He uses them in sporting events and his prize is a brutal pedigreed oaf trained to kill and ride. Dubbed Bull Bantam, he resents the spark between Spirit and the new boy and plans to kill the kid in Sacker’s forthcoming race meet/arm show…

After once more failing to escape, Kamandi is forced to ride in a deadly death-race: the grand finale in a mass spectacle drawing thousands of prospective clients and the only event able to enforce a truce between tigers, leopards lions, gorillas and sundry other warring species…

The ‘Hell at Hialeah!’ climaxes in a duel with Bantam and another heartbreaking loss for the Last Boy as his Devil is grievously injured and Kamandi must deliver the ultimate release to his beloved pet…

As tensions escalate, a sudden reunion with Canus and Tuftan in ‘Winner Take All!’ is the only thing saving the argumentative human from being euthanized as a dangerous maverick…

Like all science/speculative fiction, Kamandi was never about the future but firmly honed in on contemporary culture. When our hero rides off with Tuftan and the tigers, he stumbles into another pointless hunt for misunderstood myths as the cats continue their mission to uncover ‘The Watergate Secrets!’ These legendary tapes have sustained a level of divine mystery over years, but when the searchers actually find them, Kirby delivers awry twist that will have readers howling…

Cover-dated April 1974, Kamandi #16 sees D. Bruce Berry assist (and eventually replace) Royer on inks and letters as the staggering secret of the animals’ evolutionary leap is revealed, when the wanderers find ‘The Hospital!’ where an obsessed medic explores animal intelligence.

Located in what was Washington DC, and using the lost note of Dr. Michael Grant, ape surgeon Dr. Hanuman experiments on lab humans, resolved to unlock the secrets of brain stimulant Cortexin.

As the night of the Great Disaster seems to play out again, Hanuman himself is somehow trapped as events terrifyingly replay according to Grant’s writing, with him as the doomed researcher and a super-bright beast called Kamandi as the liberator of his test animals and accidental vector and disseminator of a chemical that boosted intellect in everything it contaminated…

Escaping Hanuman’s lab, the Last Boy is scooped up by gorillas in need of a really smart beast for a pest control problem. Shipped across country, Kamandi is dumped underground to destroy ‘The Human Gophers of Ohio!’ stealing all their supplies, but instead leads the devolved humans against the apes until their war calls forth an unstoppable creature which can only be described as ‘The Eater!!’

Kamandi #19 and 20 highlight a much-referenced and often-revisited theme in Kirby’s oeuvre as – one of the few survivors of the monster mash above – the Last Boy stumbles into an entire city of normal humans just like those of his microfilm viewing youth. However, the thugs, molls, mobsters and mooks comprising ‘The Last Gang in Chicago!’ harbour a cruel secret and fatal flaw that cannot survive the determination of obsessed gorilla Sergeant Ugash who won’t rest until Kamandi is dead.  When his commandos invade the bizarre animal-run city, it leads to combat, calamity and ‘Slaughter on Michigan Avenue!’

The horrible ‘Truth!’ of Chicago is exposed in the concluding episode as Kamandi and Ugash are forced to cooperate to escape ‘The Electric Chair!!!’: leaving the lonely boy more broken and alone than ever…

Exploring a rocky shore, Kamandi meets a new ally in ‘The Fish!’, as dolphin and his service human enlist the boys aid in a vital mission. The cetacean’s subsurface civilisation is at war with ancestral enemies the Killer Whales and the foe has perfected the ultimate warrior who patrols the seas and slays at will. When not fighting off marauding sea monsters, the dolphins are steadily failing to stop ‘The Red Baron’, even with the aid of Ben Boxer and his atomic brothers.

They had been recruited after their crash into the sea, and have been aiding in exploring the vast territories behind a radiation barrier isolating what used to be Canada. Now as Kamandi rapidly befriends and loses dolphin pals, the steely trio enact a dangerous plan. It works and ends the hunter, but in the aftermath ‘Kamandi and Goliath!’ sees both sides in the eternal sea war forced to face its cost…

Adrift and possibly the sole survivor, Kamandi washes ashore and meets a troupe of performers taking shelter in a ramshackle old mansion. Schooled in human history, the boy recognises it as a classical haunted house, especially after strange lights and cruel poltergeist phenomena targets elderly monkey Flim-Flam and his three trained and gifted humans…

Terrified but always rational, Kamandi deduces who and what is really going on in ‘The Exorcism!’ before joining Flim-Flam’s ‘Freak Show!’ The ensemble is soon enriched by Ben, Steve and Renzi, but an invasion of monsters forces a rapid evacuation of their shore sanctuary: a retreat that takes them to ‘The Heights of Abraham!’ and the mystery land where Kliklak came from…

The region has been utterly transformed by the Great Disaster, and is a paradise of nature run riot. Sadly this ‘Dominion of the Devils’ is under assault by the Sacker Company, who are harvesting its fauna and destroying its flora in a rabid quest for profit…

The wanderers disgusted first response to stop the atrocity is only halted by the arrival of a ‘Mad Marine!’ in #27: a “Brittanek” bulldog, who is advance guard to an armed force from what was once Europe. These guardians are sworn to ‘Enforce the Atlantic Testament!’, marshalling animal armies to rout sacker and restore this new world’s order. Of course that means immense blood, sacrifice and gallant stupidity on the part of the professional soldier, but Ben and Kamandi have no scruples in stopping Sacker’s forces by any means necessary…

Cover-dated May 1975, Kamandi #29 quickly achieved cult status by apparently confirming the strip’s status as part of a greater DC Universe. An alternate argument can be found in Bruce Timm’s Afterword at the end of this book…

It sees Ben and Kamandi stumble upon a cult of gorillas awaiting the return of a mighty warrior who could leap over tall building, bend metal in his hands and was faster than a speeding bullet. The high priest held in trust the fabled champion’s suit of blue and red cape, waiting the day when a being would emulate his deeds and claim his birth right.

Outraged at gorillas appropriating humanity’s greatest cultural myth, Kamandi convinces Ben to become a Man of Steel and reclaim the garments of the ‘Mighty One!’

Dystopian catastrophe is amped up by cosmic intrigue in #30 as the pair are then scooped up by an extraterrestrial stranded for ages on Earth. ‘U.F.O. The Wildest Trip Ever!’ offers more clues as to how man fell as the pair are dumped on a beach overflowing with human artefacts retrieved from across the globe. However, as ‘The Door!’ to another world opens and the collections starts to vanish, Ben and Kamandi discover a suitcase atom bomb that has been primed to detonate since the night of the Great Disaster.

They barely get clear in time but the bomb shatters the portal, trapping the extremely angry alien far from home even as Boxer absorbs too much radiation and is warped by ‘The Gulliver Effect!’: which reduces him to a mindless metal colossus, just as Tuftan and Canus appear, exploiting a savage sea battle with the gorillas to look for their lost friends…

As that war bloodily expands, the dog doctor establishes contact with energy force ‘Me!’ even as Kamandi manipulates the giant into driving off the gorilla flotilla. When the ape navy resumes its assault, going after the mixed bag of tigers, dogs, humans and unknowns on the beach, the energy alien drives off the simians.

Issue #32 was a giant-sized special that also reprinted the first issue and offered other extras, which here manifests as photo-feature/interview ‘Jack Kirby – A Man with a Pencil’ by Steve Sherman and a new, extended and double-page map of ‘Earth A.D.’, before we resume our abnormal service in #33.

In the enforced calm, Canus helps the stranger build a physical body in ‘Blood and Fire!’: items seen in great abundance offshore as Tuftan’s tigers and the gorillas mercilessly resume hostilities…

By this time Kirby was riding out his contract and #34 (October 1975) saw him relinquish cover duties and the editor’s blue pencil. From this issue on Joe Kubert drew the front images and Gerry Conway edited whilst the King concentrated on the interiors, introducing flamboyant, inquisitive and emotionally volatile ‘Pretty Pyra!’ – who promptly soared off to investigate the sea battle.

Whilst “she” was distracted, Kamandi and Canus unwisely tried to pilot her ship and stop the fight, but instead ended up in space where they encountered a Cold War holdover who had become a living horror. Moreover, ‘The Soyuz Survivor!’ was determined to carry out his doomsday scenario instructions, so it was a good thing that Pyra came looking for them…

Returning to Earth, the voyagers landed in ex-Mexico and found respite of sorts in ‘The Hotel!’ The resort was still a valued destination but now ran on Darwinian principles administered by jaguars. Visitors could stay where they wanted and do what they wished, until some other person of groups took it from them. When Kamandi witnessed a tribe of humans driven off, he used simple cunning to set crocodiles and wolves at each other’s throats…

Cover-dated January 1976, ‘The Crater People’ was Jack’s final script, disclosing how the Last Boy stayed to shepherd the hotel humans when Canus and Pyra took off for more exploring. However, he was soon captured again, this time by what appeared to be normal technologically astute humans. They were anything but…

Initially beguiled into joining them, Kamandi soon learned they were also mutants: living at a hyper-rapid pace and dying of old age by age five. They were harvesting wild human DNA in search of the secret of their longevity and saw this intelligent, normal-aging homo sapiens from the old world as a genetic goldmine. If only they’d been completely honest with him, instead of trying to exploit the boy via honeytrap Arna…

Kamandi #38 February 1976) was scripted by Conway and Royer returned as inker with the story splitting focus between the plight of the crater people who overstepped their bounds and drove the appalled last boy away whilst in space, ‘Pyra Revealed’ revealed the truth about her world and her mission…

Frantic fugitives, Kamandi and Arna were captured by intelligent lobsters and imprisoned in ‘The Airquarium’ run by a coalition of crustaceans, molluscs and sea snails, just as Canus and Pyra returned to terra firma and met a nation of saurian. All this time, tigers and gorillas had been engaging at sea and obliviously continued doing so, even as Kamandi engineered a mass breakout to liberate all the undersea playthings of the lobster league…

Issue #40 concluded Kirby’s involvement entirely, with the pencils for ‘The Lizard Lords of Los Lorraine!’, wherein Kamandi & Arna and Canus & Pyra were gulled into stealing a heat-generating ‘Sun Machine’ for rival factions (lizards and donkeys!) seeking absolute control of the rain forest region. Fast-paced but innocuous, it ended with the unlikely rivals reunited again and ready for fresh, non-Kirby adventures.

Rounding out this paper monolith are those aforementioned extra: an ‘Afterword by Bruce Timm’ discussing the title’s role and reach, and ‘Mother Box Files’ reprinting pertinent pages from Who’s Who in the DC Universe (illustrated by Kirby & Greg Theakston), before an absolute hoard of un-inked story pages and covers reveal why ‘The Art of Jack Kirby’ is just so darn great. It all ends with a bunch of ‘Biographies’…

For sheer fun and thrills, nothing in comics can match the inspirational joys of prime Jack Kirby. This is what words and picture were meant for and if you love them you must read this.

© 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 2018, 2022 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.


Should you opt for a less strenuous mode of entertainment, the first 20 tales in this Omnibus have been recently released in a trade paperback and digital edition.

Entitled Kamandi by Jack Kirby volume 1 and © 1972, 1973, 1974, 2022 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved., it’s as wonderful an experience without the need for a chiropractor or steroids. As always the internet is your friend here, so go wild guys, gals, gorillas and whatnots…

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The Newsboy Legion Volume One


By Joe Simon & Jack Kirby with Arturo Cazeneuve, Gil Kane, John Daly, Harry Tschida & others (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2593-3 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Never Too Early for Classic Comic Kid Capers… 9/10

Just as the Golden Age of Comics was beginning, two young men with big dreams met and began a decades-long association that was uniquely, intensely creative, immensely productive and spectacularly in tune with popular tastes. As kids both had sold newspapers on street-corners to help their families survive the Great Depression…

Joe Simon was sharp, smart, talented and studious, with 5 years’ experience in “real” publishing: working from the bottom up to become art director on a succession of small paper like the Rochester Journal American, Syracuse Herald and Syracuse Journal American.

He moved to New York City and a life of freelancing as an illustrator, art & photo retoucher. Encouraged and recommended by his boss, Simon joined Lloyd Jacquet’s pioneering Funnies Inc.: a production “shop” generating strips and characters for numerous publishers, all eager to cash in on the success of Action Comics and its stellar attraction Superman. Within days, Simon devised The Fiery Mask for Martin Goodman of Timely Comics (AKA Marvel), where he became acquainted with young Jacob Kurtzberg, a cartoonist and animator just hitting his stride with The Blue Beetle for the Fox Features Syndicate.

Together Simon & Kurtzberg (who went through many pen-names before settling on Jack Kirby) built a creative empathy and synergy that galvanized an already electric neo-industry with a vast catalogue of features and even sub-genres. They produced influential monthly periodical Blue Bolt, sub-contracted and dashed out Captain Marvel Adventures (#1) for Fawcett and, once Martin Goodman appointed Simon his editor at Timely, created a host of iconic characters like Red Raven, the first Marvel Boy, Hurricane, The Vision, proto-Kid Gang The Young Allies and, of course, million-selling megahit Captain America.

Famed for his larger-than-life characters and colossal cosmic imaginings, “King” Kirby was an astute, spiritual, hard-working family man who lived through poverty, gangsterism and the Depression. He loved his work, hated chicanery of every sort and foresaw a big future for the comics industry…

When Goodman failed to make good on his financial obligations, Simon & Kirby jumped ship to National/DC, who welcomed them with open arms and a fat chequebook. Bursting with ideas the staid company were not comfortable with, the hypercreative duo were initially an uneasy fit, and given two strips that were in the doldrums until they could find their creative feet: Sandman and Manhunter.

They turned both around virtually overnight before, ensconced, established and left to their own devices, launching the aforementioned Kid Gang genre (technically “recreating” as the notion was one of their last Timely innovations in 1941s bombastic, jingoistic Young Allies #1). Their DC star fully rose with a unique juvenile Foreign Legion dubbed The Boy Commandos.

The little warriors began by sharing the spotlight with Batman and Robin in flagship title Detective Comics, but they rapidly won their own solo title. It promptly became one of the company’s top three sellers.

Boy Commandos was such a success – frequently cited as the biggest-selling US comic book in the world at that time – that the editors and Publisher Jack Liebowitz, knowing the Draft was imminent, greenlit completion of a wealth of extra material to lay away for when their stars were called up. S&K consequently assembled a creative team which generated so much material in a phenomenally short time that Liebowitz suggested they retool some of it into adventures of a second juvenile team. Thus was born The Newsboy Legion (and superheroic mentor The Guardian)…

Based on the Our Gang/Little Rascals film shorts (1922-1944) and Angels With Dirty Faces (1938, directed by Michael Curtiz), the Newsboy Legion was pitched halfway between a surly bunch of comedy grotesques and charmingly naive ragamuffins, and comprised four ferociously independent orphans living together on the streets, peddling papers to survive. There was earnest, good-looking Tommy Tompkins, garrulous genius Big Words, diminutive, hyper-active chatterbox Gabby and feisty, pugnacious Scrapper, whose Brooklyn-based patois and gutsy belligerence usually stole the show. They were headed for a bad end until somebody extraordinary entered their lives…

Their exploits generally offered a bombastic blend of crime thriller and comedy caper, leavened with dynamic superhero action and usually seen from a kid’s point of view. The series debuted in Star-Spangled Comics #7, forcing the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy off the cover slot and lead position. The youngsters remained opening feature until the end of 1946, when – without fanfare or warning – #65 found them gone: ousted and replaced by Robin, the Boy Wonder. His own youth-oriented solo series subsequently ran all the way to SSC #130 in 1952, by which time superhero romps had largely been supplanted throughout the industry by general genre tales.

This collection reprints the first 26 episodes, spanning Star-Spangled Comics #7 to 32 (April 1942-May 1944), and includes stunning covers by Kirby, inker Arturo Cazeneuve, Fred Ray and teenage debutante Gil Kane. It opens with a lyrical and revelatory reminiscence from Joe Simon himself. His invaluable Introduction ‘Birth of the Legion’ leads directly into a potent tale of poverty and skulduggery pitted against idealism to create optimism in the darkest of urban outposts as ‘The Story of the Newsboy Legion’ introduces rookie cop Jim Harper walking a beat in the inner city hellscape dubbed “Suicide Slum”.

When he’s jumped by a gang of thugs and severely beaten, Harper responds in an unlikely manner: raiding a costume store and cobbling together an outfit to obscure his identity. Donning a blue bodystocking, hooded mask, crash-helmet and shield, he hunts down his assailants and gives them the thrashing they so richly deserve…

Happily, his illegal actions accidentally result in the arrest of an infamous kidnap ring. The mysterious figure is dubbed the Guardian of Society by the newspapers selling like hotcakes on street corners. Harper has no intention of repeating his foray into vigilantism, but when he catches Tommy, Big Words, Gabby & Scrapper shoplifting, their lives are all forever changed…

The tough little monkeys are destined for reform school until the cop makes an earnest plea for clemency on their behalf. In response, the judge appoints him their legal guardian. The lads are far from grateful and send him packing, but when their next get-rich-scheme involves them with armed bandits, they realise the mettle of the man they’re saddled with…

Witnesses to the crimes of murderous mobster Frankie the Fence and hopelessly implicated in them, the boys are about to die when a human thunderbolt in a mask and helmet comes to their rescue.

In actual fact it’s unclear who saves whom, but at the end the Newsboy Legion are finally set on a righteous path, but with their suspicions aroused. Frustratingly, no matter how hard they try, the boys can’t prove that their two Guardians are the same guy…

And thus the scene was set: the lads constantly looking for broadly legal ways to make a living, whilst Harper hovered over them as a guide and his alter ego worked tirelessly behind the scene to keep them alive and extricate from the trouble that always found them on the streets and alleys of the most-crime-infested slum in America…

The very next month Tommy stumbles onto the hideout of fugitive killer Black Leo Lucas and his abduction to ‘Last Mile Alley’ leads the fighting-mad Guardian to a confrontation with the latest Big Boss who thought himself untouchable. ‘The Rookie Takes the Rap’ then sees Harper framed by devious gambler Sure Thing Kelly and only cleared by the actions of his now-devoted foster-kids…

To be frank, the relationship between Jim and the boys was never properly defined. Although he was responsible for keeping them out of trouble, they never lived with him and generally provided for themselves whilst – presumably – still sleeping on the streets…

Having now made some headlines of their own, the boys are offered the chance to be ‘Kings for a Day’ in Star-Spangled Comics #10: running various municipal departments in a grand civic publicity stunt. Sadly, the event is hijacked by mobster The Mark, whose plans to plunder the entire city would have succeeded had he not underestimated those pesky kids temporarily in charge of the emergency services…

Many episodes worked powerfully against the pervasive backdrop of crushing poverty and social injustice. SSC #11 saw the boys arrested by a heartbroken Jim for burglary and sent to the State Reformatory. What he doesn’t know is that the boys have learned of corruption at ‘Paradise Prison’ and seek to expose unctuous, sanctimonious Warden Goodley for the sadistic grafter he truly is…

With little kids starving in their hovels and resorting to petty theft, the boys decide to make a documentary with borrowed film equipment. Naturally the hunt for perfect locations drops them right in the laps of bank bandits resulting in a ‘Prevue of Peril’, and requiring another last-minute save by the blockbusting blue-&-gold mystery man with the pot on his head…

With the clue in the name, the Legion still made most of their living hawking newspapers. Whenever tabloids weren’t selling, things got tough, and in SSC #13 falling sales spur the lads to create their own local periodical. With Harper’s assistance, the premier issue of the Slum Sentinel proves a huge success but ‘The Scoop of Suicide Slums!’ makes the area too hot for crooks in their warrens. However, in seeking to crush the little newsmakers, the city’s biggest racketeer only exposes himself to Legion scrutiny …and the Guardian’s furious fists!

Philanthropist Wilbur Whilling is a man with a plan. Using the Legion as his unwitting shills, he convinces slum residents to donate everything they have to build a modern apartment project to house everyone. Sadly, ‘The Meanest Man on Earth!’ never expected the kids to uncover his fraudulent alliance with lawyers and planners to repossess the snazzy new complex upon completion, and certainly isn’t ready for the personal retribution doled out by Scrapper and the man in the mask.

Arturo Cazeneuve became prime inker with #15’s ‘Playmates of Peril!’ as Patrolman Harper’s frequent absences lead to his being partnered with a supervising sergeant. It doesn’t stop his trouble-magnet wards falling into another criminal caper and being taken hostage: necessitating a storm of frantic improvisation to save them, his job and his secret identity…

When Tommy saves a child from being run over, the hero is eagerly adopted by rich banker Willis Thornton. He doesn’t want to go but his pals force him to take his shot at escaping the ghetto. All too soon, though, ‘The Playboy of Suicide Slum!’ is framed for robbery at the Thornton mansion and needs his true brothers to clear his name, after which ‘The Newsboy Legion versus the Rafferty Mob’ finds the kids in a turf-war with rival street toughs led by the toughest girl they have ever encountered.

Hostilities cease as soon as a gang of gunsels use the distraction as a way of trapping the Guardian…

‘The Education of Iron-Fist Gookin’ sees the slum’s most brutal thug taking elocution lessons from Big Words, and picking up a few morals – plus a pardon and new start – along the way, before ‘The Fuehrer of Suicide Slum’ focuses on Scrapper and takes the odd narrative liberty, depicting the boys battling Nazis after a sneak attack and invasion of New York City…

Steve Brodie inked the return to comic book reality in Star-Spangled Comics #20’s ‘The Newsboys and the Champ!’ as the boys help hillbilly boxer Zeke Potts navigate the lethally crooked big city fight game before ‘The House Where Time Stood Still’ (Cazeneuve inks) finds the kids selling war bonds. To do so they explore a derelict house and discover two be-whiskered hermits who have shunned the world for decades. The belligerent Presby brothers change their isolationist attitudes once Nazi spies move into their home, so it’s a good thing the Legion didn’t take that first “no” for an answer…

Gabby wrecks an automobile and incurs dubious yet huge debt in the Cazeneuve-inked ‘Brains for Sale!’ and his proposed payment solution leads the entire team into deadly danger from an underworld surgeon, after which ‘Art for Scrapper’s Sake’ (John Daly inks) sees that bellicose boy discovering his extremely profitable creative side. Typically, he’s far from happy after realising he’s just the patsy for a high-end art fraud…

Cazeneuve returns as regular inker with ‘Death Strikes a Bargain’ in SSC #24, as a crime crackdown in Suicide Slum leads to the kids being parachuted into a luxurious new life as part of a bold social experiment. Of course, the reformer in charge has a murderous ulterior motive for his seeming benevolence…

A vacation growing vegetables on a farm in ‘Victuals for Victory’ lands the lads in more trouble as their nearest neighbours turn out to be bucolic bandits hiding out after a big city crime spree, whilst ‘Louie the Lug Goes Literary’ sees the Guardian bust a major felon and inadvertently spark a massive hunt for the racketeer’s favourite tome… and the incredible secrets it holds…

Star-Spangled Comics #27 has the lads as volunteer firefighters encountering an insurance inspector-turned-arsonist eager to ‘Turn on the Heat’, whilst #28’s ‘Poor Man’s Rich Man’ sees kindly night watchman Pop O’Leary inherit a fortune. Immediately lavishing largesse on all the other unfortunates in Suicide Slum, Pop only starts to worry after his unpaid bills mount up and his lines of credit dry up, until the Newsboys discover the generous geezer is victim of a cruel plot by saboteurs. They furiously take appropriate action, with the hammer-fisted Guardian charging along for the ride…

Always seeking solid investments, the kids hop on the publishing bandwagon in ‘Cabbages and Comics’: hoping to make millions peddling their own strip magazine. Their big mistake is incorporating local hoods’ likenesses and overheard snippets of gossip in the final mix…

Naturally, their masked protector is on hand to prevent them perishing from the indignation – and guns – of the plunderers they inadvertently expose and plagiarize…

In SSC #30, a reformed crook is framed and ‘The Lady of Linden Lane’ suddenly abandons her miserly ways and starts acting very strangely, leading the lads to devilish fraud, after which neophyte superstar Gil Kane illustrates ‘Questions, Please?’ with brilliant Big Words and even his less cerebral comrades becoming radio quiz sensations on the very night the dread Purple Mask gang raid the studio.

This stunning assemblage of astounding articles concludes with Star-Spangled Comics #32 as the boys act as ‘The Good Samaritans!’ (by Kane & Harry Tschida), unknowingly sheltering a gang of desperate, starving thieves holding millions in hot cash they can’t spend… yet…

After years of neglect, the glorious wealth of Jack Kirby material available these days is a true testament to his influence and legacy, and this magnificent, initial collection of his collaborations with fellow pioneer Joe Simon is a gigantic box of delights perfectly illustrating the depth, scope and sheer thundering joy of the early days of comics.
© 1942, 1943, 1944, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Jack Kirby’s Spirit World


By Jack Kirby with Mark Evanier, Steve Sherman, Sergio Aragonés, Vince Colletta, Mike Royer & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3418-8 (HB)

Jack Kirby was – and remains long after his passing – the master imagineer of American comics. His collected works provide a vast rich trove of astounding narrative delights for any possible occasion. An ideal and seasonably timely tome is this magnificent compendium re-presenting the complete “King’s Canon” of one of his least known, most misunderstood and mishandled DC creations. Regrettably, it’s still not a book you can read digitally, but hope springs eternal…

Famed for larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, Kirby was an astute, spiritual man who had lived through poverty, gangsterism, the Depression, World War II and the rise and stall of the Space Age. He’d seen and survived Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures. Above all else, he was open-minded and utterly wedded to the making of comics stories on every imaginable subject.

On returning from valiant service in World War II, Jack – reunited with long-term creative partner Joe Simon – began producing genre material for older audiences and famously invented the genre of Romance comics. Amongst the dynamic duo’s other concoctions for Prize/Crestwood/Essankay Publications was a noir-esque anthology, supernatural-themed and psychologically underscored, reflecting the tone and trends of those rapidly-changing, globally Post-Traumatic times.

Black Magic (and short-lived companion title Strange World of Your Dreams) eschewed traditionally gory, heavy-handed morality plays and simplistic cautionary tales seen in other comics and concentrated on deeper, stranger fare. They were – until EC comics hit their peak – far and away the best horror and mystery titles on the market.

Changing tastes and an anti-crime, anti-horror witch-hunt quashed the comics industry, so under a doctrinaire, self-inflicted conduct code, publishers stopped innovating and moved into more anodyne areas. This established holding pattern persisted until the rebirth of superheroes and triggered the demise of many smaller publishers…

From 1956, at a little outfit using the name “Atlas”, Kirby partnered with Stan Lee and, when superheroes were revived, changed the world with a salvo of new concepts and characters that revitalised if not actually saved the comics business. Kirby always understood the fundamentals of pleasing an audience and toiled diligently to combat the appalling prejudice about the word-&-picture medium – especially from insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies’ world” they felt trapped in.

However, after a decade or so, costumed characters began to wane again as public interest in the supernatural grew. With books, television and movies all exploring The Unknown in gripping and stylish new ways, the Comics Code Authority sought to slacken its censorious choke-hold on horror titles, hoping to save the industry from implosion when the superhero boom busted…

Experiencing increasing editorial stonewalling and creative ennui at Marvel, in 1970 Kirby (after breaking ground with a few horror shorts for the House of Ideas’ new anthology titles) accepted a long-standing offer from arch rival DC Comics…

Promised freedom to innovate, one of the first projects he tackled was a new magazine format carrying material targeting adult readerships. For the full story of how that worked out, you can read Mark Evanier’s acerbic article at the centre of this glorious – but inexplicably still not available in digital editions – oversized (282 x 212 mm) hardback compilation. He was there and knows a lot of the secrets…

Reflecting and rechannelling the mature experimentation of Black Magic in a superb yet poorly received – and largely undistributed – monochrome magazine, Spirit World #1 and only launched in the summer of 1971, but, as happened all too often, editorial cowardice and back-sliding scuppered the project before it could get going. At least when the original 1940s-1950s Black Magic was revived as a DC reprint anthology in 1973, it got a few years to properly test the waters…

Material from a second, never-to-be published, Spirit World issue eventually appeared in various colour comic books, but with most of his ideas misunderstood, ignored or side-lined by the company, Kirby opted to return to more traditional formats.

Never truly defeated, he cannily blended his belief in the marketability of supernature with flamboyant super-heroics to create another unique and lasting mainstay for the DC universe: one that lesser talents later made a pivotal figure of the company’s continuity: Etrigan the Demon. There’s a complete Kirby compendium of the Hellish hero’s deeds out there too if you’re interested, as well as many subsequent reinterpretations by creators infernally inspired by the original…

The eerily eclectic Spirit World collection, however, eschews costume continuity in favour of plot and mood-driven tales, opening with the published premier issue: combining primarily comics tales (because DC wouldn’t spring for colour photography illustrations) with prose and black-&-white “Foto-Features”, all driven by the King’s voracious, questing imagination and unique perspectives…

Printed in spooky blue tones, the arcane explorations unfold with Jack & Vince Colletta’s pictorial investigation of the power of precognition. Preceded by a stunning 3-page Kirby photo-collage, ‘The President Must Die!’ – narrated by erudite host/parapsychologist Dr. E. Leopold Maas – recounts and interprets the chilling dreams of an unnamed woman in the days leading up to the assassination of JFK.

Again sporting a collage intro, ‘House of Horror!’ grippingly relates what happened when Dr. Maas was invited to visit the phantom-plagued Calder House…

‘Children of the Flaming Wheel!’ is a fumetti-work (photographic comic strips that were huge in Europe and an area of storytelling Jack was desperate to develop) depicting the astral journey of a supposed modern cultist, after which tireless Dr. Maas shares his discoveries on the nature of reincarnation by opening ‘The Lorca File!’

As “transcribed” by Kirby’s editorial assistants Steve Sherman & Mark Evanier, ‘The Spirit of Vengeance!’ relates in a terse prose piece Maas’ interaction with a most unquiet and petty revenant before Kirby & Colletta illuminate the astounding accomplishments and warnings of ‘Nostrodamus!’ – including all those predictions still pending confirmation…

The magazine concluded with a page of ‘Weird Humor’ strips by Sergio Aragonés (and possibly Dave Manak) and came with a free wallposter. It’s included here for veracity’s sake and because they’re still pretty damn cool…

Following that tell-all article from Evanier, the majority of the proposed second issue follows in standard monochrome. The strips are taken from their eventual last resting place in DC’s anthologies Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #6 and Weird Mystery Tales #1-3, and still have insets and copy from other hosts such as Destiny (yes!… latterly of the Endless!), but the art, plots and most of the scripting is pure Kirby…

With Mike Royer inking all these later yarns, ‘Horoscope Phenomenon or The Witch Queen of Ancient Sumeria’ opens the fearsome festivities as a bizarre regal apparition visits many modern men and women to change their fates forever, after which the lugubrious Dr. Maas probes a primordial artefact and speculates upon the barbaric life and cataclysmic demise of ‘Toxl, the World Killer’ – a rousing fantasy warrior yarn co-plotted and scripted by Evanier.

Accompanied by photomontage inserts, ‘The Burners’ confounds Maas with a spate of deaths by spontaneous combustion and possible alien incursion – before the mystery-&-imagination moments culminate with uncanny cases of ‘The Psychic Bloodhound’. Co-plotted by Evanier & Sherman, this graphic fictionalisation of a detective with extra-sensory perception is probably based on the exploits of controversial Dutch celebrity sleuth Peter Hurkos…

Jack Kirby remains a unique and uncompromising artistic force of nature: his words and pictures an unparalleled, hearts-&-minds grabbing delight no comics lover could resist. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind.

That doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby’s work from 1937 to his death in 1994 shaped the entire American scene and indeed the entire comics planet – affecting the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour for generations. He’s still winning new fans and apostles, from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. Jack’s work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep whilst simultaneously mythic and human.

Wherever your tastes take you, his creations will be there ready and waiting. So, if fear and mystery are your meat, you can wonderfully upset your complacent equilibrium with this classy classic…
© 1971, 1972, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Showcase Presents Showcase


By Many and various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78116-364-1 (TPB)

If you’re a book reviewer, Christmas often comes incredibly early. We received lots and lots of lovely new tomes in the last week and I’ve still not caught up yet, so in the meantime, I’m fobbing you all off with a reworked recommendation I was saving for our actual Christmas promotion season. It’s still a wonderful read criminally in need of re-release and a digital edition, but readily available – for now…

The review is incredibly long. If you want to skip it and just buy the book – because it’s truly brilliant – then please do. I won’t mind and you won’t regret it at all…

In almost every conceivable way, DC’s original “try-out title” Showcase created and dictated the form of the Silver Age of American comic books and is responsible for the multi-billion-dollar industry and art form we all enjoy today.

For many of us old lags, the Silver Age is the ideal era and a still-calling Promised Land of fun and thrills. Varnished by nostalgia (because it’s the era when most of us caught this crazy childhood bug), the clean-cut, unsophisticated optimism of the late 1950s and early 1960s produced captivating heroes and compelling villains who were still far less terrifying than the Cold War baddies then troubling the grown-ups. The sheer talent and unbridled professionalism of the creators working in that too-briefly revitalised comics world resulted in triumph after triumph and even inspired competitors to step up and excel: all of which brightened our young lives and still glow today with quality and achievement.

The principle was a sound one and graphically depicted in the very first issue: the Editors at National/DC were apparently bombarded with readers’ suggestions for new titles and concepts and the only possible way to feasibly prove which would be popular was to offer test runs and assess fan reactions – for which read Sales…

Firmly ensconced in the age of genre thrillers and human adventurers, this magnificent, monolithic monochrome tome covers the first 21 issues from that historic series, spanning March/April 1956 to July/August 1959, and starts the ball rolling with the first and last appearances of Fireman Farrell in a proposed series dubbed Fire Fighters.

Following the aforementioned short ‘The Story Behind Showcase’ by Jack Schiff & Win Mortimer, the human-scaled dramas begin in ‘The School for Smoke-Eaters’ by Schiff and the superb John Prentice (Rip Kirby), introducing trainee fireman Mike Farrell during the last days of his training and desperate to simultaneously live up to and escape his father’s fabulous record as a legendary “smoke-eater”.

The remaining stories, both scripted by Arnold Drake, deal with the job’s daily dilemmas: firstly in ‘Fire under the Big Top’ wherein an unscrupulous showman ignored Farrell’s Fire Inspection findings with tragic consequences, and in‘Fourth Alarm’ mixing an industrial dispute over fireman’s pay, a crooked factory owner and a waterfront blaze captured on live TV in a blisteringly authentic tale of human heroism.

Showcase #2 featured Kings of the Wild: tales of animal valour imaginatively related in three tales scripted by Robert Kanigher – who had thrived after the demise of superheroes with a range of fantastical genre adventures covering western, war, espionage and straight adventure. Stunningly illustrated by Joe Kubert, ‘Rider of the Winds’ tells of a Native American lad’s relationship with his totem spirit Eagle; ‘Outcast Heroes’ (Ross Andru & Mike Esposito) relates how an orphan boy’s loneliness ends after befriending a runaway mutt who eventually saves the town’s kids from a flood before ‘Runaway Bear’ – drawn by Russ Heath – uses broad comedy to describe how an escaped circus bruin battles all the horrors of the wilderness to get return to his comfortable, safe life under the Big Top.

Issue #3 debuted Kanigher & Heath’s The Frogmen in an extended single tale following candidates for a US Underwater Demolitions Team as they move from students to successful undersea warriors. Beginning with ‘The Making of a Frogman’ as the smallest diver – mocked and chided as a ‘Sardine’ by his fellows (especially ‘Shark’ and ‘Whale’) – perseveres and forges bonds until the trio are dumped into blazing Pacific action in ‘Flying Frogmen’, learning the worth of teamwork and sacrifice by destroying a Japanese Sub base in ‘Silent War’…

The feature returned as a semi-regular strip in All-American Men of War #44 (April #1957) amongst other Kanigher-edited war comics: making Frogmen the first but certainly not the last graduate of the try-out system. The next debut was to be the most successful but the cautious publishers took a long, long time to make it so…

No matter which way you look at it, the Silver Age officially arrived began with The Flash. It’s an unjust but true fact that being first is not enough; it also helps to be best and people have to notice. The Shield beat Captain America to the news-stands by over a year yet the former is all but forgotten today.

The industry had never really stopped trying to revive superheroes when Showcase #4 was released in late summer of 1956, with such precursors as The Avenger (February-September 1955); Captain Flash (November 1954-July 1955); Marvel’s Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and aforementioned Sentinel of Liberty (December 1953-October 1955) and even DC’s own Captain Comet (December 1953-October 1955) and Manhunter from Mars (November 1955 until the close of the 1960’s and almost the end of superheroes again!) still turning up in second-hand-stores and “Five-and-Dime” bargain bins. What made the new Fastest Man Alive stand out and stick was … well, everything!

Once DC’s powers-that-be decided to try superheroes once more, they moved pretty fast themselves. Editor Julie Schwartz asked office partner and Golden-Age Flash scripter Kanigher to recreate a speedster for the Space Age, aided and abetted by Carmine Infantino & Joe Kubert, who had also worked on the previous incarnation.

The new Flash was Barry Allen, a forensic scientist simultaneously struck by lightning and bathed in the exploding chemicals of his lab. Supercharged by the accident, Barry took his superhero identity from a comic book featuring his predecessor (scientist Jay Garrick, who was exposed to the mutagenic fumes of “Hard Water”). Designing a sleek, streamlined bodysuit (courtesy of Infantino – a major talent rapidly approaching his artistic and creative pinnacle), Barry Allen became the point man for the spectacular revival of a genre and the entire industry.

‘Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt’ (Kanigher) and ‘The Man Who Broke the Time Barrier’ (written by the superb John Broome) are polished, coolly sophisticated stories introducing the comfortingly suburban superhero and establishing the broad parameters of his universe. Whether defeating bizarre criminal masterminds such as The Turtle or returning criminal exile Mazdan to his own century, the new Flash was a protagonist of keen insight and sharp wits as well as overwhelming power. Nonetheless the concept was so controversial that despite phenomenal sales, rather than his own series the Fastest Man Alive was given a Showcase encore almost a year later…

Showcase #5 featured the last comics concept in years that didn’t actually develop into an ongoing series, but that’s certainly due to changing fashions of the times and not the quality of the work. The three crime yarns comprising cops-&-robbers anthology Manhunters, begin with ‘The Greatest Villain of all Time’ by Jack Miller & Mort Meskin, revealing how Hollywood screenwriter-turned-police detective Lt. Fowler is dogged by a madman playing for real all the fantastic bad guys the mystery author had once created, whilst ‘The Two Faces of Mr. X’ (Miller, Curt Swan & Sy Barry) finds a male model drafted by the FBI to replace a prominent mob-boss. Unfortunately, it’s the day before the gangster is scheduled for face-changing plastic surgery…

‘The Human Eel’ (Miller & Bill Ely) then pits a cop unable to endure heights against an international high-tech rogue who thinks he hold all the winning cards…

The next try-out was on far firmer fashion grounds and was the first feature to win two issues in a row.

The Challengers of the Unknown were a bridging concept. As the superhero genre was ever so cautiously alpha-tested in 1956 here was a super-team – the first new group-entry of this still-to-be codified era – but with no uncanny abilities or masks, the most basic and utilitarian of costumes, and the most dubious of motives: Suicide by Mystery…

If you wanted to play editorially safe you could argue that were simply another para-military band of adventurers like the long running Blackhawks… but they weren’t.

A huge early hit – winning their own title before The Flash (March 1959) and just two months after Lois Lane (March 1958, although she had been a star in comics since 1938 and even had TV, radio and movie recognition on her side) – the Challs struck a chord resonating for more than a decade before they finally died… only to rise again and yet again. The idea of them was stirring enough, but their initial execution made their success all but inevitable.

Jack Kirby was – and remains – the most important single influence in the history of American comics. There are quite rightly millions of words written about what the man has done and meant, and you should read those if you are at all interested in our medium. When the comic industry suffered a collapse in the mid 1950’s, Kirby briefly returned to DC, crafting genre mystery tales and revitalising the Green Arrow back-up strip whilst creating newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force. He also re-packaged for Showcase an original super-team concept that had been kicking around in his head since he and long-time collaborator Joe Simon had closed their innovative but unfortunate Mainline Comics.

The Challengers of the Unknown were four extraordinary mortals; heroic adventurers and explorers brought together for a radio show who walked away unscathed from a terrible plane crash. Already obviously what we now call “adrenaline junkies”, they decided that since they were all living on borrowed time, they would dedicate what remained of their lives to testing themselves and fate. They would risk their lives for Knowledge and, of course, Justice.

Showcase #6, dated January/February 1957 – which meant it came out in time for Christmas 1956 – introduced pilot Ace Morgan, wrestler Rocky Davis, acrobat Red Ryan and scholarly marine explorer “Prof” Haley in a no-nonsense romp by Kirby, scripter Dave Wood, inkers Marvin Stein and Jack’s wife Roz, before devoting the rest of the issue to a spectacular epic with the doom-chasers hired by duplicitous magician Morelian to open an ancient casque holding otherworldly secrets and powers in ‘The Secrets of the Sorcerer’s Box!’

This story roars along with all the tension and wonder of the B-movie thrillers it emulates, and Kirby’s awesome drawing resonates with power and dynamism as the heroes tackle ancient horrors such as ‘Dragon Seed!’, ‘The Freezing Sun!’ and ‘The Whirling Weaver!’

The fantasy magic continued in the sequel: a science fiction crisis caused when an alliance of Nazi technologies with American criminality unleashes a robotic monster. Scripted by Kirby, ‘Ultivac is Loose!’ (Showcase #7, March/April 1957) introduces quietly capable boffin Dr. June Robbins, who becomes the fifth Challenger at a time when most comic females had returned to a subsidiary status in that so-conservative era.

As her computers predict ‘A Challenger Must Die!’, the lads nevertheless continue to hunt a telepathic, sentient super-robot who inadvertently terrorises ‘The Fearful Millions’ but soon find their sympathies with the tragic artificial intelligence after ‘The Fateful Prediction!’ is fulfilled…

Showcase #8 (June 1957) again featured the Flash, leading with another Kanigher tale – ‘The Secret of the Empty Box’. This perplexing but pedestrian mystery sees Frank Giacoia debut as inker, but the real landmark is Broome’s thriller ‘The Coldest Man on Earth’. With this yarn the author confirmed and consolidated the new phenomenon by introducing the first of a Rogues Gallery of outlandish super-villains. Unlike Golden Age stalwarts, new super-heroes would face predominantly costumed foes rather than thugs and spies. Henceforth, Bad Guys would be as visually arresting and memorable as the champions of justice. Captain Cold would return time and again as pre-eminent Flash Foe and Broome would go on to create every single member of Flash’s classic pantheon of super-villains.

Also included is filler reprint ‘The Race of Wheel and Keel’ by Gardner Fox, Gil Kane & Harry Lazarus, from All-Star Comics #53 (June/July 1950): a true story of how in 1858 a shipping magnate and stagecoach tycoon competed to prove which method of transportation was fastest…

When Lois Lane – arguably the oldest supporting character/star in the Superman mythology if not DC universe – finally received her own shot at a solo title, it was very much on the terms of the times.

I must shamefacedly admit to a deep, nostalgic affection for her bright, breezy, fantastically fun adventures, but as a free-thinking, (nominally) adult liberal of the 21st century I’m astounded now at the jolly, patronising, patriarchally misogynistic attitudes underpinning so many of the stories.

Yes, I’m fully aware that the series was intended for young readers at a time when “dizzy dames” like Lucille Ball or Doris Day played to a popular American stereotype of Woman as jealous minx, silly goose, diffident wife and brood-hungry nester, but asking kids to seriously accept that intelligent, courageous, ambitious, ethical and highly capable females would drop everything they’d worked hard for to lie, cheat, inveigle, manipulate and entrap a man just so that they could cook pot-roast and change super-diapers is just plain crazy and tantamount to child abuse.

I’m just saying…

Showcase #9 (cover-dated July/August 1957) featured Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane in three tales by Jerry Coleman, Ruben Moreira & Al Plastino; opening with seminal yarn ‘The Girl in Superman’s Past’ wherein Lois first meets red-headed hussy Lana Lang. The childhood sweetheart of Superboy seems to be a pushy conniving go-getter out to win Lois’ intended at all costs. Naturally Miss Lane invites Miss Lang to stay at her apartment and the grand rivalry is off and running…

‘The New Lois Lane’ aggravatingly saw Lois turn over a new leaf and stop attempting to uncover his secret identity just when Superman actually needs her to do so, and the premier concludes with concussion-induced day-dream ‘Mrs. Superman’ with Lois imagining a life of domestic super-bliss…

The next issue (September/October 1957) offered three more of the same, all illustrated by Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye, beginning with ‘The Jilting of Superman’ – scripted by Otto Binder – wherein the Man of Tomorrow almost falls for an ancient ploy as Lois pretends to marry another man to make the Kryptonian clod realise what she means to him…

‘The Sightless Lois Lane’ by Coleman reveals how a nuclear accident temporarily blinds the journalist, before her unexpected recovery almost exposes Clark Kent‘s secret when he callously changes to Superman in front of the blind girl. Binder delightfully closes the issue with ‘The Forbidden Box from Krypton’: a cache of devices dug up by a Smallville archaeologist originally packed by Jor-El to aid the infant superbaby on Earth. Of course, when Lois opens the chest all she sees is a way to become as powerful as the Man of Steel before becoming addicted to being a super-champion in her own right…

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane launched into her own title scant months later, clearly exactly what the readers wanted…

Showcase #11 (November/December 1957) saw the Challengers return to combat an alien invasion on ‘The Day the Earth Blew Up’, with unique realist Bruno Premiani inking a taut doomsday chiller that keeps readers on the edge of their seats even today. Whilst searching for missing Antarctic explorers the Challs discover an under-ice base where double-brained aliens prepare to explosively alter the mass and gravity of Earth. Although intellectually superior, ‘The Tyrans’are no match for the indomitable human heroes and with their Plan A scotched, resort to brute force and ‘The Thing That Came out of the Sea’, even as Prof scuttles their aquatic ace in the hole with ‘One Minute to Doom’…

By the time of their final Showcase cases (#12, January/February 1958) they had already secured their own title. Here, though, ‘The Menace of the Ancient Vials’ is defused by the usual blend of daredevil heroics and ingenuity (with the wonderful inking of George Klein, not Wally Wood as credited here) as international spy and criminal Karnak steals a clutch of ancient chemical weapons which create giants and ‘The Fire Being!’, summon ‘The Demon from the Depths’and materialise ‘The Deadly Duplicates!’ before the pre-fantastic four put their enemy down.

Flash zipped back in Showcase #13 (March/April 1958) in a brace of tales pencilled by Infantino and inked by Joe Giella. Written by Kanigher, ‘Around the World in 80 Minutes’ follows the Scarlet Speedster as he tackles atomic blackmail in Paris, foils kidnappers and rebuilds a pyramid in Egypt; dismantles an avalanche in Tibet and scuttles a pirate submarine in the Pacific, before Broome’s ‘Master of the Elements’ introduces outlandish chemical criminal Al Desmond who ravages Central City as Mr. Element until the Flash outwits him.

One last try-out issue – inked by Giacoia – cemented the Flash’s future: Showcase #14 (May/June 1958) opens with Kanigher’s eerie ‘Giants of the Time-World!’ as the Fastest Man Alive smashes dimensional barriers to rescue his girlfriend Iris West from uncanny cosmic colossi and stamp out an alien invasion plan, after which Al Desmond returns with an altered M.O. and new identity. Doctor Alchemy‘s discovery of the mystic Philosopher’s Stone makes him ‘The Man who Changed the Earth!’: a stunning yarn and worthy effort to bow out on, but it was still nearly a year until the first issue of The Flash finally hit the stands.

To reiterate: Showcase was a try-out comic designed to launch new series and concepts with minimal commitment of publishing resources. If a new character sold well initially, a regular series would follow. The process had been proved with Frogmen, Lois Lane, Challengers of the Unknown and Flash, so Editorial Director Irwin Donenfeld now urged his two Showcase editors to create science fiction heroes to capitalise on the twin zeitgeists of the Space Race and the popular fascination with movie monsters and aliens. Jack Schiff came up with a “masked” crimefighter of the future – who featured in issues #15 and 16 – whilst Julie Schwartz concentrated on the now in the saga of a contemporary Earth explorer catapulted into the most uncharted territory yet imagined.

Showcase #15 (September/October 1958) commenced without fanfare – or origin – the ongoing adventures of Space Ranger – beginning in ‘The Great Plutonium Plot’ (plotted by Gardner Fox, scripted by pulp veteran Edmond Hamilton and illustrated by Bob Brown).

Their hero was in actuality Rick Starr, son of a wealthy interplanetary businessman who – thanks to incredible gadgets and the assistance of shape-shifting alien pal Cryll and capable Girl Friday Myra Mason – spent his free time battling evil and injustice. When Jarko the Jovian space pirate targets only ships carrying the trans-uranic element, Rick suspects a hidden motive. Donning his guise of the Space Ranger, he lays a cunning trap, exposing a hidden mastermind and a deadly ancient device endangering the entire solar system…

From his base in a hollow asteroid, Space Ranger ranges the universe and ‘The Robot Planet’ brings him and his team to Sirius after discovering a diabolical device designed to rip Sol’s planets out of their orbits. At the end of his voyage, Starr discovers a sublime civilisation reduced to cave-dwelling and a mighty computer intelligence intent on controlling the entire universe unless he can stop it…

Issue #16 opened with ‘The Secret of the Space Monster’ (plot by John Forte, scripted by Hamilton, illustrated by Brown) with Rick, Myra and Cryll investigating an impossible void creature and uncovering a band of alien revolutionaries testing novel super-weapons. ‘The Riddle of the Lost Race’ (Fox, Hamilton & Brown) then takes the team on a whistle-stop tour of the Solar system in pursuit of a vicious criminal and hidden treasures of a long-vanished civilisation.

A few months later Space Ranger was transported to science fiction anthology Tales of the Unexpected, beginning with issue #40 (August 1959) to hold the lead and cover spot for a 6-year run…

One of the most compelling and revered stars of those halcyon days was an ordinary Earthman who regularly travelled to another world for spectacular adventures, armed with nothing more than a ray-gun, a jetpack and his own ingenuity. His name was Adam Strange, and like so many of that era’s triumphs, he was the brainchild of Julius Schwartz and his close team of creative stars.

Showcase #17 (November/December 1958) proclaimed Adventures on Other Worlds, courtesy of Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky & Bernard Sachs, telling of an archaeologist who, whilst fleeing from enraged natives in Peru, jumps a 25-foot chasm only to be hit by a stray teleport beam from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. Rematerialising on another planet filled with giant plants and monsters, he is rescued by a beautiful woman named Alanna who teaches him her language via a cunning contrivance. ‘Secret of the Eternal City!’ reveals Rann is a world recovering from atomic war, and the beam Adam intercepted was in fact a simple flare, one of many sent in an attempt to communicate with other races.

In the four years (Speed of Light, right? As You Know, Bob – Alpha Centauri is about 4.3 light-years from Sol) the Zeta-Flare travelled through space, cosmic radiation converted it into a teleportation beam. Until the radiation drains from his body Strange is a most willing prisoner on a fantastic world of mystery, adventure and romance…

And an incredibly unlucky one apparently, as no sooner has Adam started acclimatising than an alien race The Eternalsinvades, seeking a mineral that grants them immortality. Strange’s courage and sharp wits enable him to defeat the invaders only to have the Zeta radiation finally fade, drawing him home before his adoring Alanna can administer a hero’s reward. Thus was established the principles of this beguiling series. Adam would intercept a Zeta-beam hoping for some time with his alien sweetheart, only to be confronted with a planet-menacing crisis.

The very next of these, ‘The Planet and the Pendulum’ sees him obtain the crimson-and-white spacesuit and weaponry that became his distinctive trademark in a tale of alien invaders attacking a lost colony of Rannians. They reside on planetary neighbour Anthorann – a fact that also introduces the major subplot of Rann’s still-warring city-states, all desperate to progress and all at different stages of recovery and development….

The next issue featured the self-explanatory ‘Invaders from the Atom Universe’ – with sub-atomic marauders displacing the native races until Adam unravels their nefarious plans – and ‘The Dozen Dooms of Adam Strange’, wherein our hero outfoxes the dictator of Dys who plans to invade Alanna’s home-city Rannagar.

With this last story, Sachs was replaced by Joe Giella as inker, although the former did ink Showcase #19’s stunning Gil Kane cover, (March/April 1959) which saw the unwieldy Adventures on Other Worlds title replaced with eponymous logo Adam Strange.

‘Challenge of the Star-Hunter’ and ‘Mystery of the Mental Menace’ are classic puzzle tales wherein the Earthman must outwit a shape-changing alien and an all-powerful energy-being. After so doing, Adam Strange took over the lead spot and cover of anthology comic Mystery in Space with the August issue.

Clearly on a creative high and riding a building wave, Showcase #20 (May/June 1959) introduced Rip Hunter… Time Master and his dauntless crew as ‘Prisoners of 100 Million BC’ (by Jack Miller & Ruben Moreira) in a novel-length introductory escapade seeing the daredevil physicist, his engineer friend Jeff Smith, girlfriend Bonnie Baxter and her little brother Corky travel to the Mesozoic era, unaware they are carrying two criminal stowaways.

Once there, the thugs hi-jack the Time Sphere, holding it hostage until the explorers help them stock up with rare and precious minerals. Reduced to the status of castaways, Rip and his team become ‘The Modern-Day Cavemen’, but when an erupting volcano provokes ‘The Great Beast Stampede’, our dauntless chrononauts finally turn the tables on their abductors…

Miller was always careful to use the best research available, but never afraid to blend historical fact with bold fantasy for Hunter’s escapades, and this volume concludes with an epic follow-up. Illustrated by Sekowsky & Joe Giella, ‘The Secret of the Lost Continent’ (Showcase #21, July/August, 1959,) has the Time Masters jump progressively further back in time in search of Atlantis. Starting with a dramatic meeting with Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, the explorers follow the trail back centuries to ‘The Forbidden Island’ of Aeaea in 700 BCE and uncover the secret of the witch Circe before finally reaching 14,000 BCE and ‘The Doomed Continent’ only to find the legendary pinnacle of early human achievement to be a colony of stranded extraterrestrial refugees…

Rip Hunter would appear twice more in Showcase before winning his own comic. The succeeding months would see the Silver Age truly kick into High Gear with classic launches coming thick and fast…

These stories from a uniquely influential comic book determined the course of the entire American strip culture and for that alone they should be cherished, but the fact they are still some of the most timeless, accessible and entertaining graphic adventures ever produced is a gift that should be celebrated by every fan and casual reader.

Buy this for yourself, get it for your friends and get a spare just because you can…
© 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 2012 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Machine Man: The Complete Collection by Kirby and Ditko


By Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, with Marv Wolfman, Tom DeFalco, Roger Stern, Mike Rockwitz, Sal Buscema & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-9577-1 (TPB)

Jack Kirby was – and nearly 30 years after his death, remains – the most important single influence in the history of American comics. There are innumerable accounts of and testaments to what the man has done and meant, and you should read those if you are at all interested in our medium.

Off course, I’m now adding my own tenpence’s worth, pointing out what you probably already know: Kirby was a man of vast imagination who translated big concepts into astoundingly potent and accessible symbols for generations of fantasy fans. If you were exposed to Kirby as an impressionable child you were his for life. To be honest, the same probably applies whatever age you jump aboard the “Kirby Express”…

For those of us who grew up with Jack, his are the images which furnish and clutter our interior mindsets. Close your eyes and think “robot” and the first thing that pops up is a Kirby creation. Every fantastic, futuristic city in our heads is crammed with his chunky, towering spires. Because of Jack we all know what the bodies beneath those stony-head statues on Easter Island look like, we are all viscerally aware that you can never trust great big aliens parading around in their underpants and, most importantly, we know how cavemen dressed and carnosaurs clashed…

In the late 1930s, it took a remarkably short time for Kirby and his creative collaborator Joe Simon to become the wonder-kid dream-team of the new-born comicbook industry. Together they produced a year’s worth of the influential monthly Blue Bolt, dashed off Captain Marvel Adventures (#1) for overstretched Fawcett and, after Martin Goodman appointed Simon editor at Timely Comics, co-created a host of iconic characters such as Red Raven, the original Marvel Boy, Mercury, Hurricane, The Vision, Young Allies and of course million-selling mega-hit Captain America.

When Goodman failed to make good on his financial obligations, Simon & Kirby were snapped up by National/DC, who welcomed them with open arms and a fat chequebook. Bursting with ideas the staid industry leaders were never really comfortable with, the pair were initially an uneasy fit, and awarded two moribund strips to play with until they found their creative feet: Sandman and Manhunter.

They turned both around virtually overnight and, once established and left to their own devices, switched to the “Kid Gang” genre they had pioneered at Timely. Joe & Jack created wartime sales sensation Boy Commandos and a Homefront iteration dubbed the Newsboy Legion before being called up to serve in the war they had been fighting on comic book pages since 1940.

Once demobbed, they returned to a very different funnybook business, and soon after left National to create their own little empire…

Simon & Kirby heralded and ushered in the first American age of mature comics – not just by inventing the Romance genre, but with all manner of challenging modern material about real people in extraordinary situations – before seeing it all disappear again in less than eight years.

After years of working for others, Simon & Kirby had finally established their own publishing house, producing comics for a far more sophisticated audience, only to find themselves in a sales downturn and awash in public hysteria generated by an anti-comicbook pogrom. Their small stable of magazines – generated for the association of companies known as Prize, Crestwood, Pines, Essenkay and/or Mainline Comics – blossomed and as quickly wilted when the industry abruptly contracted throughout the 1950s.

Hysterical censorship-fever spearheaded by US Senator Estes Kefauver and opportunistic pop psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham led to witch-hunting Senate hearings. Caving in, most publishers adopted a castrating straitjacket of draconian self-regulatory rules. Horror titles produced under the aegis and emblem of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised and anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, even though the market’s appetite for suspense and the uncanny was still high. Crime comics vanished and mature themes challenging an increasingly stratified and oppressive society were suppressed…

Simon quit the business for advertising, but Jack soldiered on, taking his skills and ideas to a number of safer, more conventional and less experimental, companies. As the panic abated, Kirby returned briefly to DC Comics where he worked on mystery tales and Green Arrow (at that time a mere back-up page-filler in Adventure Comics and World’s Finest Comics) whilst concentrating on his passion project: newspaper strip Sky Masters of the Space Force.

During that period Kirby also re-packaged an original super-team concept that had been kicking around in his head since he and Joe Simon had closed their innovative, ill-timed ventures. At the end of 1956 Showcase #6 premiered the Challengers of the Unknown…

After three more test issues they won their own title with Kirby in command for the first eight. Then a legal dispute with Editor Jack Schiff exploded and the King was gone…

He found fresh fields and an equally hungry new partner in Stan Lee at the ailing Atlas Comics outfit (which had once been mighty Timely) and there created a revolution in superhero comics storytelling…

After a decade of never-ending innovation and crowd-pleasing wonderment, Kirby felt increasingly stifled. His efforts had transformed the little publisher into industry-pioneer Marvel but now felt trapped in a rut. Thus, he moved back to DC for another burst of sheer imagination and pure invention.

Kirby always understood the fundamentals of pleasing his audience and strived diligently to combat the appalling state of prejudice about the comics medium – especially from industry insiders and professionals who despised the “kiddies world” they felt trapped in.

After his controversial, grandiose Fourth World titles were cancelled, Kirby looked for other projects that would stimulate his own vast creativity yet still appeal to a market growing ever more fickle. These included science fictional heroes Kamandi and OMAC, supernatural star The Demon, war stories starring The Losers, and even a new Sandman– co-created with old Joe Simon – but although the ideas kept coming (Atlas, Kobra, Dingbats of Danger Street), once again editorial disputes increased. Reluctantly, he left again choosing to believe in promises of more creative freedom elsewhere…

His return to Marvel in 1976 was much hyped and eagerly anticipated at the time, but again turned controversial. New works such as The Eternals and Devil Dinosaur found friends rapidly, but his return to earlier creations Captain America and Black Panther divided the fanbase.

Kirby was never slavishly wedded to tight continuity, and preferred, in many ways, to treat his stints on titles as a “Day One”: a policy increasing at odds with the close-continuity demanded by a strident faction of the readership…

Kirby was fascinated by the evolution of humanity and how it was ultimately defined. Gods, devils, ascension, devolution and especially artificial intelligence were themes he regularly revisited. As early as 1957, in his second Challengers of the Unknown yarn, tragic Ultivac was a misunderstood mechanoid built by war criminals who spontaneously achieved sentience, sapience and a profound sense of self-preservation. This concept of machine soul re-emerged constantly in characters as diverse as King Kra, Recorder 211, Torgo, Mother Box and many others but found its greatest expression in a strip spun off from licensed property 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Although not included here, Machine Man actually debuted in July to September 1977 in #8-10 of that series – so Marvel are being a tad generous with the term “complete” in this epic trade paperback and digital compilation. X-51/Aaron Stack/Mister Machine was a government-built war droid who achieves passionate, unique self-actualisation after an encounter with the enigmatic alien Monolith of Kubrick and Clarke’s movie classic. When the publishing license expired, Jack’s metal miracle catapulted into his own eccentric series and a little slice of history was made…

Collecting the 19-issue run of Machine Man spanning April 1978 to January 1989, and including material from Incredible Hulk #234-237 and Marvel Comics Presents #10, this canny compilation offers a rare chance to see how a single character can fare under the widely differing and unique artistic visions of the visual founders of the Marvel Universe.

Brushing over the embargoed origins, a fully sentient but unschooled and inexperienced ‘Machine Man’ exploded into the Marvel Universe in his first issue (April 1978, by Kirby & Mike Royer), on the run from the US Army.

As X-51, he had been condemned to eradication when his 50 predecessors malfunctioned, attacking the soldiers they were designed to replace. “Aaron” was different, however, reared as a human in the household of psychologist Dr. Abel Stack. When the official order came to scrap all X-models, Stack gave his life to remove his “son’s” self-destruct trigger, sending the innocent out to find his place in the world. On his trail was veteran warrior Colonel Kragg, maimed sole survivor of a brutal X robot assault…

On the run and plagued by nightmares, Aaron makes friends easily in the easy-going, post-Hippie region around Central City, California, and holes up in the asylum run by psychiatrist Dr. Peter Spalding. As they debate the nature of existence, soldiers close in and a fresh crisis is triggered in the ‘House of Nightmares’ when an inmate psionically connects to an alien being about to die countless light years away…

Stack’s on-board technologies confirm the contact is no delusion, and empathy moves the assembled earthlings to open a door for the dying stranger. Sadly, ‘Ten-For, the Mean Machine’ is a devious, arrogant professional world-conqueror who believes his kind of mechanical life superior to organics and sets about adding Earth to the Autochron empire, just as Kragg’s forces breach the building…

The Colonel is no fan of artificial beings but is soon overwhelmed, leaving Machine Man to ‘Battle on a Very Busy Street’, before briefly abandoning humanity and questioning the point of his tormented existence. His status as a despised ‘Non-Hero’ changes after attending a wild party and meeting empathetic communications executive Tracy Warner, who inspires Aaron to defeat the rapidly-approaching invasion fleet with a ‘Quick Trick’…

Issue #7 opens in the aftermath as a Special Congressional Committee convenes to rule on the robot’s autonomy and continued existence. ‘With a Nation Against Him!’ shows humanity’s prejudices and willingness to exploit Aaron, and when Spalding is kidnapped, Congressman Miles Brickman sees a way to ride that bigotry all the way to the White House…

As Aaron seeks to save Peter from nefarious capitalist criminals The Corporation, Kragg undergoes a change of heart and helps foil their plans to mass-produce X-Units, resulting in a spectacular ‘Super-Escape’ and a tenuous détente between mankind and Machine Man when they cooperate ‘In Final Battle!’ (Machine Man #9, December 1978)…

The series ended there, with the unresolved issues carrying over to a story arc in Incredible Hulk. Here a 6-page extract from #234’s ‘Battleground: Berkeley’ (April 1979 by Roger Stern, Sal Buscema & Jack Abel) sees Corporation high flyer Mr. Jackson frame Machine Man for kidnapping the Hulk’s friend Trish Starr, and lure the Jade Juggernaut to Central City…

Followed by the entirety of #235-237, the resultant clash gears up the metal marvel for a fresh run, opening with ‘The Monster and the Machine’ (Stern, Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito) as the Hulk runs amok and shreds the real Aaron Stack, whilst in Washington DC, opportunistic Brickman is elevated to the Senate…

The rematch in #236 furiously escalates in ‘Kill or Be Killed!’, but by the time the truth has emerged, the Hulk is beyond all reason and turns his wrath on Jackson with horrific effect in concluding chapter ‘When a City Dies!’ (by Stern, S Buscema & Abel)…

One month later Machine Man returned to his own title but it couldn’t have been more different…

In an industry and medium packed with imaginative graphic iterations of mechanoid marvels and malcontents, nobody ever drew robots like Steve Ditko…

He was one of comics’ greatest and most influential talents and – during his lifetime – probably America’s least lauded. Reclusive and reticent by inclination, his fervent desire was always to just get on with his job, telling stories the best he could: letting his work speak for him.

Whilst the noblest of aspirations, that attitude was a minor consideration – and even actual stumbling block – for the commercial interests which controlled comics production and still exert overwhelming influence upon the bulk of comic industry’s output.

In 1966, after Ditko’s legendary disagreements with Stan Lee led to the artist quitting Marvel, he found work at Warren Comics and resumed a career-long association with Charlton Comics. That company’s casual editorial attitudes had always offered the most creative freedom, if not financial reward, but in 1968 their wünderkind editor Dick Giordano was poached by rapidly-slipping industry leader National Comics. He took his key creators with him, but whilst Jim Aparo, Steve Skeates, Frank McLaughlin and Denny O’Neil found a new home, Ditko began only a sporadic – if phenomenally productive – association with DC.

It was during that heady, unsettled period that the first strips stemming from Ditko’s interpretation of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy began appearing in indie publications like Witzend and The Collector, whilst for the “over-ground” publishing colossus, he devised cult classics The Hawk and the Dove and Beware the Creeper. Later efforts included Shade, the Changing Man, Stalker and The Odd Man, plus anthological Sci Fi and horror yarns; truly unique interpretations of Man-Bat, Kirby’s The Demon, Legion of Super-Heroes and many more…

In 1979, Ditko grudgingly returned to Marvel to work on Micronauts, Captain Marvel, Fantastic Four, Captain Universe, licensed properties and new characters like Speedball, Squirrel Girl and the automaton in question…

MM #10 offered ‘Renewal!’ courtesy of Marv Wolfman & Steve Ditko. Severely damaged in combat, the artificial avenger is frantically rebuilt by Spalding and X-Project originator Dr. Broadhurst, at the cost of much of his awesome armament. This arbitrary adjustment forces Aaron to reassess his status and condition, and after finding a message from Abel Stack, he resolves to chart a fresh course as part of the human race.

Even after Aaron saves the Senator from certain death, Brickman pins his future career on capturing the mechanical “menace”, but the robot perseveres and a battle with a high-tech thief in ‘Byte of the Binary Bug!’ leads to a new cover secret identity as an insurance investigator, a new confidante in businessman Byron Benjamin and a new nemesis in exotic millionaire Khan of Xanadu…

When a freak accident turns ordinary mortals into ascendant angels in #12’s ‘Where Walk the Gods!’ Aaron is forced to confront his own biases and moral imperatives to save his life, and learns the value of mercy from a small child, before Khan returns in ‘Xanadu!‘, determined to achieve immortality by occupying Aaron’s mechanical body…

Wolfman & Ditko sought to humanise Machine Man through a cast of fellow workers at Delmar Insurance, such as freeloading lazy moocher Eddie Harris and office vamp Maggie Jones, but the real counterbalance to Aaron is Brickman who announces his run for the White House based on a publicity pogrom against the synthetic superhero in #14. Here, the action stems from ‘The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls’: a tragic scientist accidentally turned super-dense and hired by the Senator’s assistants to impersonate and defame the robot champion…

Further inroads into mainstream continuity come as Tom DeFalco joins Ditko from #15 onwards. Transformed into a cloud of energized gas, Dr. Voletta Todd calls herself Ion and – demanding ‘Kill Me or Cure Me’ – crushes Machine Man. As the robot is repaired by garrulous blue collar engineering savant Gears Garvin, the Thing and Human Torch tackle the deranged suicidal monster but are grateful for Aaron’s last-minute save…

Issue #16 introduces the first in a string of maniacal baddies as ‘Baron Brimstone and His Sinister Satan Squad!’ go on a magic-backed crime spree, after which #17 debuts evil industrialist Sunset Bain and macabre Madame Menace who seek to profit from selling Aaron’s stolen limbs in ‘Arms and the Robot!’

Brickman makes his move in #18, using dubious political connections and outright lies to trick Canadian super-agents Sasquatch, Aurora and Northstar into attacking the metal marvel who stands ‘Alone Against Alpha Flight!’ before the quirky series ends with #19 (February 1981) and a brutal battle against a manic mercenary: a cruel clash that leaves Aaron dejected, deformed and dispirited after being ‘Jolted by Jack O’Lantern!’

Marvel Comics Presents #10 (January 1989) then offers one last hurrah as – written by Ditko & Mike Rockwitz with Dave Cockrum inking the abstract master’s compelling pencils – ‘Machine Man Meets the F.F…Failure Five’ finds Aaron Stack targeted by a robot fiasco determined to continue his own existence by occupying the astounding X-51 frame… irrespective of who might already be using it…

With extras including a complete cover gallery by Kirby, Ditko, Royer, Al Milgrom, Frank Giacoia, Dan Green, Joe Sinnott, Steve Leialoha, Walter Simonson, John Byrne, Rich Buckler & Frank Miller, plus a quartet of ‘Machine Mail’editorials by Kirby; house ads; original art pages by both titans and unused cover art from the period and full biographies of the founding titans, this compilation is a dose of utter, uncomplicated comics magic: bold, brash, and completely compelling. How can you possibly resist the clarion call of sheer eccentric escapism?
© 2016 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Jack Kirby’s The Losers


By Jack Kirby with D. Bruce Berry & Mike Royer (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-184856-194-6 (HB)

There’s a glorious profusion of Jack Kirby material around these days but much of the best and rarest stuff is still – unforgivably – somehow hard to access. This astounding collection of his too-brief run on DC war comic Our Fighting Forces is, for far too many, an unknown delight. You can still find it in the original 2009 hardback edition, but as far as I know, there’s neither digital or even an English-language trade paperback edition to satisfy the desires of fans lacking an infinite bank balance…

Famed for his larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, the King was a decent, spiritual man from another generation, and one who had experienced human horror and bravery as an ordinary grunt during World War II. Whether in the world-weary verité of his 1950s collaborations with Joe Simon or the flamboyant bravado of his Marvel creation Sgt. Fury, Kirby’ combat comics always looked and felt real: grimy, tired, battered yet indomitable.

In 1974, with his newest creations inexplicably not setting any sales records at DC, and while he tentatively pondered a return to Marvel, Jack took over the creative chores on a well-established and compelling but always floundering series that had run in Our Fighting Forces since 1970.

The Losers were an elite unit of American warriors cobbled together by amalgamating three pre-existing war series that had reached the end of their solo star roads. Gunner and Sarge (supplemented by “the Fighting Devil Dog” Pooch) were Pacific-based Marines; debuting in All-American Men of War #67, (March 1959) and running for 50 issues in Our Fighting Forces (#45-94, May 1959 to August 1965), whilst Captain Johnny Cloud – Navaho Ace and native American fighter pilot – shot down his first bogie in All-American Men of War #82 (December 1960). He flew solo until issue #115 (1966).

The final component of the Land/Air/Sea team was filled by Captain Storm, a disabled PT Boat commander (he had a wooden leg) who had his own 18-issue title from 1964 to 1967. All three series were created by comics warlord Robert Kanigher.

The characters had all pretty much passed their sell-by dates when they teamed-up as guest-stars in a Haunted Tank tale in 1969 (G.I. Combat #138 October), but these “Losers” found a new resonance together in the relevant, disillusioned, cynical Vietnam years (and beyond) when their somewhat nihilistic, doom-laden anti-hero group adventures took the lead spot in Our Fighting Forces #123 (January/February 1970). Once again written primarily by Kanigher, the episodes were graced with art from such giants as Ken Barr, Russ Heath, Sam Glanzman, John Severin, Ross Andru and Joe Kubert.

With the tagline “even when they win, they lose” the team saw action all over the globe, winning critical acclaim and a far-too-small, passionate following. In an inexplicable dose of company politics, the discontented Kirby was abruptly given complete control of the series with #151 (November 1974).

His radically different approach was highly controversial at the time but the passage of years has allowed a fairer appraisal and whilst never really in tune with the aesthetic of DC’s other war-books, the King’s run was a spectacular and singularly intriguing examination of the human condition under the worst of all possible situations.

The combat frenzy kicks off in ‘Kill Me with Wagner’ as the Losers infiltrate a French village to rescue a concert pianist before the Nazis can capture her. The hapless propaganda pawn has one tremendous advantage… nobody knows what she looks like.

As with most of this series, a feeling of inevitable, onrushing Gotterdammerung permeates the tale: a sense that worlds are ending and new one’s a-coming. The action culminates in a catastrophic wave of destruction that is pure Kirby magic…

Most of DC’s war titles sported Kubert covers, but #152 featured the first in a startling sequence of hypnotic Kirby illustrations, almost abstract in delivery, to introduce the team to the no-hope proposition of ‘A Small Place in Hell!’ as they find themselves the advance guard for an Allied push, but dropped in the wrong town: one that has not been cleared…

The spectacular action here is augmented by a potent 2-page Kirby fact feature: Sub-machine guns of WWII, and it should be noted and commended that this collection is also peppered with un-inked Kirby pencilled pages and roughs.

Our Fighting Forces #153 is one of those stories that made traditionalists squeak. Behind another Kirby cover, the story of ‘Devastator vs. Big Max’ veers dangerously close to science fiction, but the admittedly eccentric plan to destroy a giant German rail-mounted super-cannon isn’t any stranger than many schemes actual Boffins dreamed up to disinform the enemy during the actual conflict, actually…

That yarn – with two beautiful info-pages on military uniforms and insignia – is followed by a superb parable about personal honour. A bombastic Kirby cover segues into the team’s deployment to the Pacific to remove a Japanese officer whose devotion to ‘Bushido’ has inspired superhuman loyalty and resistance to surrender among his men. The means used to remove him are far from clean or creditable…

Bracketed by 2 pages on war vehicles plus a wonderful pencil cover-rough, and two more on artillery pieces and the pencils for the cover to that issue, ‘The Partisans!’ (OFF #155) takes the Losers into very dark territory indeed, before the team return to America for ‘Good-bye Broadway… Hello Death!’, wherein the lads experience the home-front joys of New York whilst hunting for a notorious U-Boat commander. Naturally there’s more to the story than first appears…

This fast-paced thriller is complemented by a history of battle headgear and another pencilled rough. Issues #157 and 158 comprise a 2-part saga concerning theft, black marketeering and espionage featuring truly unique personage ‘Panama Fattie!’ Her criminal activities almost alter the course of the war; and conclude in the highly charged ‘Bombing Out on the Panama Canal’ with accompanying pages on ships, subs and Nazi super-planes.

Behind the last Kirby cover (#159), ‘Mile-a-Minute Jones!’ details a smaller-scaled duel between a black runner who embarrassed the Nazis at the 1936 Olympics and the Nazi ubermensch he defeated, reigniting on the battlefield with the Losers relegated to subordinate roles.

Kubert and Ernie Chan handled the three remaining covers of this run, an indication that Kirby’s attentions were being diverted elsewhere, but the stories remain powerful and deeply personal explorations of combat. In ‘Ivan’ (OFF #160) the Losers go undercover, impersonating German soldiers on the Eastern Front, and have an unpleasant encounter with Russian Nazi sympathizers whose appetite for atrocity surpasses anything they have ever seen before (supplemented by a 2-page tanks feature) whilst the hellish jungles of the Burma campaign prove an unholy backdrop for traumatic combat shocker ‘The Major’s Dream.’

The volume and Kirby’s DC war work ends with a sly tribute to his 1942 co-creation the Boy Commandos. ‘Gung-Ho!’sees young Gunner training a band of war orphans in Marine tactics only to find fun turn to dire necessity when Germans overrun their “safe” position. This is an optimistic, all-out action romp ending on a note of hope and anticipation, even as the King made his departure for pastures not-so-new. From issue #163 Kanigher resumed the story reins, with artists like Jack Lehti, Ric Estrada and George Evans illustrating, and the Losers returned to their pre-Kirby style and status, with readers hardly acknowledging the detour into another kind of war.

Jack Kirby is unique and uncompromising. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind. That doesn’t alter the fact that his work from 1939 onwards shaped the entire American comics scene, affected the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour around the world for generations, and which still garners new fans and apostles from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. Jack’s work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral and deceptively deep whilst being simultaneously mythic and human.

These tales of purely mortal heroism are in many ways the most revealing, honest and insightful of Jack’s incredibly vast accumulated works, and even the true devotee often forgets their very existence. As Neil Gaiman’s introduction succinctly declaims, “they are classic Kirby… and even if you don’t like war comics, you may be in for a surprise…”

You really don’t want to miss that, do you?
© 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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The Simon & Kirby Library: Horror!


By Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Mort Meskin, Bill Draut, Martin Stein, Ben Oda, George Roussos, Vic Donahue, Bill Walton, Harry Lazarus, Jim Infantino, Bruno Premiani, John Prentice, Jerry Grandenetti, Ernie Schroeder and various (Titan Books)
ISBN13: 978-1-84856-959-1 (HB)

There’s some magnificent vintage Jack Kirby material around these days but tragically a lot of it hasn’t made the jump to digital yet. One such tragic omission is Titan Books’ splendidly sumptuous Simon & Kirby Library: gathering that iconic team’s groundbreaking genre contributions. Today, let’s look at one of the most compelling: a compendium of mystery, suspense and the supernatural…

Kirby’s collaborations with fellow industry pioneer Joe Simon always produced dynamite concepts, unforgettable characters, astounding stories and huge sales no matter what avenues they pursued, blazing trails for so many others to follow and always reshaping the very nature of American comics with their innovations and sheer quality.

Comic books started slowly in 1933, until the creation of superheroes like Superman unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and invented a new genre. Implacably vested in the Second World War, the Mystery Man swept all before him (very occasionally her or it) until the troops came home and older genres supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Although new kids kept up the buying, much of the previous generation also retained their four-colour habit, but increasingly sought more mature themes in the reading matter. The war years altered the psychology of society and a more world-weary, cynical reading public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything. Their chosen forms of entertainment – film and prose as well as comics – increasingly reflected this.

Western, War and Crime comics, madcap teen comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent, Simon & Kirby introduced Romance comics in 1947 even as pulp-style Science Fiction began to spread. In the real world, another global revival of spiritualism and interest in the supernatural – possibly provoked by the monstrous losses of the recent conflict (just as had happened in the 1920s, following WWI) – led to a wave of increasingly impressive, evocative and even shocking horror comics.

There were grisly, gory and paranormal paragons previously, including a pantheon of ghosts, monsters and wizards draped in costumed hero trappings (The Spectre, Mr. Justice, The Heap, Frankenstein, Sargon the Sorcerer, Zatara, Dr. Fate and dozens of others), but these had been victims of circumstance: the Unknown as convenient power source for super-heroics.

Now the focus shifted to ordinary mortals thrown into a world beyond their ken with the intention of unsettling, not vicariously empowering, the reader…

Practically every publisher jumped on the monumentally popular juggernaut, but B & I (which became the magical one-man-band Richard E. Hughes’ American Comics Group) launched the first regularly published horror comic in the autumn of 1948. Adventures Into the Unknown was technically pipped by Avon whose impressive single issue release Eerie debuted and closed in January 1947. They wised up late and launched a regular series in 1951…

By this time Classics Illustrated had already long milked the literary end of the medium with adaptations of The Headless Horseman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1943), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1944) and Frankenstein (1945) among others.

It was at this time that Joe Simon and Jack Kirby identified another “mature market” gap for the line of magazines they autonomously packaged for publishers Crestwood/Prize/Essenkay to supplement Headline Comics, Justice Traps the Guilty, Police Trap, Young Romance and their other anthologies.

They too saw the sales potential for macabre material, resulting in the superb and eerily seminal Black Magic (launched with an October/November 1950 cover-date) and boldly obscure psychological drama anthology Strange World of Your Dreams in 1952.

Marvel had jumped on the bloody bandwagon early, but National/DC Comics only reluctantly bowed to the inevitable, launching a comparatively strait-laced short story title that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

Soon after, a hysterical censorship scandal led to witch-hunt Hearings (see the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954) which panicked most comics publishers into adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulatory rules…

Just like today, America back then cast about wildly looking for external contaminants rather than internal causes for a perceived shift in social attitudes and youthful rebellion: happily settling on bloodthirsty comics about crime or horror, drenched in unwholesome salacious sex, as the reason their children were talking back, acting up and staying out late.

S&K didn’t do those kinds of comicbooks but they got tarred – and metaphorically feathered too – in the media-fuelled frenzy…

This striking full-colour hardback begins with the essay ‘That Old Black Magic’ by series editor Steve Saffel; delineating the history of the title and tone of the times whilst ‘Simon and Kirby’s Little Shop of Horror’ details the workings of the small but prolific studio of rotating artists who augmented the output of the named stars: creators such as Mort Meskin, Bill Draut, Martin Stein, Ben Oda, George Roussos, Vic Donahue, Bill Walton, Jim Infantino, Bruno Premiani, John Prentice, Jerry Grandenetti and more…

With vast output across many titles, S&K simply couldn’t produce every story and many yarns here are ghosted by other hands, although each and every one does begin with a stunning Kirby splash panel.

As with all their titles, Simon & Kirby offered themed material tweaked by their own special sensibilities. Black Magic – and the Mort Meskin-inspired The Strange World of Your Dreams – eschewed cheap shocks, mindless gore and goofy pun-inspired twist-endings in favour of dark, oppressive suspense soaked in psychological paralysis and inexplicable unease: Tension over Teasing…

The stories presented fantastic situations and, too frequently for comfort, there were no happy endings, pat cosmic justice or calming explanations: sometimes The Unknown just blew up in your face and you survived or didn’t… but never whole or unchanged.

The compendium of bleak cartoon cavortings commences with ‘Last Second of Life!’ (from volume 1 #1, October-November 1950) wherein a rich man obsesses over what the dying see at the final breath, but learns to regret the unsavoury lengths he goes to in finding out, after which ‘The Scorn of the Faceless People!’ (#2 December 1950-January 1951) relates the meaning behind a chilling nightmare.

It’s not hard to believe this one must have prompted the creation of the spin-off Strange World of Your Dreams. Issue #2 also provided a chilling report on a satanic vestment dubbed ‘The Cloak!’ whilst an impossible love in the icy wastes of Canada ended with ‘A Silver Bullet for Your Heart!’ in #3 (February-March 1951).

Issue #4 provided ‘Voodoo on Tenth Avenue’ as a disgruntled wife went too far in her quest to get rid of her man, whilst in #5 ‘The World of Spirits’ recounted the uncanny predictions of Emanuel Swedenborg in a brief fact feature before #6 described psychic connection and a ‘Union with the Dead!’ and a ravaged mariner survived meeting ‘The Thing in the Fog!’ (#7) – an encounter with the legendary Flying Dutchman…

Black Magic #8 (December 1951-January 1952) details the sacrifice a woman made to save her man from ‘Donovan’s Demon!’ (mostly illustrated by Bob McCarty) whilst ‘Dead Man’s Lode!’ (#10 March 1952 – the series now being monthly) related a ghostly experience in an old mine and ‘The Girl Who Walked on Water!’ in #11 showed the immense but fragile power of self-belief…

Meskin & Roussos illustrated #12’s ‘A Giant Walks the Earth!’ as a downed pilot lost his best friend to a roving colossus in India, after which the utterly chilling and unforgettable ‘Up There!’ kicks off three stories from the landmark 13th issue…

The saga of a beguiling siren of the upper stratosphere is followed by ‘A Rag – a Bone and a Hank of Hair!’ (Meskin) and a walking pile of trash that learned to love, whilst ‘Visions of Nostradamus!’ (by Al Eadeh) tracks and interprets the prognosticator’s predictions.

‘The Angel of Death!’ in #15 outlines a horrific medical mystery and ‘Freak!’ (#17, possibly by Bill Draut) exposes a country doctor’s deepest shame.

Black Magic #18 (November 1952) is another multi-threat issue. ‘Nasty Little Man!’ gets my vote for scariest horror art job of all time as three hobos discover to their everlasting regret why you shouldn’t pick on short old men with Irish accents…

‘Come Claim My Corpse’ (Martin Stein?) offers a short, sharp, shocker wherein a convict discovers too late the flaw in his infallible escape plan, before an investigator tracing truck-wreckers learns of ‘Detour Lorelei on Highway 52’ (McCarty)…

‘Sammy’s Wonderful Glass!’ in #19 (December 1952) shows the tragic outcome of a retarded lummox whose favourite toy can expose men’s souls, after which two shorts from #20 (January 1953) follow. ‘Birth After Death’ retells the true story of how Sir Walter Scott‘s mother survived premature burial, whilst ‘Oddities in Miniature: The Strangest Stories Ever Told!’ offers half a dozen uncanny tales on one page.

Issue #21 provided ‘The Feathered Serpent’ in which an American archaeologist uncovers the truth about an ancient god, before #22 (March 1953) slips into sci-fi morality play mode with UFO yarn ‘The Monsters on the Lake!’, and ‘Those Who Are About to Die!’ from #23 sketches out the tale of a painter who can predict imminent doom…

A brace of tales from #24 (May 1953) begins with a scholar who attempts to contact the living ‘After I’m Gone!’, complemented by half-page fact feature ‘Strange Predictions’ (Harry Lazarus) after which ‘Strange Old Bird!’ is the first of three stories from the (again bimonthly) Black Magic #25 (June/July 1953).

In this gently eerie thriller, a little old lady gets the gift of life from her tatty old feathered friend, whilst ‘The Human Cork!’ precis’ the life of literally unsinkable Angelo Faticoni, before a man without a soul escapes the morgue to become ‘A Beast in the Streets!’

There’s a similar surfeit of sinister riches from #26, beginning with ‘Fool’s Paradise!’, wherein a cheap bag-snatcher makes a deal with the devil, even as ‘The Sting of Scorpio!’ sees a rude sceptic wish she’d never taunted a fortune teller.

‘The Strange Antics of the Mystic Mirror!’ terrified nurses in a major metropolitan hospital and ‘Demon Wind!’ (Kirby inked by Premiani) finds a brash Yankee learning the efficacy of a primitive tribe’s justice system…

‘The Cat People’ (#27) mesmerise and forever mark an unwary tourist in rural Spain, and the same issue exposes a seductive Scottish supernatural shindig hosted by ‘The Merry Ghosts of Campbell Castle’, whilst #28 finds an unwilling organ donor reclaiming his “property” in ‘An Eye for an Eye!’ The same issue reveals with mordant wit how a mummy returns to make his truly beloved ‘Alive After Five Thousand Years!’…

From an issue cited during those anti-comic book Senate Hearings, ‘The Greatest Horror of Them All!’ (#29 March-April 1954) tells of a freak hidden amongst freaks, before Black Magic #30 exposes the appalling secret of ‘The Head of the Family!’ (Kirby & Premiani) whilst #31 provides both alien invasion horror ‘Slaughter-House!’ and a cautionary tale of a child raised by beasts in ‘Hungry as a Wolf!’ (Ernie Schroeder).

‘Maniac!’ from #32 is another artistic tour de force and a tale much “homaged” in later years, detailing how a loving brother stops villagers taking his simple-minded sibling away, before the Black Magic section concludes with a terrifying fable of atomic radiation and mutated sea creatures in ‘Lone Shark’ from #33 (November/December 1954).

With the sagacious, industry-hip, quality-conscious Simon & Kirby undoubtedly seeing the writing on the wall, their uniquely macabre title was wisely cancelled in 1954, not long before the Comics Code came into effect. A bowdlerised version was relaunched in 1957, long after they had dissolved their partnership and moved into different areas of the industry.

However, the eerie treats don’t end yet, as a short but sublime sampling from their other mystery title is appended here.

‘We Will Buy Your Dreams‘ discusses features and stories from abortive, revolutionary title The Strange World of Your Dreams: inspired by studio-mate Mort Meskin’s vivid night terrors. The premise involves parapsychologist Richard Temple explaining and analysing storied nightmares with pictorially dramatised dreams sent in by readers.

The too short comics section begins with ‘Send Us Your Dreams’ from #1 (August 1952); a “typical” insecurity nightmare and the chilling ‘I Talked with my Dead Wife!’, whilst #2 (September/October) provides a trio of taught traumatic tales. ‘The Girl in the Grave!’ is a scary wedding scenario in the ‘You Sent Us This Dream!’ sector, before ‘Send Us Your Dreams’ sees Dr. Tempe describe the extent of self-preservation imagery…

‘The Woman in the Tower!’ comes from #3 (November/December), detailing typical symbolism whilst ‘You Sent Us this Dream’ from the same issue explains away a nightmare climb up an unending tower…

Capping off everything is a spectacular Cover Gallery, reprinting Black Magic #1-33, and a stunning unpublished cover; performing the same service for The Strange World of Your Dreams #1-4, plus the unpublished #5, just to make our lives utterly complete.

The Simon & Kirby Library: Horror! is a gigantic compendium of classic dark delights that perfectly illustrates the depth and scope of their influence and innovation and readily displays the sheer bombastic panache and artistic virtuosity they brought to everything they did. This is a worthy, welcome introduction to their unique comics contributions, and needs the relative immortality of electronic iterations.

It would be far less grim on your hands and wrists, too…
© 2014 Joseph H. Simon and the Estate of Jack Kirby. All Rights Reserved.

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Super Powers by Jack Kirby


By Jack Kirby with Joey Cavalieri, Paul Kupperberg, Adrian Gonzalez, Pablo Marcos, Alan Kupperberg, Greg Theakston & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-7140-4

Famed for his larger than life characters and gigantic, cosmic imaginings, Jack Kirby (1917-1994) was an astute, imaginative, spiritual man who lived through poverty and gangsterism, the Great Depression, Post-War optimism, Cold War paranoia, political cynicism and the birth and death of peace-seeking counter-cultures. He was open-minded and utterly wedded to the making of comics stories on every imaginable subject. He also always believed that sequential narrative was worthy of being published as real books right beside mankind’s other literary art forms.

Looks like he was right, and – as usual – just ahead of the times, doesn’t it?

Thanks to his recent centenary there’s a magnificent abundance of Kirby commemorative collections around these days (though still not all of it, so I remain a partially disgruntled dedicated fan). This particular trade paperback and eBook compendium re-presents The King’s last complete conceptual outing for DC and one that has been neglected by fans for far too long.

During the 1980s costumed heroes stopped being an exclusively print cash cow as big toy companies licensed Fights ‘n’ Tights titans and reaped the benefits of ready-made comicbook spin-offs. DC’s most recognizable characters became a best-selling line of action figures and were inevitably hived off into a brisk and breezy, fight-frenzied miniseries.

Super Powers launched in July 1984 as a 5-issue miniseries with Kirby covers and his signature Fourth World characters prominently represented. Jack also plotted the stellar saga with scripter Joey Cavalieri providing dialogue, as Adrian Gonzales & Pablo Marcos illustrated a heady cosmic quest comprising numerous inconclusive battles between agents of Good and Evil.

Eschewing any preamble, we hurtle straight into action with ‘Power Beyond Price!’, as ultimate cosmic nemesis Darkseid despatches four Emissaries of Doom to destroy Earth’s superheroes. Sponsoring and empowering Lex Luthor, The Penguin, Brainiac and The Joker, the Dark God’s emissaries and their stooges jointly target Superman, Batman & Robin, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman and Hawkman…

The combat escalates in #2’s ‘Clash Against Chaos’ with the Man of Steel and Scarlet Speedster tackling Luthor, whilst Aquaman and Green Lantern scupper the Penguin. Meanwhile Dark Knight and Winged Wonder confront an astoundingly-enhanced Harlequin of Hate…

With Alan Kupperberg inking #3, an inconclusive outcome leads to a regrouping of evil and an attack by Brainiac on Paradise Island, as in ‘Amazons at War’ the Justice League rally until Superman is devolved into a brutal beast who attacks his former allies.

All-out battle ensues in ‘Earth’s Last Stand’ before King Kirby steps up to write and illustrate the fateful finale: a cosmos-shaking conclusion designated ‘Spaceship Earth – We’re All on It!’ (November 1984, with Greg Theakston suppling inks)…

A bombastic Super Powers Promotional Poster then leads into the second Super Powers miniseries, spanning September 1985 to February 1986.

Scripted by Paul Kupperberg, the Kirby/Theakston saga ‘Seeds of Doom!’ recounts how deadly Darkseid despatches techno-organic bombs to destroy Earth, a diabolical deed requiring practically every DC hero to unite to counter the threat.

With teams of Super Powers travelling to England, Rome, New York, Easter Island and Arizona the danger is magnified ‘When Past and Present Meet!’ as the seeds warp time and send Aquaman and Martian Manhunter J’onn J’onzz back to days of King Arthur…

Super Powers #3 (November 1985) finds Red Tornado, Hawkman and Green Arrow plunged back 75 million years in ‘Time Upon Time Upon Time!’ even as Doctor Fate, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman are trapped in 1087 AD, battling stony-faced giant aliens on Easter Island.

Superman and Firestorm discover ‘There’s No Place Like Rome!’ as they battle Darkseid’s agent Steppenwolf in the first century whilst Batman, Robin and Flash visit a far-flung future where Earth is the new Apokolips in #5’s ‘Once Upon Tomorrow’.

Eventually Earth’s scattered but indomitable champions converge on Luna to spectacularly squash the schemes-within-schemes of ‘Darkseid of the Moon!’

Jack Kirby was and remains unique and uncompromising: his words and pictures comprise an unparalleled, hearts-and-minds grabbing delight no comics lover can possibly resist. If you’re not a fan or simply not prepared to see for yourself what all the fuss has been about then no words of mine will change your mind.

That doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby’s life’s work from 1937 to his death in 1994 shaped the entire American comics scene – and indeed the entire comics planet – affecting the lives of billions of readers and thousands of creators in all areas of artistic endeavour for generations. Most tellingly, he is still winning new fans and apostles every day, from the young and naive to the most cerebral of intellectuals. His work is instantly accessible, irresistibly visceral, deceptively deep and simultaneously mythic and human.

He is the King and there will never be another.
© 1984, 1985, 2018 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Sky Masters of the Space Force: The Complete Dailies


By Jack Kirby, Dick & Dave Wood, Wally Wood & Dick Ayers (Hermes Press)
ISBN: 978-1-61345-129-8

Sky Masters of the Space Force was – and remains – a beautiful and eminently readable newspaper strip but one with a chequered and troubled back-story. How much so you can discover for yourself when you buy the book.

Even ever-upbeat and inspirational comics mega-creator Jack Kirby spent decades trying to forget the grief caused by his foray into the newspaper strip market during the height of the Space Race before finally relenting in his twilight years and giving his blessing to collections and reprints such as this one from Hermes Press.

I’m glad that he did because the collected work is one of his greatest achievements, even with the incredible format restraints of one tier of tiny panels per day, and a solitary page every Sunday. More than 50 years later this hard-science space adventure is still the business!

And that’s despite the acrimonious legal manoeuvrings that poisoned the process of creating the strip from start to finish. That can of worms you can you can read for yourself in Daniel Herman’s forthright ‘Introduction: Jack Kirby, Wally Wood, and Sky Masters’ which precedes the astronautical adventures contained herein…

Just for context though: against a backdrop of international and ideological rivalry turned white-hot when the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik in 1957, the staid George Matthew Adams newspaper syndicate decided to finally enter the 20th century with a newspaper feature about space.

After approaching a reluctant DC Comics (then known as National Periodicals Publications) a deal was brokered. The project was steered by editor Jack Schiff and he convinced Jack Kirby, inker Wally Wood (later to be replaced by Dick Ayers) and scripters/brothers Dick and Dave Wood (no relation to Wally), to begin bringing the conquest of the cosmos into our lives via an all-American astronaut, his trusty team of stalwart comrades and the philanthropic largesse of the newly-minted US Space Force…

The daily strip launched on September 8th 1958 and ran until February 25th 1961; a scant few months before Alan Shepherd became in reality the first American in Space on May 5th.

The Sunday colour page told its five extended tales (The Atom Horse, Project Darkside, Mister Lunivac, Jumbo Jones and The Yogi Spaceman) in a separate continuity running from February 8th 1959 until 14th February 1960. They are sadly not included in this superb monochrome hardback archival collection, but at least that gives us fans something to look forward to…

This tense, terse and startlingly suspenseful foray into a historical future begins with ‘The First Man in Space’ (September 8th – November 21st 1958) as Major Schuyler “Sky” Masters becomes the second man in space. Romantically involved with Holly Martin, he is hurled into orbit to rescue her astronaut father after the bold pioneer encounters something too horrible to contemplate in the pitiless reaches above Earth…

The human tragedy and ever-impinging fear of the unknown of that moody tale informs all the following stories and as Holly Martin’s feisty brother Danny and burly Sgt. Riot join the cast (who do they remind me of?) for ‘Sabotage’ (22nd November – 7th March 1959), the quintessential components of all great comics teams are in place.

In this second encounter the stage expands enormously and a member of the vast Space Force contingent sinks into derangement: convinced that the colonization of the void and abandonment of Mother Earth is an unholy abomination.

That’s bad enough, but after he is despatched as one of the six pathfinders constructing America’s first permanent orbiting space station, disaster is assured unless Sky can expose him and stop his deadly machinations…

Even as grim yet heady realism slowly grew into exuberant action and fantastic spectacle the strip moves into high dramatic gear as woman pilot (or “aviatrix”) ‘Mayday Shannon’ (9th March – 9th May) joins the squad. The Brass have high hopes that she will prove females can thrive in space too but didn’t reckon on her publicity-hungry greed and selfishness.

Luckily, the magnetic allure of the stars overcomes her bad side and Sky is on hand to deal with her ruthlessly unscrupulous manager…

A medical emergency tests the ingenuity of the dedicated spacers when project instigator and patriarch Doctor Royer is taken ill and Sky must ferry a surgeon to him in ‘To Save a Life’ (11th May – 10th June) after which the tireless Major and an unsuspected rival for Holly’s affections are stranded together on a New Guinea island of cannibals after losing control of ‘The Lost Capsule’, (11th June – 23rd September)…

During that heady meeting of ancient and modern cultures, inker and finisher Wally Wood was replaced by Dick Ayers (although the signatures remained “Kirby & Wood” for years more. Maybe the credit was for the writers?).

The incalculable terrors of space manifested with the next saga as ‘Alfie’ (24th September 1959 – 13th January 1960) carried the heroes of the New Frontier into the next decade. When young astronaut crewman Marek joins the orbiting space wheel he is soon periodically experiencing bizarre fits. Every four hours, for seven and a half minutes the young American seems to channel the personality of an aging East End cockney thief called Alfie Higgins. With the fear that it might be some kind of infectious space madness, Sky and Riot head for London to link up with Scotland Yard in a gripping mystery drama blending jewel robbery and murder with the eerie overtones of Dumas’ Corsican Cousins…

The ever-present tensions of the Cold War and Space Race come to the fore in ‘Refugee’ (14th January – 19th February) as Sky and the US Space Force aid the most unlikely and improbable Soviet defector escape to the West…

Now a fully-trusted and dedicated member of the squad, Mayday Shannon returns to solve an astronaut’s romantic dilemma by arranging a ‘Wedding in Space’, (20th February – 20th April) before the true threat of the outer depths is tackled as Sky meets astronautical guru and maverick Martin Strickland. A tempestuous but invaluable asset of the Space program, the intellectual renegade has proof of alien life but won’t share the ‘Message from Space’ (21st April – 22nd June) unless the military and civil authorities give him carte blanche to act on humanity’s behalf…

Counterbalancing such speculative sci fi aspects, the penultimate adventure is very much Earthbound and grounded in contemporary science and economics. In ‘Weather Watchers’ (23rd June – 27th December) greedy capitalist entrepreneur Octavius Alexia realises he can make huge profits by scamming insurers if he has access to the advance weather predictions afforded by the growing web of satellites orbiting the world.

To secure that valuable information he targets Mayday with the latest in espionage technologies and a male honey trap named J. Mansfield Sparks III. It might have all gone his way too if the woman hadn’t been so smart and his hired gigolo had remained unencumbered by conscience…

The strip ended in a rather rushed and rapid manner with ‘The Young Astronaut’ (28th December 1960 – 25th February 1961) wherein a new recruit proved to be too good to be true. Excelling at every aspect of the harsh training, Frederick T. “Fission” Tate had ulterior motives for getting into space. Luckily, suspicious Major Masters was right beside him on that first flight into the Wide Black Yonder…

As well as these stellar tales of stellar wonder, this volume also contains an abundance of visual extras such as a numerous covers and samples of Kirby’s contemporary comicbook work and original art panels in a ‘Focus’ section, which almost compensates for the absence of the Sunday colour pages. Almost…

This compilation comprises a meteoric canon of wonderment that no red-blooded armchair adventurer could possibly resist, but quite honestly, I simply cannot be completely objective about Sky Masters.

I grew up during this time period and the “Conquest of Space” is as much a part of my sturdy yet creaky old bones as the lead in the paint, pipes and exhaust fumes my generation absorbed. That it is also thrilling, challenging and spectacularly drawn is almost irrelevant to me, but if any inducement is needed for you to seek this work out let it be that this is indisputably one of Kirby’s greatest accomplishments: engaging, challenging and truly lovely to look upon.

Now go enjoy it…
© 2017 Herman and Geer Communications, Inc. d/b/a Hermes Press. Introduction and Focus © 2017 Daniel Herman.

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Fantastic Four Marvel Masterworks volume 9


By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Joe Sinnott, Frank Giacoia & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1846-6 (HB)                    : 978-0-7851-6760-0 (PB)

Cautiously bi-monthly and cover-dated November 1961, Fantastic Four #1 (by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, George Klein & Christopher Rule) was crude: rough, passionate and uncontrolled excitement. Thrill-hungry kids pounced on it and the raw storytelling caught a wave of change starting to build in America. It and succeeding issues changed comicbooks forever.

In eight short years FF became the indisputable central title and most consistently groundbreaking series of Marvel’s ever-unfolding web of cosmic creation: bombarding readers with a ceaseless salvo of new concepts and characters at a time when Kirby was in his conceptual prime and continually unleashing his vast imagination on plot after spectacular plot. Clearly inspired, Stan Lee scripted some of the most passionate superhero sagas that Marvel – or any publisher, for that matter – had or has ever seen.

Both were on an unstoppable roll, at the height of their creative powers, and full of the confidence that only success brings, with The King particularly eager to see how far the genre and the medium could be pushed.

This full-colour compendium – available in hardcover, trade paperback and digital editions – gathers Fantastic Four #82-93: a rollercoaster ride of incredible imagination and passion spanning January to December 1969 with Stan & Jack riding a wave that no fan realised was imminently ending…

As seen in that unforgettable premier issue, maverick scientist Reed Richards, his fiancé Sue Storm, their close friend Ben Grimm – with Sue’s tag-along teenaged brother Johnny – survived an ill-starred private space-shot after Cosmic Rays penetrated their ship’s inadequate shielding and mutated them all.

Richards’ body became elastic, Sue gained the power to turn invisible and the kid could turn into living flame, but poor, tragic Ben horrifically devolved into a shambling, rocky freak…

Following another frothy Lee Introduction, the magic resumes with Fantastic Four #82 as Susan Richards takes time off to tend her newborn son and Johnny’s Inhuman girlfriend Crystal steps in as her replacement. Before long, however, the substitute’s violent past reasserts itself as her mad cousin Maximus again attempts to conquer mortal humanity.

‘The Mark of… the Madman!’ (by Lee, Kirby & Joe Sinnott sees the quirky quartet invade hidden Inhuman enclave Attilan to aid of the imprisoned Royal Family and overcoming an entire race of subjugated super-beings before uniting to trounce the insane despot in ‘Shall Man Survive?’

All-out action then gives way – at least initially – to tense suspense for the start of a 4-part epic starring the team’s greatest foe. ‘His Name is Doom!’ finds Mr. Fantastic, the Human Torch, the Thing and Crystal making their home after failing to capture Maximus, only to be intercepted by Nick Fury and the super-spies of S.H.I.E.L.D. looking for a favour…

Steel-Shod Dictator Victor Von Doom has apparently devised unstoppable super-robots and Fury needs the FF to infiltrate the sovereign state of Latveria to ferret them out. However, it’s impossible to sneak up on the most paranoid man in the world and the heroes are easily intercepted and captured by the totalitarian tyrant’s security team.

‘Within This Tortured Land’ opens with them “guests” in Doom’s picturebook Ruritanian paradise, but even with their powers hypnotically cancelled out the valiant heroes soon discover the cruel iron within their velvet prison once the Monarch of Latveria begins testing his deadly “Doombots” on his own subjects.

When the automatons go berserk the entire postage-stamp kingdom is imperilled in ‘The Victims!’ and only the last-minute arrival of Invisible Girl Sue Richards allows the FF and the villagers to survive Doom’s cataclysmic failsafe plan.

The shocking final confrontation and conclusion manifest in ‘The Power and the Pride!’, wrapping up the saga in a bombastic blend of super-science, soap opera and mesmerising melodrama seldom seen in comicbooks before or since.

Fantastic Four #88 focuses on the five champions back in the USA and looking at an unconventional new house found by the determinedly domesticated Sue in her perpetual quest to carve out a relatively normal life for her new – and still unnamed – son.

Regrettably the trendy, extremely isolated detached dwelling in ‘A House There Was!’ has been designed by the team’s oldest enemy and no sooner do they all move in than ‘The Madness of the Mole Man!’ turns the deadly domicile against them even as the maniac’s goal of turning the entire world blind and wiping out the extended heroic family entirely comes within inches of succeeding…

The Thing takes centre-stage in the extended epic which completes this potent tome, as he is targeted and kidnapped to another world when ‘The Skrull Takes a Slave!’ in #90. Abducted to fight in gladiatorial games on a colony world patterned after Earth’s 1920s gangster era, ‘The Thing… Enslaved!’ introduces rival Skrull mobs vying for planetary supremacy and a noble slave destined to slaughter our shanghaied champion.

‘Ben Grimm, Killer!’ then ramps up the tension as Ben Grimm and mechanoid marvel Torgo discover that their home-worlds are hostage to their fortune and ferocity in the arena…

Meanwhile Reed, Johnny and Crystal have not been idle. While Ben is at ‘The Mercy of Torgo!’ (inked by Frank Giacoia) his Earthly brothers-in-arms are enacting a desperate plan to swoop in, save him and destroy the Skrulls planetary doom-weapon… a task undertaken and accomplished with great speed and in stunning style…

Added attractions here include the cover to the all-reprint Fantastic Four Annual #7, a contemporary photo-feature revealing each and every member of the burgeoning Marvel Bullpen, eight un-inked pencil pages from issues #89 and 90 plus the original cover art for FF #90 inked by Sinnott, a graphic bonanza no fan could resist.

These are the stories that confirmed Kirby as the absolute master of superhero storytelling and gave Marvel the push needed to overtake the decades-dominant DC. They’re also some of the very best comics ever produced and as addictively thrilling now as they ever were. This is a must-have book for all fans of Fights ‘n’ Tights graphic narrative.
© 1968, 1969, 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.