KIRBY WITHOUT WORDS

Stan Lee told stories with words. Jack Kirby told stories with pictures. The two didn't always agree.

[kirbywithoutwords]

Kirby Without Words Mentioned At NYCC Panel

Elana Levin hosted a panel at NYCC19 on the topic of Jack Kirby’s Women. Regrettably, I couldn’t be there. But I was present in spirit, thanks to a few Kirby Without Words examples that were included in the slideshow. Summary: The Beat has a nice write-up. Video: The Jack Kirby Museum uploaded a partial video. Photo: The above photo is from a Publisher’s Weekly article. If you follow Kirby Without Words, you’ve probably noticed it’s been on hiatus for awhile. I do plan to bring it back, but right now I’m focusing on getting my life a little more stable. When it returns, it’ll be as part of my Patreon-supported research of comics and video game history. If you’d like to donate a few dollars to the cause, include a note that you’d like to see Kirby Without Words return!

[katewillaert]

Kirby Meets Kirby

Monday, August 27 marks 100 years since the birth of Marvel universe co-creator Jack Kirby. Coincidentally, August 2017 also marks 25 years since Nintendo released Kirby’s Dream Land in the US. Naturally, I couldn’t help but imagine what would happen if the two met…

Want to view it all in a single image? Non-Tumblr version here.

[kirbywithoutwords]

Hi everyone, I’d like to apologize for the delay in new posts, and assure you that updates will resume shortly.

Between my day job as a UI/UX designer, the writing I do outside of work, and the fan art I create, I have a tendency to over-commit myself. I’m trying to find a solution to that, maybe by making this a Patreon-supported blog. In the meantime, please enjoy this Kirby tribute I created for his 100th birthday. Without words, naturally.

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Tales Of Suspense #73 (Page 4)

There are three Sleeper robots hidden around Germany, and the Nazis are trying to activate them. 

In these Kirby layouts finished by George Tuska, it seems pretty clear to me that activating them is a suicide mission, blowing up the foolish and/or devoted Nazis given the task. But the caption in the final panel claims the explosion occurs “miles away.” When it happens again in the following issue with a different Nazi, Stan Lee has no problem confirming for us that this Nazi is definitely very dead. Maybe something a Comic’s Code reviewer caught the first time and was overlooked the second time?

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Another time, Jack took a call. A voice on the other end said, 'There are three of us down here in the lobby. We want to see the guy who does this disgusting comic book and show him what real Nazis would do to his Captain America.' To the horror of others in the office, Kirby rolled up his sleeves and headed downstairs. The callers, however, were gone by the time he arrived. Years later, he told an interviewer, 'I once got a letter from a Nazi who told me to pick out any lamppost I wanted on Times Square, because when Hitler arrived, they’d hang me from it. It was typical of a genre of fans who have long since died out.'

Kirby: King Of Comics by Mark Evanier (pages 55-56)

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Fantastic Four #44 (Page 20)

Note the dramatic change to two of the panels above, moving Sue and Medusa off-camera in the panels where they get captured. 

The pencil stat comes from Jack Kirby Collector #33, with a caption that asks, “we’re unsure why Stan requested the art change. Ideas, anyone?” I asked John Morrow if he’d received any good theories, but unfortunately he didn’t get anything solid. He did mention that Goodman or Lee might’ve been extra  heavy-handed around this time in reaction to an influx of new competition, especially a new superhero line by Captain America co-creator Joe Simon.

Personally, I’m also at a loss. I’d be tempted to speculate that maybe Stan Lee was nervous about the stack of letters he might get from two women becoming damsels in back-to-back panels, but the old “Sue isn’t doing enough” topic hadn’t popped up in the letters page in a long while.

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Tales To Astonish #73 (Page 7)

Jack Kirby only did the layouts for this story, so there are a lot of notes for artist Bob Powell. Kirby had a lot to say about this panel in particular, with notes going down both sides of the panel that were sadly later chopped off.

But what’s still there is very exciting! It turns out Kirby intended the scene to show a planet filled with Watchers!

AFTER YEARS OF SEARCHING A MILLION GALAXIES, LEADER HAS FOUND HOME PLANET OF THESE AWESOME CREATURES -- IT IS A PARADISE PLANET ON THE VERY EDGE OF THE [KNOWN] UNIVERSE -- UNREACHABLE -- EVEN BY MOST ADVANCED CREATURES -- MAKE SCENE BEAUTIFUL AND AWE [INSPIRING] -- WATCHERS ARE [ALMOST GOD LIKE (unreadable)] WITH [ALMOST GOD LIKE (unreadable)]

Unfortunately, most of that second part is covered up by a giant note specifying “ONLY _ONE_ WATCHER.” Maybe Stan Lee felt it was better for the character to remain mysterious and one-of-a-kind.

But the really exciting thing is that if you look at the border on the right, you can see a sliver of what appears to be a fully inked background of a busier, less empty scene that’s been pasted over! 

Maybe one day a stat of the page will surface, or we’ll be able to do an x-ray scan to view the originally planned scene (it looks like the Watcher is reaching down to pet a dog or pat a kid on the head?). Or I suppose some day an owner of the page might decide its worth devaluing the art to peel off the top layer and see what’s underneath.

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Fantastic Four #43 (Page 15)

This page immediately follows the previous panel. Sue decides to attack, but Stan writes it as Reed instructing her to do “Plan ‘R!’”

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Fantastic Four #43 (Page 14)

There are some who feel that when I point out differences between Kirby’s and Lee’s characterization of female characters that I’m reading things into the art that aren’t necessarily there.

Honestly, sometimes even I question myself. Sometimes I err on the side of caution and opt to not post a panel if it seems too ambiguous. Above is an example of such a panel. My first reaction was “ha ha, Jack has Reed holding Sue back from attacking while Stan has her asking Reed to take action! This is hilarious!” But the more I looked at it, the more I second-guessed myself. Is Reed really holding her back, or just holding her? Am I misreading the art? A few months ago the original art for this page appeared online, and it confirmed my initial reading. I’ve darkened the partially cut off margin area to make it easier to read. Jack has Reed saying EASY, SUE!

I can’t tell you how much I wish I knew what SUE SAYS. I looked at margin notes from surrounding issues to try and find examples of letters that match the top of what’s there, and my best estimate is that she’s saying “YOU BARBARIANS! with the closing quotation mark being on the next line.

[kirbywithoutwords]

Fantastic Four #40 (Page 20), #43 (Page 11), Annual #3 (Page 2)

The Thing crushes Dr. Doom’s hands in Fantastic Four #40. He’s still recovering three months later in #43, where he says he plans to unleash a new machine once his hands are healed. 

But when he finally uses the machine one month later* in Annual #3, his hands are clearly still hurting, even though the dialogue makes no mention of it. In Mike Gartland’s A Failure To Communicate you can see the margin notes telling Stan: “THIS [ripping the newspaper] HURTS HIS HANDS AND MAKES HIM ANGRIER -- HE’LL GET EVEN NOW.”

Gartland’s speculates that Lee ignored the note "in favor of high drama,” which is a completely plausible explanation. I do have an alternate theory, though. What if he didn’t see the pages for Annual #3 until it was too late to change the “as soon as my hands are healed” line, and decided to play Doom as healed in order to cover for his flub?

Mind you, I’m not saying I’m right and Gartland’s wrong. I’m just offering another possibility. *A rambling aside: When was Annual #3 released? Copyright records indicate #43 went on sale July 8, 1965, but they didn’t bother to file Annual #3. This helpful resource has dates that match up with the copyright dates plus dates for some annuals that weren’t filed. I’m not sure where they’ve gotten these additional dates, but they place Annual #3 as coming out the first week of August.

The editor’s note in #43 mentions Annual #3 is “now on sale,” but notes like this were written months in advance, and it wouldn’t be the first time Lee claimed something was “now on sale” that wasn’t just yet.

[kirbywithoutwords]

The Fathers Of The Marvel Age Of Comics

Sunday marks 99 years since Jack Kirby was born on August 28, 1917. To celebrate the birthday weekend, I’ve assembled visual timeline of what Lee & Kirby looked like through the ages. Note that Stan Lee didn’t start sporting the mustache until Jack Kirby left. Any depiction of Marvel in the ‘60s that shows Lee with a mustache is inaccurate. 

When Colleen Doran was illustrating Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir, I don’t know whether Lee requested she draw the mustache during that period or if it was just down a lack of research materials, but it kind of complimented the inaccuracy of Stan Lee’s memories.

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Fantastic Four #43 (Page 13)

In a single caption, Stan Lee manages to make both women equally ineffective.

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Journey Into Mystery #119 (Pages 9-11 & 13)

These panels might require some additional context to read “without words.”

Odin is the creator of the Destroyer, and only he has the power to stop it. It was created as an empty vessel that requires a living consciousness inside it. Loki convinces a human (the guy in the yellow shirt) to enter it and fight Thor.

Eventually Odin is alerted to the fight, just as Thor is using the man’s body as a shield to keep the Destroyer from destroying him.

In the wordless version, it looks to me like Odin is the one who forces the man’s consciousness back into his own body, and then sets the temple crumbling. The final panel here shows Odin looking down over Thor like he’s just finished casting a spell.

Stan’s dialogue explains that the man willingly left the Destroyer, while his body language seems to say “let go of me!”

On the next page, the man exposits that Thor is demolishing the temple, when Thor’s body language suggests he is alarmed by what’s happening.

At the end, when Odin is looking all-powerful, Thor is thanking him for not doing anything. Earlier in the story there was a great amount of tension built up over whether Odin would be alerted in time to stop the Destroyer, which becomes a huge anti-climax if Odin wasn’t needed at all.

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X-Men #9 (Page 4) & X-Men #12 (Page 13)

In both instances where Professor X says Lucifer was the one who crippled him, the margin notes say nothing of the sort. I’ve darkened the margins to make them a little easier to read.

#9 Page 4 (Panels 1-3):

I’M DESCENDING TO FIND LUCIFER

IF I DON’T MAKE IT - [?] X-MEN

I’M DOWN IN SUBTERRANEAN DISNEYLAND

#12 Page 13 (Panel 1):

BACK TO PRESENT - PROF AT DESK WITH HEAD IN HANDS. SURROUNDED BY X-MEN -- HE DESCRIBES SOUND - FURY - CHAOS - EXPERIENCED IN CRASH

The second of these two issues was drawn by the legendary Alex Toth with layouts provided by Kirby, which is why the margin notes are so much more in-depth.

In his A Failure To Communicate column, Mike Gartland wonders if Kirby intended to reveal in #13 that Juggernaut crippled Professor X and Lee jumped the gun in #9 (it’s likely Stan Lee’s handwriting above that says “IT WAS LUCIFER WHO CAUSED PROF X’S AFFLICTION”).

Being that Stan Lee always goes with alliterative names, “Cain Marko” is likely a Kirby creation, a fitting name for a story about a conflict between two brothers. It’d make thematic sense for Marko to be the one responsible, especially in a story title “The Origin Of Professor X!”  

The origin is told in a series of flashbacks split up between a framing sequence where Juggernaut is approaching the mansion. Each flashback ends with some sort of violence or catastrophe, as if building to a big reveal. The problem is that the final flashback shows a Xavier running out of a cave-in as Marko becomes Juggernaut.

Gartland suggests that perhaps the character in the final flashback wasn’t meant to be Xavier at all, and that Xavier lost the use of his legs after the car wreck in the previous flashback. I’m not so sure, because it’d mean introducing a new character at the end of the story, who Xavier somehow heard the story from.

I don’t have access to page 12 where the car wreck happens, but the first panel of page 13 above shows him reacting to the memory of it -- the panel where he’d most likely reveal that THIS is when his legs were injured -- and the margin notes make no mention of it.

If Marko wasn’t responsible, it honestly seems like kind of a missed opportunity. The one last possibility is that maybe one of the panels of the final flashback was redrawn, and Kirby had Xavier become injured in the cave-in? Unfortunately I don’t have access to margin notes from that page, so there’s no way to confirm either way.

[kirbywithoutwords]

Avengers #19 & 20 (Letters Pages)

With the launch of DC Rebirth and the announcement of a new Marvel NOW, it’s a fitting coincidence that my last several entries have been about Avengers #16, since it happens to be the Marvel U’s first major shake-up.

In this issue, all the remaining founding members leave the team (Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, and Wasp) and are replaced by former villains (Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver). Captain America -- who is not an actual founding member -- stays behind as the team’s first regular leader. In a further shake-up, Wasp and Ant-Man retire entirely from being superheroes, their solo feature cancelled and replaced by the Sub-Mariner.

Did fans react differently to major changes back in the ‘60s than they do in the internet age? Thankfully, Stan Lee helps us answer that question by printing an equal number of negative reactions along with the positive. 

“You have messed up the whole team.”

“If any super-hero leaves a team after only a little over a year of issues published, I’d say he doesn’t have much stamina!”

“I’m distraught at the crass, senseless manipulation of my favorite superheroes.”

“I feel nasty today, so let me bring up another point. Aside from a few blasts, your lettercols have been free from defamatory letters. Natch, this letter, along with countless others, will be censored. It seems to me that Marvel censorship is carried a bit too far.”

The answer is no. They weren’t very different at all.

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Avengers #16 (Pages 12 & 13)

Captain America’s trip to South America to save Rick Jones from Baron Zemo left them without transportation home. While wandering the jungles, Cap spots “a white man -- being attacked by a leopoard!!” Presumably Cap considers it to be notable that there’s another white man out here?

On the next page, the margin notes specify that the man is a South American. Lee obliges by having him say “señor,” while Rick Jones now considers it notable that this South American speaks English. 

Was Stan Lee cranking through pages so fast while writing dialogue that he didn’t bother to correct himself when new information was presented? Or is this just an example of a self-edit he missed?

[kirbywithoutwords]

 Fantastic Four #40 (Page 3) & Avengers #16 (Page 2)

As a change of pace, Stan Lee decides to have Reed tell someone other than Sue how to do their job. Shouting “now!” at Daredevil seems like it’d be more distracting than helpful.

It’s becoming contagious! One month earlier, over in Avengers, Iron Man tells Thor how to use his own powers. But when Thor says “our power alone is not enough,” Kirby actually intended Thor to be talking about a new use for his hammer. From the margins:

GIANT MAN SAYS THEY [??] BREAK [??]

THOR SAYS THIS’LL TAKE THE WISDOM OF ODIN

DRAMATIC CLOSEUP OF THOR THRUSTING HAMMER FORWARD AGGRESSIVELY AT THE READER -- HE SAYS “--OR THE [SIXTH] USE OF THIS HAMMER”

“Of course! I should have thought of it myself!” almost sounds like Lee acknowledging and hanging a lampshade on how hacky this overused exposition trick is, but it’s also possible he intended no irony. After all, what other explanation is there for Thor never having used this ability in previous battles where it would’ve come in handy, other than that he simply forgets he can do it?

Kirby notes that Thor is addressing the reader in panel two. Is this an indication that even Kirby didn’t take these stories that seriously?

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Avengers #16 (Page 1) & Fantastic Four #40 (Page 14)

Kirby’s margin notes are much more extensive on Avengers #14-16, most likely because he wanted to make sure artist Dick Ayers understood what was happening in his layouts.

In contrast, when drawing Fantastic Four #40 the next month, Kirby felt comfortable enough labeling the three-panel page of Ben’s forced transformation with the simple note: “SELF-EXPLANATORY.”

But back to the first page of Avengers #16, here’s what I can decipher:

WASP - GIANT MAN (IN OLD COSTUME) IRON MAN AND THOR FACE UNSEEN ENEMY OFF PAGE AS PEOPLE IN PANIC FLEE FROM SAME UNSEEN ENEMY - SOME PEOPLE [?] SHOULDER -- [?] (LIKE TIMES SQUARE) BUILDINGS [?] - ABANDONED CARS

The interesting thing here is that he specified Giant-Man’s “old costume” and that someone else crossed that out. Giant-Man's new costume debuted just two months previous to Avengers #15 -- which this story is a direct continuation of -- and I’m betting Kirby only got word of the change between these two issues. 

It wouldn’t be the first time; after Iron Man’s mask was tweaked in his solo series to have rivets on his forehead instead of the two points, Lee had Kirby’s next Avengers issue modified at the last minute to include the change (you can see the white-out on the original art).

So I’m guessing Kirby included that note because he was being continuity-conscious, not realizing the new costume had already been drawn in the previous issue.