Inglourious Basterds #1

These have been making the rounds the last couple of days ... CHUD posts a series of faux Inglourious Basterds comic book covers they found on Harry Knowles' Twitter feed that look like they were created in the 1970s. Cool stuff; go check out the rest of them.

Update: The covers were created by Martin Duhovic.

Stuck in the Middle

Libraries | There's still more follow-up to the removal this week of Stuck in the Middle: Seventeen Comics from an Unpleasant Age from two middle-school libraries in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Teachers still have access to the anthology -- it depicts language and sexual reference that at least one parent found objectionable -- and may use it in class.

An editorial in the Argus Leader calls the school board's decision "a reasonable approach that balances the need to provide suitable guidance for kids when dealing with sensitive topics without falling prey to censorship." CBS affiliate KELO, meanwhile, continues its coverage of the story with a look at how books are selected for libraries. Tom Spurgeon also has reaction from two of the anthology's contributors. [Argus Leader, KELOLAND.com]

Creators | Jeet Heer digs up writings by a young Dave Sim expressing, in no uncertain terms, his disdain for the work of Jack Kirby. [Comics Comics]

Creators | Cartoonist Jeff Keane discusses the evolution of The Family Circus, IDW Publishing's new archival collection, and the future of newspapers. [ICv2.com]

Batman and Robin, by Frank Quitely

Creators | Thought Bubble interviews artists Frank Quitely and Charlie Adlard. "When you work on a title or character that everyone knows loads of people say 'I hate his Wolverine' or 'I hate his Superman' or whatever," Quitely says, "because it jars with their own favourite versions of the characters -- no one ever says 'I hate his We3 animals' because they didn’t start reading it with any preconceptions or prejudices. From that point of view it’s always easier to work on new stuff, or your own stuff, but I enjoy the challenge of getting to do well-known characters and I generally don’t really care if some folk don’t like what I do, it’s personal taste, and I’ve got a pretty thick skin." [via ArtPatient]

Creators | Collaborators Martin Conaghan and Will Pickering talk at length about their historical graphic novel Burke and Hare. [Forbidden Planet International]

Creators | Warren Ellis offers for download his scripts for issues of Fell, Desolation Jones and Ministry of Space. [Warren Ellis]

Webcomics | El Santo spotlights a handful of politically conservative webcomics. [The Webcomic Overlook]

Comics | The Son of Satan is back, baby! [The Cool Kids Table]

The Archon by Adam Prosser

Johanna Draper Carlson points out that Adam Prosser has posted his 24-Hour Comics Day comic on the web. It's one part Kirby's New Gods, one part Archie Comics and all parts awesome -- heck, it's likely the coolest thing you'll see today.

Welcome to Comics College, a (sort of) monthly feature here at Robot 6 where we provide an introductory guide to some of the most significant artists, writers and creators in comics and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.

Little did I know when I chose Jack Kirby as my second entry more than a month ago that his name would be splayed across the headlines of comics blogs and message boards as his family announced their intention to attempt to win back the copyrights to various Marvel characters. Despite the questionable rancor from some parties, the news provides a perfect opportunity to revisit Kirby's work, as he remains one of the great colossi of American Comics, perhaps its most significant creator, depending upon who you talk to. He's certainly one of the most prolific.

But Kirby can be tough for some folks. Modern readers used to the Image school of exaggeration or a more photorealistic (or PhotoShopped at any rate) style of superhero comics tend to balk at Kirby's blocky, dynamic style, especially in his later period when it verged on outright expressionism. What's more, he was always a better artist and idea man than a writer, and his dialogue when working solo can come off as turgid and forced, especially when he's trying to sound "hip" and "with it." I know as a teenager and young adult I found Kirby's work initially too odd and different from what I was used to as a comic reader to enjoy. It wasn't until I forced myself to sit down and immerse myself into his world that I learned to appreciate his oeuvre and became a devotee.

Keep in mind: Kirby's output was so vast that to try to encapsulate it here in a simple blog post is a mug's game. In other words, there are going to be omissions -- volumes left out and series ignored, either due to the fact that I simply haven't read them yet or because I just didn't have the time and space to include them here. I feel confident enough in my recommendations, but feel free to pick on my negligence in the comments section.

Why he's important

Do I really have to explain this one? The man's biography and bibliography follows the entire history of American comic books to the present day. You name it -- romance comics, war sagas, the early Golden Age, the later Silver and Bronze periods -- he had a hand in it, especially in the development of the superhero genre. Only Robert Crumb and Charles Schulz have had as wide, diverse and lasting an influence, and neither of them has produced as varied a resume as Kirby did.

But even beyond his considerable influence, or the fact that he helped create some of the most beloved comic characters around, Kirby's work remains as vital and alive as it was when it first appeared decades ago. To read Kirby is to visit a universe that crackles (sometimes literally) with energy and motion, where violence is the most intricate of ballets and one's sense of scale and grandeur is only limited by your imagination. And Kirby's imagination was boundless.

Where to start

Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Vol. 1

The best place to be introduced to Kirby is with his arguably most famous series, The Fantastic Four. I wouldn't recommend picking up at the beginning with FF #1, however. The early issues are certainly entertaining, but the series doesn't come into full flower until about midway through, say, after issue #30. The most obvious introductory point for newcomers then would be the "Galactus trilogy" (issues #48-50) in which we are introduced to the planet-eating galoot himself and the Silver Surfer. It was here that Kirby truly showed the sort of epic storytelling he was capable of. You can find those tales collected in either the massive Fantastic Four Omnibus Vol. 2, Vol. 5 in the Marvel Masterworks series or Vol. 3 of the Essential Fantastic Four line.

After the FF, Kirby's most acclaimed work is easily the "Fourth World" saga he did for DC in the early 1970s, after an ugly falling out with Marvel. The saga spread across four comics -- The New Gods, The Forever People, Mister Miracle and, yes, Jimmy Olsen -- until DC got skittish and pulled the plug. The company has recently reprinted these comics in four $50 volumes. You'll definitely want these instead of the earlier paperback versions, as they are in full color, print the comics in the order they appeared on the newsstand and includes The Hunger Dogs, Kirby's attempt at a conclusion many years later. Feel free to start with Vol. 1, but you may be better off using Vol.2, or Vol. 3 as a taste test, since they has some of the very best stories from that saga, including "Happyland," "The Glory Boat," "The Pact" and yes, an appearance by comedian Don Rickles. Starting in the middle is also a good way to get a feel for the mythos Kirby was attempting to create and get used to the, admittedly stilted, dialogue. Don't worry, you won't get that confused, jumping in midstream.

From there you should read

Kamandi Archives Vol. 1

Once you've had a taste, feel free to go back and explore the rest of Kirby's Fourth World and FF. When you're finished though, you'll want to move on to Kamandi. This Planet-of-the-Apes-style, "boy in a apocalyptic world ruled by animals" is, in my opinion, the best of Kirby's post-Darkseid material. DC has put two Archive editions of Kamandi so far and they remain one of the best ways to get ahold of the series, barring digging through longboxes for musty back issues. Hopefully they'll re-release the series in updated hardcover editions similar to the Fourth World books, in the near future.

Kirby created a lot of great characters for Marvel with Stan Lee, including the Hulk and the X-Men, but easily his best work for the House of Ideas after FF is The Mighty Thor. Again, it's the sense of scale and mythology that Kirby brings to the material that makes it sing. You can best available in the Marvel Masterworks or Essential collections. As with Fantastic Four, though, you'll want to start with the later volumes. It doesn't really get cooking until after the whole Jane Foster/Don Blake romance is tossed aside and Kirby and Lee start really exploring the whole Norse mythology angle. At the very least begin with Vol. 2 of either collection.

Further research

For a long time, Kirby's early collaborations with Joe Simon have been ignored by fans and historians in favor of focusing on his more recent and celebrated work with Marvel and DC. That's thankfully starting to change now as a number of publishers are re-releasing material from those early days.

Captain America fans will no doubt want to start with the Golden Age Marvel Masterworks collections that have been coming out at a steady clip (three volumes so far). The more casual fan, however, may be happy with The Best of Simon & Kirby from Titan Books or the even recent Sandman collection from DC. Titan plans to release a number of Simon and Kirby collections showcasing their work in romance, crime and other genres apart from superheroes.

As seminal as those early Captain America stories were, Kirby's much later run on Captain America has justly earned plaudits as well. I'd recommend picking up Bicentennial Battles as a starting point, which finds Steve Rogers traversing across American history thanks to a puckish Buddhist.

Ancillary material

OMAC: One Man Army Corps

Kirby's run on Black Panther, collected in two volumes, is fun little ride, with the Wakandan prince getting into one nail-biting scrape after another. Devil Dinosaur, which dares to tell the tender story of a vicious red dinosaur and his tender friendship with a cro-magnon tween,  is amusing and full of high melodrama, but remains perhaps a bit too silly, even by Kirby's standards, to be regarded as essential. OMAC: One Man Army Corps offers an interesting flip-side perspective to Kamandi, but lacks the latter's spark and feels a trifle rote at times. Unfortunately, as with a lot of Kirby's DC work, it ends just as things start to get interesting.

The Eternals and The Demon have both, as of yet, been unread by me, but I know plenty of folks that regard them very highly.

Avoid

Stan and Jack's initial run on the X-Men is rather uninspired and devoid of the spark and joie de vivre that graced their other work from the same period. It would take Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum to breathe life into the material.

Honestly, there's very little of Kirby's work that's not worth at least a sideways glance. Having said that, a lot of the material he did towards the end of his life is rather weak and feels at times recycled or ill thought-out. Thus, comics like the Super-Powers mini-series or Captain Victory are really only for the dedicated Kirby fan.

(Thanks to Tom Spurgeon, Tim O'Shea and Tom Bondurant for their help with this entry.)

Next month: Osamu Tezuka

The Avengers #4

Creators | Using the copyright-reclamation bid by Jack Kirby's children as a news hook, Geoff Boucher takes a look at the artist's legacy, his creative partnership with Stan Lee, and his bitter feud with Marvel. "A lot more people know the name Stan Lee than the name Jack Kirby," says daughter Lisa Kirby. “I’m not putting down Stan Lee’s talents but it’s difficult for us to see that he does dominate the credit. That doesn’t reflect the work or the reality. To see Jack Kirby in small letters and Stan Lee in big letters, that’s hard for us.” [Los Angeles Times]

Publishing | Jim Shelley considers what effect the recession may be having on the illegal downloading of comic books. He finds there are more downloads, but they've become more difficult to track. [Flashback Universe, via Kleefeld on Comics]

2009 Shuster Awards art by Francis Manapul

Awards | Following comments posted last week by Alex Hoffman lamenting that webcomics creators are limited to one category in the Joe Shuster Awards, organizers are revisiting the issue and requesting feedback on eligibility. [Joe Shuster Awards]

Conventions | New York Anime Festival drew a reported 21,388 attendees to the Javits Center over the weekend -- up 16 percent from last year -- where publishers like Del Rey Manga, Tokyopop, Vertical and Viz Media announced new license acquisitions. [New York Anime Festival]

Conventions | Johanna Draper Carlson, Scott Edelman and Justin Kownacki are among the first out of the gate with their reports from the Small Press Expo. [SPX]

Long Beach Comic Con

Conventions | The local newspaper previews the inaugural Long Beach Comic Con, which debuts Friday at the Long Beach Convention Center. Guests will include Stan Lee, Marc Andreyko, Simone Bianchi, Tim Bradstreet, Amanda Conner, Sandra Hope, Geoff Johns, Rob Liefeld, Jeph Loeb, Dustin Nguyen, David Peterson, Darick Robertson and Mark Waid. [Press-Telegram]

Creators | It turns out artists are authors, after all: As a result of an email exchange with artist George O'Connor, Amazon.com has reversed its policy and apparently will allow comic illustrators to add books to their author's page. [ACT-I-VATE]

Creators | On what would've been the 100th birthday of Li'l Abner creator Al Capp, an editorial in the Newburyport, Massachusetts, newspaper argues for the creation of "a prominent memorial" to the cartoonist in nearby Amesbury, where he's buried. [The Daily News]

Stitches

Creators | Terri Finch Hamilton presents a longish profile of award-winning illustrator David Small, whose memoir Stitches has been receiving a good amount of praise. [Grand Rapids Living]

Creators | Brett Williams chats with artist Joe Quinones about his background, and working with Kurt Busiek on the Green Lantern strip for DC's Wednesday Comics. [Surfing the Bleed]

Creators | The Surrogates promotional tour continues as Graeme McMillan interviews writer Robert Venditti about the comic-turned-motion picture. [io9.com]

Creators | J. Caleb Mozzocco talks to Erie, Pennsylvania, native Ryan Dunlavey about writing and illustrating M.O.D.O.K.: Reign Delay for Marvel. [Erie Times-News]

Amazing Fantasy #15

Spider-Man is, indeed, one of the Marvel characters listed in the 45 copyright-termination notices sent last week by the heirs of Jack Kirby.

With Sony Pictures among the list of recipients -- along with Marvel, Disney, Fox, Universal and others -- it seemed likely that Kirby's four children were seeking a portion of the copyright to the wall-crawler (Sony holds the movie rights to the character in perpetuity). Now The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog confirms that after reviewing termination notices for Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four.

Wait. Didn't Stan Lee and Steve Ditko create Spider-Man? Well ... yes. However, Kirby was clearly involved in the early stages. The nature, and extent, of that involvement isn't quite so clear.

As Borys Kit and Matthew Belloni recount at Heat Vision, Lee initially approached Kirby to help develop the concept and draw the initial story in 1962's Amazing Fantasy #15. For one reason or another -- Lee has said he didn't like Kirby's muscular, or "too heroic," take on Spider-Man -- Ditko was tapped to draw the story, with Kirby providing the cover.

But some accounts assert that Kirby contributed elements from an unpublished character called Silver Spider that he developed in the 1950s with longtime collaborator Joe Simon. Others say Silver Spider became The Fly, a character created by Simon and Kirby for Archie Comics' Red Circle imprint.

According to the Heat Vision report, Kirby's heirs seek to recapture a share of the copyright to characters and story elements that appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 -- Aunt May, Uncle Ben, Flash Thompson, etc. -- plus characters and concepts like J. Jonah Jameson, the Daily Bugle, Chameleon, the Tinkerer and the Lizard, most of which debuted months later in issues of The Amazing Spider-Man. (The Daily Bugle first appeared in Fantastic Four #2.)

If the Kirby children are successful, they would reclaim their father's portion of the copyright to key characters and concepts from the Marvel Universe as early as 2017 for the Fantastic Four. In most cases, that would seem to mean co-ownership with Marvel, as Lee agreed to waive claim to any of the characters.  With Spider-Man, one-third ownership could be possible if the Kirbys were to prevail yet the judge recognized Ditko's interests.

Although Disney asserts it "fully considered" the potential copyright claims before it launched its $4-billion purchase of Marvel, this move by the Kirby children surely complicates matters. If nothing else, it provides additional fuel for those who already had criticized Disney for wading into a tangle of licensing agreements that could prevent the House of Mouse from making movies based on Spider-Man, the X-Men, Fantastic Four and other central Marvel properties for years (last link via Dirk Deppey).

The Avengers #4

In a move that by now should be familiar to comics fans, the heirs of Jack Kirby are seeking to regain copyrights to some of the legendary artist's creations.

The New York Times reports that 45 copyright-termination notices were sent last week to Marvel, Disney, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and others who have made films and other forms of entertainment based on characters that Kirby co-created.

The heirs, who are represented by Marc Toberoff -- the attorney who helped the wife and daughter of Jerry Siegel regain a share of Superman last year -- intend to reclaim copyrights to some properties as early as 2014.

A copyright dispute that involves many of Marvel's marquee characters obviously adds a wrinkle to the recently announced $4-billion purchase by Disney.

Although the article doesn't say which characters are specified, the movie studios listed may offer a clue: Sony Pictures holds the film rights to Spider-Man; Universal had the Incredible Hulk; Fox has the X-Men and Fantastic Four; and Paramount has the distribution rights to several of the Marvel-produced projects, including the Iron Man movies.

In addition to those characters, Kirby also co-created (with Stan Lee) The Avengers, Thor, the Black Panther, the Silver Surfer, Nick Fury, Magneto, Galactus and Doctor Doom -- to name but a few properties that have recently appeared, or are slated to appear, in film or on television.

Developing, naturally ...

Update (7:09 p.m.): The Los Angeles Times breaks down some of the dates when Kirby's children would be eligible to claim their father's share of copyright: Fantastic Four in 2017, the Hulk in 2018 and X-Men in 2019. (The copyrights would continue for another 39 years under current law.)

The newspaper also manages to get a comment from a Disney spokesperson: "The notices involved are an attempt to terminate rights seven to 10 years from now and involve claims that were fully considered in the acquisition."

Kirby's Mickey

The editorial force behind the upcoming Art of Steve Ditko (to name just one of his numerous projects) has launched a new blog called Super I.T.C.H. (International Team of Comics Historians) and debuts with an appropriate image considering yesterday's news:

Back in 1991, I did a coffee table art book “The Art of Mickey Mouse”, I got artists from around the world to do their interpretation of “The World’s Favorite Mouse.” One of the first people I called was Jack Kirby. He and his wife Roz were very excited about the idea. He sent me two drawings, as I recall, and I chose this one. I colored it “animation style,” with the black line on an overlay and  the background colors underneath. Jack’s contribution was part of a touring exhibit of art from the book throughout Japan. So, Marvel is called by some fans “The House that Jack Built” (not, in my opinion to take ANYTHING  away from the brilliant genius Stan Lee’s more than vital part.) And here’s Jack doing Mickey! Is this weird, or what?

Jack Kirby from New Gods #6

Bully over at Comics Oughta Be Fun! is celebrating Jack Kirby's birthday today by posting every hour a different portrait or video of the King from various comics and TV shows where he appeared, such as the Incredible Hulk TV show.

Jack Kirby, who died in 1994, would have been 92 today.

Spongebob Superteam

Artist Paul Conrad shares a piece he did for the Spongebob 10th Anniversary Celebration issue of Nickelodeon Magazine, which imagines Spongebob Squarepants and company as if they were drawn by Jack Kirby.

Via