As many of you will know, comics legend Jack “King” Kirby worked for the Ruby-Spears animation studio from 1980 to 1987. This commenced with production design for Steve Gerber’s Thundarr the Barbarian (1980-81), after initial design man Alex Toth left the project due to one of his patented disagreements with various people!
As well as generating original ideas such as Thundarr, R-S also dabbled in licensed properties—Kirby had worked on conceptual art for possible comics-related shows involving Thor (1981), Wonder Woman and Hawkman (both 1983), amongst others. None of these went into production, alas. In 1988, just after Kirby left the studio, they did do a quite well-done Superman show, which sadly lasted only 13 episodes, but boasted Marv Wolfman as script editor and Gil Kane as production designer. Kirby may have worked on this if he’d stayed a while longer…
R-S also licensed a series of shows which used real-life celebrity likenesses—Mister T (1983-86), Rambo: The Force of Freedom and Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos (both 1986). Kirby did indeed draw some production art on all three.
Sad to say, in the last couple of years he worked for R-S, Kirby’s work was in serious decline—several years of struggling with essential tremors had taken a heavy toll on his ability to work, and his art had become quite rudimentary, even crude at times. One reason Gil Kane was brought on board was to develop and refine Kirby’s designs, which frequently were deemed unsuitable at this point… Kane gave the ideas, as he put it himself, a better level of “representational” value.
Anyhow, to get to the point: towards the very end of Kirby’s R-S stint, around 1987, it appears that they were trying to get an idea off the ground involving Arnold Schwarzenegger! It makes sense, after doing Rambo and Chuck Norris—Arnie was one of the biggest action guys of the era. The show never happened, but there’s some interesting Kirby art in support of it to peruse…
Let’s overlook the fact that Jack didn’t know how to spell Schwarzenegger…
What can we gather from this? Arnie is a good guy (natch), and he sports some interesting gadgets—his badge has a “time wheel” powered by his belt, which presumably enables him to teleport across space and time.
More Arnie art below!
Full-figure shot of Arnie, armed & ready to kick ass!
Extra detail on the weapon Arnie’s packing.
Arnie defends AIR FORCE ONE from a monster attack! (Yep, name still misspelt.)
Arnie in battle with some crazy-looking horn dude.
Would you dig any more R-S focused posts? Thanks for reading…
Fascinating, I did not know any of this. A new aspect of Kirby’s history that you’ve just educated me in.
Actually, it was Sylvester Stallone who played Rambo. (Wasn’t it?)
Yes. Different show, which actually got made in 1986.
Ah, I see now. I thought you were saying that they were trying to do something after Schwarzenegger had played Rambo.
The Schwarzenegger series could have been a lot of fun, particularly if they included plenty of those trademark Kirby Kreatures. Yet another file for the “What If?” cabinet.
I was equally unaware of the Superman show, which even uses part of the 1978 movie’s main theme in its opening credits. Having now watched two episodes, I’m puzzled as to why it only ran 13 episodes, especially with experienced writers such as Marv Wolfman and Martin Pasko on board, and those terrific Gil Kane designs. However, according to IMDb, Warner Bros bought Ruby-Spears whilst it was in production, and there’s a Hollywood tradition of incoming studio heads dropping their predecessor’s projects.
It certainly looks as though Kirby was planning some fantastic scenarios for Schwarzenegger to play about in, though that, in itself, would be a departure from the treatment accorded the other ‘real-life’ actors/characters?
The arm gun gadget is pretty cool. Also like the monster riding the jet plane.