Mark EvanierRezensionen
Autor von Kirby: King of Comics
Rezensionen
Garfield Vol. 1 von Mark Evanier
Found it for a few bucks used, but in great condition.
Title: Eye of the Kabula
Series: Groo the Wanderer #6
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 24
Words: 2K
Synopsis:
Groo swims to land after being shipwrecked in the previous issue. He comes across a village that is having bad luck because their lucky ruby was stolen. Groo sets off to find the ruby and get a reward. He tracks it down until he finds a king who has a ruby fetish. Groo dresses up like a female slave to get into the palace and steals the ruby. He takes it back to the village, only to have the king's army follow him. Groo flees the village as the army wants him dead and the villagers want him dead for leading the army to their village. Groo just can't win.
My Thoughts:
This was more amusing and less “moralizing” than the previous issue.
★★★★☆
Title: Slavers
Series: Groo the Wanderer #5
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 24
Words: 2K
Synopsis:
Groo has run out of money, food and options. When he is conscripted into a navy, he beats all the soldiers to a pulp. A merchant sees his prowess and hires him. The merchant is a slaver and uses Groo to capture a lot of slaves on an island. Groo sets all the slaves free and the slave enslave the slavers. Groo doesn't want anybody to be a slave and so starts killing everyone. The original slavers slink off, only to be eaten by wild animals. Groo makes it back to ship and they sail away. The issue ends with Groo on watch in the crow's nest but asleep. The ship is headed for a sheer cliff.
My Thoughts:
I wasn't sure WHERE this was going when the slaves ended up enslaving the slavers. I should have known that Groo would end up trying to kill everyone though. That's what Groo does best after all!
★★★☆☆
The catalyst for this edition is a thinly-veiled metaphor of the United States in 2008: one kingdom is unsuccessfully rules a foreign land while facing a rising trade deficit at home and finanial crisis at home. Poorly thought-out interventions by the king lead to more problems. While many "Groo" comics play on similar metaphors, this one was a bit thick, though every angle was valid.
Most "Groo" comics are ballasted by Sergio Aragonés' lovely cartoon art. Every page is filled to the edge with fun drawings that capture the reader's eye. It is not clear to me who writes each comic. I believe most comics are started by Aragonés and then polished by Mark Evanier.
"Groo" is one of the longest-running comics of all time. It started as an independent venture before being picked up by various publishers. The past few years, it has gone to a mini-series format, which is to say that three or four issues are released a year that, when put together, comprise a full story arc.
As I got older, I found other artists to love: John Buscema, Neal Adams, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne. But you can only have one first love, and for me, that was Jack Kirby.
This book serves as a great introduction to Kirby. I would have liked to see a bit more analysis of his work, what made his panels explode, how he influenced others, but as a primer, it doesn't get much better than this.
I didn't find this book as biased as a few other reviewers have stated. Of course the entire "who created / who wrote most of those early Marvel superhero stories?" question comes up a couple of times, but the author is pretty good at staying fairly neutral while presenting the opposing views.
And with the (finally) recent settlement between Marvel and the Kirby Estate, it's nice to see him getting his due from the company that he set on the path to greatness. So go back and read how he helped do it.
It was probably the happiest time of his career. Jack did all the pencilling, while Joe inked and designed covers and took care of the business side of things. He was good at that. They created Captain America for Timely Comics publisher Martin Goodman and were promised a share of the profits. When it became a bestseller, they saw very little money. Goodman’s accountant wrote off all the expenses of the company against the ‘Captain America’ profits, after which there wasn’t much left. They started moonlighting for other companies and made a deal to start with DC Comics once their contract expired. They were given the heave-ho early when Goodman found out. Did he hear about it from young Stan Lee who was an assistant in the Simon And Kirby Studio and a relative of the publisher? Stan always said he didn’t snitch. Jack forever believed he did.
More success at DC with ‘Boy Commando’s and ‘The Newsboy Legion’. World War II and frostbite under General Patton. Back to work with Joe Simon and more hits in the early 50s with crime and romance comics. Then the Senate decided comic books were evil and the business collapsed. Jack went to work for DC Comics as a hired hand. He created a newspaper strip ‘Sky Masters Of The Spaceways’ but DC editor Jack Schiff wanted a cut. Jack fell out with DC and had to go back working for Marvel at crappy page rates under Stan Lee, his old gopher.
Marvel wasn’t doing well in the early 60s and Goodman thought of closing down the comics line. Then the ‘Justice League Of America’ started selling and he decided that super-heroes were back in. Goodman told Stan to do a group. ‘The Fantastic Four’ launched the Marvel Age of Comics, which was mostly drawn by Jack Kirby. All created and written by Stan Lee? Ah, there’s the rub.
As the characters became successful, Jack thought he should have a share of the profits as co-creator. Goodman disagreed and kept paying him strictly for drawing by the page. Jack fled to DC and created ‘New Gods’, demanding control of both the script and the editing in his terms and conditions. Jack’s talent was visual, not verbal and his dialogue was not what fans were used to, especially if they were accustomed to Stan’s. Whatever his flaws, Stan could write dialogue. The DC line failed and Jack went back to Marvel to bash out more ‘Captain America’ and a run on ‘Black Panther’. He also created ‘The Eternals’ and ‘Machine Man’. But the new generation of artists and writers weren’t impressed. His eyesight was failing and the art wasn’t what it used to be.
There was a kind of happy ending because he was hired by young admirers to work in animation, with health benefits. When he needed a heart bypass operation it was covered. The cost would have crippled the family finances if he had to pay himself. It was always the family finances that counted with Jack. He married in 1942 and had four children. His role was being a good provider, so he put in sixty hours or more every week at the drawing board to earn money. He created much but never had the business savvy to make the most of it. A second-rater like Bob Kane could land a fortune because he made a good deal. Will Eisner was both a great artist and a clever businessman, so he made money. Jack just sweated and sweated and sweated and made other men rich. He believed strongly in the American Dream that a man who worked hard could make it. His experience was the American Reality, that cheats prosper.
This version of ‘Kirby: King Of Comics’ is an updated paperback edition with an additional chapter entitled ‘Legacy.’ There’s more information about the famous court case where Kirby’s children tried to claim some copyright over characters, going up against the mighty Disney Corporation which had just bought Marvel. Stan Lee testified that he was the sole creator of all the characters. Cross-examined by the lawyer about all the times he had hailed Jack as co-creator he said this (Kirby fans of a sensitive disposition should look away now): ‘I tried to write these, knowing Jack would read them, I tried to write them to make it look as if he and I were just doing everything together, to make him feel good.’
Wasn’t that kind of Stan?
In the end, Kirby has the recognition he deserved and Stan Lee’s reputation amongst the comic savvy public and comic professionals is forever tainted. The general public who watch the movies and see his cameos may be vaguely aware that his name is plastered on as Executive Producer and he’s made plenty of money but there’s a regular magazine called ‘The Jack Kirby Collector’ which continues to keep Jack’s legacy going even after his death. Stan ain’t got that.
Despite the interesting text, this is really a picture book and what glorious pictures they are! Well, the first three-quarters anyway. Kirby never went to art school and learned to draw ‘properly’ but sheer practice made him good and he developed techniques to show raw power that have never been matched. The poster-style art of this kind of book can’t show his true strength which was storytelling. He was always more interested in getting the story out than in creating pretty pictures. A great book and a must-have for any Kirby fan.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
An art book is a tricky thing for a reviewer. If one picture is worth a thousand words, how do you describe several hundred of them? How does anyone describe the bold vitality of the art of Jack Kirby? There are thick lines, of course. There are heroes in spectacular poses with arms and legs spread wide leaping off the page at you. There are ugly monsters, terrible aliens and ordinary people with expressive faces. Yet it’s not easy to sum up how all this fits together to make such a distinctive, dynamic style. Fortunately, most people thinking of buying this book will already be familiar with Kirby’s powerful pencils, so perhaps the best thing to do is describe what you’ll get for your money.
At the beginning, there is a long essay by Kirby biographer Mark Evanier on the background of the work. It tells how Joe Simon met Jack Kirby, how they teamed up and worked together in harmony for many years producing some of the best comic books available at the time. This text is interspersed with illustrations, mostly comic covers and photos of the dynamic duo and their team, for Simon and Kirby ran a studio and had a little gang of helpers. As you would expect from the title, the art of other chaps in the studio is also included here.
After the essay, there is a long section of comic pages. Regrettably, the contents information does not list credits for these, so the reader has to take his best guess as to who did what. As well as covers and splash pages by the headline act, this section contains many stories but they are generally very short. Tell the plot and you spoil them, so I won’t. In the text, Evanier reveals that Joe Simon generally drafted the covers and splash pages because he had a good sense of design, having worked for a while in the newspaper industry. Evanier has remarked elsewhere that Jack wanted to tell stories and had little interest in covers. Odd really because he was an excellent cover artist and certainly did most of them for Marvel Comics in the early sixties. In any case, they swapped roles freely but in general, Jack did the pencils and Joe or someone else did the inks.
Preceding Evanier’s essay is a ‘Boy’s Ranch’ splash page featuring the lads at sea in a boat. The style is distinctly Kirby with heavy blacks and looks similar to his early seventies work at DC. This page could easily have been slotted into New Gods # 6. After the essay, there are some ‘Stuntman’ covers and several double-page spreads featuring that hero. When I was eleven, I thought Jim Steranko invented the double-page spread in Captain America # 110 for in 1971 there were very few books about comics and no Internet to find out everything. Steranko, a great Kirby fan, would have been the first to disabuse me of my faulty notion. The two pagers are not all great. The figures look wonky on ‘The Evil Sons of M. Le Blanc’ but the one for ‘Terror Island’ is a masterpiece of giant insects, collapsing buildings and falling figures.
Next, there are a couple of pages of Kirby pencil art with a man being tied down by little people, like Gulliver. The pencils are clean, not sketchy, but with no black areas. I guess the inker was depended on to do that for this particular item. In general, as Gil Kane said, Kirby did ‘the most beautifully complete pencils you ever saw in your life.’ The rest of the pages in the book are inked so don’t buy this volume if you’re after original Kirby pencils. Worth noting here that all the art except for one double-page splash is in black and white, which helps the appreciation of the pencil/ink work. Apart from their cheapness, this is one reason I like the ‘Marvel Essential’ and ‘DC Showcase’ series. Bigger pages and no colour gives a better view of the original art. However, Evanier has also stated elsewhere that Kirby loved colour. He never drew anything with the intention that it be published black and white, not even ‘In The Days Of The Mob’.
There’s an eight-page story of ‘Calamity Jane’, a lady detective, in ‘The Case Of The Hapless Hackie’. It doesn’t look like Kirby. ‘A ‘Vagabond Prince’ story, ‘The Madness Of Dr Altu’, might be early Kirby or Simon. Hard to tell. ‘The Furnished Room’ doesn’t look like Kirby either. ‘The Affairs Of The Man From Out Of This World’ might be Simon, too, but it could be Kirby doing comedy. Seems to be a Superman spoof. It’s followed by some covers for ‘Headline Comics’ and ‘Justice Traps The Guilty’ which are by the main men. A five-page story ‘Credit And Loss’ doesn’t look like Kirby. Some of these might be by Mort Meskin, a stalwart at the studio for many years.
‘A Boys Ranch’ cover and seventeen-page story ‘The Man Who Hated Boys’ are most definitely Kirby. Apparently ‘Boys Ranch’ was one of his favourite strips but it never really took off. Several stories of the boy ranchers follow: ‘A Very Dangerous Dude’ (9 pages), ‘Mother Delilah’ (20 pages), ‘Fight To The Finish’ (6 pages). There’s a double-page spread in colour of Clay Duncan squaring off to a dangerous bear followed by several ‘Boys Ranch’ splash pages. For years, I have been reading comments about how marvellous ‘Boys Ranch’ was Kirby’s greatest work and how it should be reprinted. Well, here is some of it at least. It’s certainly good but I don‘t think it‘s as fine as his Marvel work.
The ‘Boys Ranch’ stuff is followed by several crime short stories that don’t appear to be by Kirby. ‘Masher’ (5 pages), ‘The Beefer‘ (6 pages) ‘Tough Beat’ (6 pages) and ‘The Mountie’ (5 pages). Although not by our hero, these stories often have first-rate art, especially ‘The Beefer’ and are worth a look on their own merits. The Simon and Kirby Studio did employ talented people. Most definitely Kirby is the seven-page ‘Fighting American’ yarn ‘Duel To The Finish Line’ but page 2 appears twice and page 4 is missing. That error on my pdf reviewers copy might be corrected in the final printed book. There’s a return to the western theme with a few pages of ‘Bulls-Eye’ and then an interesting six-page short story ‘Fruit Salad’ about a flyer bedecked with medals. The theme is heroism. The art is not Kirby but it is good.
The next section is romance comics, which don’t interest me much. Stories from ‘Black Cat Mysteries’ that follow the girly stuff include ‘Take Off, Mister Zimmer’, ‘The Fireballs’ and ‘The Big Hunt’. ‘Jim Bowie Makes A Magic Knife’ is a short western interruption to the fantastic fare. The art on ‘Take Off, Mister Zimmer’ looks understated for Kirby but it’s excellent.
This impressive volume winds down with several space stories that Simon and Kirby produced in the late fifties but which Joe managed to sell a few years later. These are: ‘The Thing On Sputnik 4‘, ‘Lunar Trap‘, ‘Face On Mars‘, ‘Island In The Sky‘, ‘Saucer Man’, ‘Space Garbage’, ‘Garden Of Eden’, ‘The Great Moon Mystery’, and ‘Lunar Goliaths’. They are all five pages long and the last two feature the 3 Rocketeers. Really great vintage Kirby art and some of it looks to be inked by Wally Wood. For me, this is the satisfying climax of the book. I have seen these stories coloured in another collection but the quality of the art really shows on this black and white version.
After ‘The Old Hulk’ and ‘When Time Ran Out’ – not Kirby – the last bit features ‘The Fly’, who may or may not have inspired Spider-Man in the minds of the many who have laid claim to the invention of that hero since he made it big. It’s all nonsense. Spider-Man didn’t succeed because of his powers but because young readers in the sixties could identify with Peter Parker, who was invented by Stan Lee. Stan may not deserve as much credit as he gets for the Marvel Universe but he‘s entitled to that bit. ‘Fly’ stories are interspersed with some yarns about the Shield, a flag bedecked all-American hero and there’s an Afterword by Jim Simon, son of Joe, to finish.
This magnificent tome is nearly 400 pages and contains a lot of high-quality art. Big hardcover books are not cheap nowadays but this is certainly value for money and, if you shop around, you can get a good price. For the dedicated fan of Simon, Kirby, et al, it’s definitely worth it.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
Entretenido. La historieta de Batman brutal!
Unlike other contemporary visionaries such as [a:Will Eisner|1642|Will Eisner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1202618782p2/1642.jpg], who in Evanier's heartfelt biography-homage credits Kirby with saving the comics industry many times over – "He was like the cavalry with a pencil" – Kirby failed to comprehend the legal and promotional facets of the business. He rarely owned his own work and spent a good portion of his career in what was often self-perceived as financially desperate straits. Publishers took advantage of his naivete time and time again. This situation propelled Kirby to prodigious artistic feats. Famous for taking on seemingly impossible assignments, Kirby routinely produced amazing 12-page stories in one day. (Most artists draw just one page a day.) Regardless of the time limitations, he always produced powerful, emotionally evocative work, often the finest comic-book accomplishments of his era.
As aptly demonstrated in this visually intense book, Kirby's fame was based on far more than speed or output. He introduced dynamism into visual storytelling, literally creating a new storytelling language using larger than life, yet anatomically realistic, characters, who leapt off the pages at the reader. Whether you love or hate the visuals, Kirby's work was never boring.
By telling a linear story lavishly infused with Kirby's art, Evanier successfully evokes the proper mystique and respect for this creative giant while revealing his human side. Since his death, a handful of books has attempted to showcase or grant insight into Jack Kirby, but none has succeeded quite like Kirby: King of Comics, the perfect tribute to both the artist and the man.
This review originally appeared in The Austin Chronicle, April 4, 2008.
I received a copy of this graphic novel in exchange for an honest review.
I was born in 1987. I grew up watching VHS tapes on a continual loop; specifically, Rocky & Bullwnkle. Rocky & Bullwinkle holds a special place in my heart, along with Dudley Do-Right and Peabody and Sherman. I have the old VHS movies, but since I don't have a player I invested in the DVD of Season 1. When I saw this graphic novel I was excited but not too excited, it would take a lot for me to feel they kept it true to the original spirit of the show. The thing is, they did a great job.
All the cheesy jokes were on point, and the artwork was so good, I'm convinced the original animators must have been raised from the dead to create this graphic novel. It's possible, right? With Boris and Natasha up to their usual tricks (including jokes about how they never recognize Boris in his costumes), and Dudley Do-Right, stupid as ever I was really impressed with this graphic novel. It's hard to take a show as old and famous as this one and turn it into a graphic novel that is relatable for the modern pop as well as the old fans with the same good old jokes.
If you're a fan of the show, you need to read this graphic novel. I'll be buying it and I'm crossing my fingers they make another one!
This graphic novel consists of four new adventures or episodes in Frostbite Falls with Rocky the Flying squirrel and his partner, Bullwinkle the Moose as they tangle with their evil nemeses, Boris Badenov and Natasha, that fiendish pair of Pottsylvanian spies. Each episode is interrupted by a tale of Dudley-Do-Right with his faithful horse and the lovely Nell.
This graphic novel was beautifully drawn by Roger Langridge and written by Mark Evanier. Although the stories are new and the humour was brought up to date, this was a definite walk down memory lane for me. It’s a whole lot of fun and silliness and should appeal to a young audience as well as those old enough to remember it in its original form.
I'm glad that there is something new out featuring these guys. Go read it and enjoy.
It even has some of the Dudley Do Right stories in it.
One in particular about a insurance salesman that had me rolling in the floor.
I received an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review from Netgalley.
PS This is read now on Netgalley :)
Links
POV Online (English)
Wikipedia (English)
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