0051: This Artist, This Man

This is the second half of the post "This Man, This Artist" (#0050). The title is a play on the title of one of Jack Kirby's most beloved art jobs from FANTASTIC FOUR #51 (06/66), "This Man, This Monster". (If you haven't read it and plan to, be advised that the rest of this paragraph is a Spoiler. The post continues in the next paragraph.) It takes place after the first Galactus story (#48-50) with the team trying to get their lives back to normal. The Thing is bemoaning his condition when a stranger invites him in from the rain. The stranger (who is never named during the story) turns out to be a scientist jealous of Reed Richards' success and drugs Ben then uses his own technology to turn his own body into the Thing and the Thing's body back into Ben's original form. Hoping to infiltrate the Baxter Building as the Thing to get close enough to Reed to kill him, the stranger instead learns that Reed's public persona is his own and not the hypocritical façade he had always assumed it to be. He realizes that his chances to find success on his own terms were squandered when he focused all his energy on revenge. During a crisis, the stranger sacrifices himself to save Reed. His death causes the real Ben to revert to the Thing. Each of the three men, Ben, Reed and the stranger, are either men or monsters depending on perspective. Ben fears that he is a monster, Reed is characterized as one and the stranger discovers that he is one. The stranger isn't named in the story because it gives thing a kind of universality. He didn't do wrong because of his name or who he is, but because of the limited way in which he saw things. That could have been any of us.

The thing that makes Kirby so universally name dropped is not simply because he touched a large number of people, many of whom went on to be comics creators. Fans, critics and publishers keep revisiting his work because of the wide variety of future creators who imprinted on him like ducklings. Eventually the ducklings grow up and swim away from momma, but if you could see under the water then you'd know that their legs are still kicking the same way. 31 years ago when Fantagraphics published the one hundredth issue of AMAZING HEROES they noticed that it would coincide with Jack Kirby's birthday on August 28th. They then cast a wide net asking anyone working in the industry to contribute a brief message to Jack. Dozens replied with anecdotes, observations, sketches or some combination of those. I included scans of half of them in the previous post and now here's the rest, along with my own short descriptions of the contributors.

• William Messner-Loebs is now known primarily as a writer but he also drew his own scripts on JOURNEY, published by Aardvark-Vanaheim and then Fantagraphics. He had just concluded the series months before this article and had begun scripts on JONNY QUEST for Comico with various artists. He began several years at DC with art on WASTELAND and scripts for DR. FATE, FLASH and WONDER WOMAN. These tend to be overshadowed by scripts for THE MAXX and EPICURUS THE SAGE, both with Sam Keith.
• Gilbert Hernandez (who often signs 'Beto') is one of several Hernandez Brothers, two of whom (Gilbert and Jaime) are markedly more prolific. Along with Mario they created all of the features in the magazine-sized anthology LOVE & ROCKETS (which was recently revived as a new series). The serialized features (like "Palomar" and "Poison River") were gradually compiled in a series of trade paperbacks under the umbrella title LOVE & ROCKETS, even though some had only tenuous or no connections to the others.

Gilberto also contributed to the all-ages anthology MEASLES and girl-band-from-space series YEAH! as well as the adult oriented BIRDLAND, LUBA and GRIP.

• T.M. Maple was a prolific fan letter writer in the 70's and 80's, when nearly every title carried a letters' page. He died shortly after Jack.
• Don Heck was working at Marvel when Jack returned there in 1958. On more than one occassion Don would have an extended run pencilling a feature that Jack started and left, notably THE AVENGERS and IRON MAN. He passed away about a year after Jack did.
• Al Gordon is more likely to be the inker who started at Marvel in the late 70's rather than the Golden Age penciller, if only because he signed off here with the phrase "'Nuff Said!" He also worked on DNAGENTS for Eclipse while Jack was drawing DESTROYER DUCK.
• This statement by Wally Wood was provided to the editors by Jim Valentino from materials prepared for a convention booklet, since Wood had died in 1981. A few years after this article when the Harvey Awards added a Jack Kirby Hall of Fame category, Wood was the first in.

• Steven Grant started writing for Marvel in the late 70's after being published in STAR*REACH and other independents. He went from the HULK! magazine and SPIDEY SUPER STORIES to the PUNISHER mini-series (collected as CIRCLE OF BLOOD) and First Comics' WHISPER when this article came out. Two years ago he brought back Warren's "The Rook" for Dark Horse.
• Milton Canniff was the creator of the newspaper strips TERRY AND THE PIRATES and STEVE CANYON. He was ten years older than Jack and died a couple years after this article ran.
• Don Rico was a Golden Age contemporary of Jack's who did art for Victor Fox, Lev Gleason and others. He went to work for Marvel in 1942 to draw Captain Marvel after Simon and Kirby left. He stayed there right through the change to Atlas until the restructuring in 1957.
• Michael T. Gilbert is most famous for refurbishing a forgotten Golden character (Mr. Monster) and has a regular column in the magazine ALTER EGO.

• Joshua Quagmire was the creator of Cutey Bunny and now works primarily through his website.
• Chas. Gillen, according to several online sources, was the real name of the Charlton artist who signed his work "J. Gill". I recognize Gillen's name (and stylized signature) from fanzines like this one, but I can't recall seeing his (or Gill's) name after the 1980's.
• Stan Lee-- if I have to explain to you who Stan Lee is then you might be reading this blog by mistake. Perhaps I can interest you in a cat video?
• [Jim] Steranko had a pair of short-lived action series for Harvey comics in 1966 when he got a chance to ink Jack Kirby on the S.H.I.E.L.D. feature in STRANGE TALES. He soon began finishing Jack's layouts and eventually was pencilling and writing the feature, taking it to a full-length monthly NICK FURY series in 1968. By the end of that year he began short stints on X-MEN and CAPTAIN AMERICA. His work on all three titles was reprinted as Baxter paper mini-series a few years before this article appeared.

• Burne Hogarth is another artist whose comments were provided by Jim Valentino. He was both a commercial illustrator and comic book artist. He drew the Tarzan Sunday newspaper strip for over a decade, but today is probably best known for a series of instructional books about drawing anatomy, especially anatomy in motion.
• Roy Thomas became a comics fan in the 1940's, contributing to the pioneering fanzine ALTER EGO, and currently edits the modern version of it published by TwoMorrows. In the mid-1960's he began a long association with Marvel, usually succeeding Stan Lee's writing duties on various titles as the company's line expanded and Lee's editing duties became more demanding. Eventually, he succeeded Lee as Editor-In-Chief as well. Most notably, he took over X-MEN and AVENGERS. He also talked the company into abandoning it's policy of avoiding licensing characters in order to adapt the first CONAN comics, which he wrote for over a decade. He also wrote the adaptation of STAR WARS in 1977. In the 1980's he became DC's go to guy regarding Golden 

Age characters, scripting ALL-STAR SQUADRON, YOUNG ALL-STARS and INFINITY, INC. When CRISIS eliminated that history, he was given a new monthly title, SECRET ORIGINS, to write or edit a new one. He may be the only person working in comics to have created as many durable, recurring characters as Stan and Jack.

• Jaime Hernandez, who often signs as "Xaime", is one of the Hernandez Brothers (see Gilberto, above). Jaime did a number of mini-series that spun off supporting characters from LOVE & ROCKETS, such as PENNY CENTURY and WHOA, NELLIE! and numerous album covers.
• Don Simpson is the creator of the long-lived super-hero parody "Megaton Man", but Dover Publications has just recently collected his science fiction opus BORDER WORLDS into a single volume for the first time ever.
• Jonathan Peterson became an editor at DC around the time that this article ran. By the time he left in 2000 he had also done some scripts.

• Rick Veitch is a writer and artist who has worked for Marvel and DC but might be best remembered for his creator owned work published with smaller companies, such as BRAT PACK, MAXIMMORTAL and RARE BIT FIEND. In the 1970's he left undergrounds to work in the majors, doing art for SGT. ROCK (DC), colors for FLASH GORDON (Western), letters for STAR WARS (Marvel) and all three for his own scripts in HEAVY METAL. After providing art on SWAMP THING for a year and a half he took over scripting when Alan Moore departed, staying for another year and a half. His website is both beautiful and easy to navigate.
• Gil Kane was working at DC in the 1950's when Jack left to join Marvel. At about that time, Kane was playing a huge part in launching DC's Silver Age, leaving behind "Rex the Wonder Dog" and "Trigger Twins" for the new "Green Lantern" and "The Atom". Beginning in the mid-60's Kane became one of the select few to work at both Marvel and DC simultaneously. He was still working for both when this article was published and continued to do

so right through the 90's. He passed away in 2000.

• Mark Alexander was an inker discovered by DC's title NEW TALENT SHOWCASE, but at the time of this article was working on one of Marvel's "Official Handbook" series, which must have forced him to think about numerous Kirby caharcter designs.
• Scott Shaw! is (like Fred Hembeck and Sergio Aragones) one of those rare humor cartoonists who becomes tied into super-hero comics for reasons that become obscured with time. His anthropomorphic comics appeared in QUACK! (published by Star*Reach) along with Dave Sim, Frank Brunner, Steve Leialoha and others. He worked on Marvel's Hanna-Barbera titles in the late 70's while Jack was there (see the Howard the Duck post, #0045) He was drawing CAPTAIN CARROT for DC while Jack Kirby was doing CAPTAIN VICTORY for Pacific Comics. Shaw brought unpublished stories of features from QUACK! to Pacific, which became WILD ANIMALS, but Pacific went under before the second issue was ready. At the time of this article he was probably working in animation, but clearly made time to write a substantial entry. In fact some of the submissions for this issue were so long that they were published as full articles in this same issue. They include "Kirby!" by Doug Moench, "Jack Kirby's Gods & Heroes" by Greg Potter, "The King And I" (an interview) by Mark Evanier, "10 Great Jack Kirby Stories" by Richard Howell, "That Old Jack Magic" by Greg Theakston and reviews of key issues by R.A. Jones in the same style normally used to review current comics.

Well, I hope that these two posts provide you with several days of amused reading. I also hope that Gary Groth doesn't have a conniption fit over me reproducing so many pages that he never had any intention of reprinting in a million years anyway. It'll also give you something to point to the next time someone says, "You can't get that many people with that many different tastes to agree on anything..."