0050: This Man, This Artist

Jack Kirby lived to be just over 76 years old. That's how long ago Captain America started punching Nazis. On Monday, August 28th, 2017, it will be Jack Kirby's 100th birthday.

The cover on the left is for AMAZING HEROES #100 (Aug.1st, 1986), a fanzine published by Fantagraphics. AH began as a B&W magazine, the same size as Fantagraphics longer lived fanzine THE COMICS JOURNAL, although I remember it being thinner. As TCJ began to devote more space to the legal and ethical issues facing comics publishing and retail, AH took over the materials more commonly sought by fans, such as release dates, previews of upcoming series and events, histories of Marvel and DC heroes and news about licensing for film and merchandise. Whereas TCJ would publish 50 page career spanning interviews with writers and artists, AH would interview them about recent projects and career highlights. Beginning with issue #14, AH shrunk down to standard comic book dimensions. It was still printed in B&W on newsprint, but of the two fanzines it was the one whose readership more likely included comic fans who didn't buy anything else of magazine dimensions that wasn't designed for a bookshelf. For their convenience, AH would then fit in a comic storage box.

Seeing as how this Kirby tribute issue is 31 years old, the people paying tribute may not all be familiar to modern audiences, although most should be. I'm not going to make any assumptions about who you'll recognize, so...

• Steve Rude is an artist probably best known for drawing Mike Baron's Nexus (as his first and definitive penciller). Look for Rude's own character The Moth. He also drew a MISTER MIRACLE Special for DC that was on sale in January following this article.
• Richard Corben emerged from undergrounds to be one of the defining contributors to the American HEAVY METAL. His SHADOWS ON THE GRAVE mini-series for Dark Horse is ending soon.
• Robert Loren Fleming is a writer who collaborates with Keith Giffen on AMBUSH BUG.
• If you read comics, you already know who Frank Miller is.
• Michael Kraiger had just started contributing the feature "Zone" to Fantagraphics' anthology THREAT months before this article. It moved to Dark Horse a few years later. He then became an editor at Marvel.

• Jim Baikie worked on 2000A.D. and other Fleetway titles in the U.K. before pencilling DC's ELECTRIC WARRIOR.
• Jim Rohn contributed his "Holo Brothers" feature to Fantagraphics' THREAT anthology shortly before this article and their Monster Comics imprint published the 10 issue miniseries that continued the story.
• Gary Fields regularly contributed "Enigma Funnies" to THREAT but lettered comics for several other creators.
• John Romita briefly drew Captain America stories in the fifties.When Kirby left Marvel in 1970, Romita was assigned to follow him on FANTASTIC FOUR. He's probably best known for his work on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.
• Jack Katz created the genuine epic FIRST KINGDOM, currently complete in hardcover from Titan.
• Bob Laughlin self-published KITZ 'N' KATZ, which was distributed by Eclipse in the 80's.
• Arthur Byron Cover is best known as a science fiction author who has occasionally worked in comics, notably with Harlan Ellison on DAREDEVIL #'S 208-209.

• Flo Steinberg was, I think, technically the receptionist at Marvel in the 60's, but according to Stan Lee and others she effectively handled just about every task around the office not directly involving comics production, such as sorting fan mail and keeping the fan club memberships organized. At the end of the 60's she left for a non-comics editing job but was involved in undergrounds and early independents, eventually becoming a publisher herself.
• Rick Norwood was an editor for COMICS REVUE, a fanzine from the publishers of COMICS INTERVIEW.
• Dennis O'Neil is a writer who worked for Marvel briefly in the mid-60's and more prominently in the 80's but made comics history with Neal Adams for their work on Batman and Green Lantern in the early 70's.
• Julius Schwartz was an early fan of science fiction pulps in the late 1920's and went on to become an editor at DC, where he revived the company's Golden Age heroes in the late 50's as s-f based characters, creating the Justice League to replace the Justice Society.

• Barry Windsor Smith became famous for drawing the first CONAN THE BARBARIAN comics in 1970. Before that, he drew in a cruder style that looked like a Kirby imitation. In just a few years his art became both original and beautiful but he kept an affection for Kirby's characters. Two years before this article he finished and inked Herb Trimpe's pencils on the MACHINE MAN mini-series. In the 90's he created ARCHER AND ARMSTRONG, RUNE and STORYTELLER.
• Dave Garcia was the creator of Panda Khan, which was a back-up feature in A DISTANT SOIL before this article and afterwards became its own title from Abacus Press.
• Monica Sharp scripted and edited the Panda Khan stories, often with Garcia.
• Bob Wiacek is an inker who did some work at DC in the mid-70's just Kirby was leaving, but in 1977 began a long tenure at Marvel working on just about everything, including STAR WARS and IRON MAN.

• Dave Gibbons is a British artist who drew for both 2000 A.D. and DOCTOR WHO WEEKLY from the beginning of each. In America, he became famous for WATCHMEN with Alan Moore and GIVE ME LIBERTY with Frank Miller.
• Kevin O'Neill is another British artist, probably best known for MARSHALL LAW and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. That's his illustration of a 'Marshall Law' type gun on the left.
• Mike Royer is a longtime inker of Kirby who has followed him through several publishers for about 20+ years.
• Stephen DeStefano was doing the DC title 'MAZING MAN when this article came out. He went on to do brilliant humor comics (including INSTANT PIANO and JINGLE BELLE) whose audience was dwarfed by that for his animation work (including "Ren And Stimpy" and "The Venture Brothers").
• Charles Meyerson wrote text pieces for First Comics in the 80's.

• Steve Parkhouse is a British artist who sold some scripts to Marvel in the late 60's. When Marvel created a U.K. branch in 1972 it was initially all reprints, but Parkhouse was one of the early writers they called on when easing into publishing original stories. He wrote three different features for HULK COMIC (later HULK WEEKLY) but also drew his own scripts on the SPIRAL PATH feature and Alan Moore's BOJEFFRIES SAGA for Fleetway/Quality's WARRIOR. Eclipse reprinted SPIRAL PATH as a mini-series while this article was out. Today you can see his art in Dark Horse's RESIDENT ALIEN (highly recommended.
• Bill Mantlo was a prolific writer at Marvel in the mid-70's to mid-80's, probably most famous for MICRONAUTS and ROM, but also wrote INCREDIBLE HULK for years and all of the B&W magazine version of HOWARD THE DUCK. He also created Rocket Raccoon for an uncompleted science fiction serial. He has been unable to write for 25 due to traumatic injury by a car.

• Vince Argondezzi drew NEXT MAN for Comico before this article came out and drew INFINITY, INC. for DC afterwards.
• Rick Bryant iinked Keith Giffen's pencils on a one shot comic from Lodestone called THE MARCH HARE, which Giffen co-wrote with Robert Loren Fleming.
• Scott Hampton had completed SILVERHEELS for Pacific comics two years before this and adapted Robert E. Howard's 'Pigeons From Hell" for Eclipse two years later. Not to be confused with brother Bo Hampton, Scott is currently finishing P. Craig Russell's layouts in AMERICAN GODS: SHADOWS from Dark Horse.
• George Pratt works as much (if not more) as an illustrator than as a comic book artist. Like Hampton, he often paints comics and is probably best remembered for the graphic novel ENEMY ACE: WAR IDYLL.
• Larry Marder is the creator of TALES OF THE BEANWORLD, originally with Eclipse and now with Dark Horse. He was made Executive Director of Image to overcome their early chaos.

• Steve Ringgenberg is a freelance comics writer who also writes nonfiction about comics industry.
• Dark Horse Comics had only just started publishing when this article was released. The lineup shown here is, left to right, Concrete (by Paul Chadwick), Boris The Bear (by James Dean Smith), Garrett from "Mindwalk" (by Randy Stradley and Randy Emberlin), Mercy St. Clair from "Trekker" (by Ron Randall), Conrad from "Black Cross" (by Chris Warner), Roma (by John Workman) and Charlie from "Hellwalk, Inc." (by J.M. DeMatteis and Mark Badger). Boris had his own series and the others appeared in DARK HORSE PRESENTS. Two of them, however, hadn't even debuted when this illustration ran. "Trekker" would debut in #4 (01/87) and "Roma" would debut in #5 (02/87). The "Hellwalk, Inc." feature didn't start until issue #2 (undated; probably September), but the image of Charlie used here can be found in #1 as part of a small ad teasing the next issue. Also in #2, the art seen here is also used in a two page ad in the centerfold.

• J.M. DeMatteis is a comics writer who was writing war and horror stories for DC's anthologies in the late 1970's and eventually doing some super-hero back-up stories. In the early 80's he worked at Marvel, including writing DEFENDERS and CAPTAIN AMERICA. When this article came out he was writing the last stories of the original JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA series and would go on co-write, with Keith Giffen, the new JUSTICE LEAGUE series that would follow the LEGENDS mini-series. Those would be some of his best remembered scripts, along with the GARGOYLE mini-series for Marvel and MOONSHADOW and BLOOD: A TALE, both minis for Marvel's Epic line and both later reprinted by DC's Vertigo.
• Scott McCloud is now best known for the nonfiction comics-format book UNDERSTANDING COMICS, but at the time of this article he was known primarily as the creator of ZOT! from Eclipse.
• Jerry Ordway is both a writer and a penciller on numerous titles but his close association with Superman was beginning to develop after this article ran and ALL-STAR SQUADRON was cancelled.

Whew! And that's just half the article! Give yourself some time to read some Jack Kirby stories today and I'll complete this article during the week. Enjoy!