Jack "King" Kirby

Jack "King" Kirby - First In Comics - Best In Comics

Jack Kirby's The Losers

You got, got Nothing To Lose! 

Very recently I found out that Jack Kirby was involved in DC's The Losers comic book. I was a fan of The Losers when I first started reading comics during John Severin's run as the artist. Kirby's run on The Losers was innovative and true to life in many ways since Kirby was a WWII veteran. Kirby's run started with 151. Issue 152 was based on a actual wartime experience Kirby had when he served in WWII. Number 155 contains a paranormal angle. "The Partisans!", a group of Russian defenders turn out to be phantoms, needless to say, the art and story are amazing and it's a great read.

Even after his work with Marvel and DC Jack Kirby was still capable of producing great comic book concepts and action packed adventures. Silver Star was originally conceived by Jack as a movie screenplay in the mid 70's. Silver Star never made it to the big screen, instead Silver Star was released as a 6 issue comic book series in the mid 80's. After achieving great success with Jack Kirby's Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers, Pacific comics produced Silver Star as a follow up to Captain Victory. The art is classic Kirby, full of action and science fiction adventure. Image comics compiled all of the 6 Silver Star issues into a graphic novel in 2007.

For all you Jack Kirby die-hards out there Tales To Astonish is a great book that covers Jack's entire comic art career. I took a copy out from the library and just finished reading it. Highly recommended to any and all Marvel/Kirby fans.

Nuff said.

How many comic artists' have their own Quarterly, featuring only their comic art?...not many but Jack Kirby did. Here's #11 featuring Dr. Doom.

Jack Kirby is my favorite comic book artist of all time. I recently picked this issue of OMAC at Don's Atomic Comics. Couldn't resist 1/2 off the cover price of $3 for this DC OMAC/Kirby issue.

Jack's full page illustrations are nothing short of spectacular. Jack Kirby used the full page comic panel like a canvas, creating beautiful illustrations full of light and dark and his wonderfully drawn good and evil comic characters. Here's a great example from Marvel's The Eternals #3 from 1976. Thanks Dan!

This full page Kirby panel is from Marvel's The Eternals #3 as well. The scene has the feel and look of a Star Wars Jabba the Hut character movie scene. The weird thing is this comic precedes the 1st Star Wars movie by 7 months and precedes the 1st appearance of the Jabba the Hut character by 7 years. At least that's what the panel reminded me of the first time I saw it. Thank You Dan.

Below is another great full page panel from DC's Kamandi from 1976. Once again this panel reminds me of  Star Wars, especially the scene in which Luke and Obi Wan are seeking out Han Solo and some of the assorted aliens/buildings that in the background in that particular scene. Thanks Dan!

This a Galactus-like panel from The Eternals #2 from 1976.

...here's another great full page panel from the same comic...

This Boy Commandos Kirby panel is from 1943. The WWII story that accompanies the panel is a great read. Once again, Thank You Dan.

28 years later Kirby's comic career was in full swing, this panel is from the first Mister Miracle series from DC. Kirby created Mister Miracle when he left Marvel to work for DC in the early 70's. Big Barda is also in the issue in which this panel comes from, another great amazonian character that is said to be based on Jack's wife and a Playboy magazine covergirl..

I wanted to scan some DC and mid-70's Marvel before I got to the classic Marvel Kirby stuff and here is some of the Marvel stuff that put King Kirby on the map, Nuff Said!