Jack Kirby Portrait
A commission for Bernard Brannigan. Am really happy with how this came out—and buyer is too!
Here’s an in-progress shot:
And here’s the finished article!
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jack kirby
Paul Gravett’s Brum Visit
A very good day, today, as I caught up with old comics pal Paul Gravett for the first time in aeons.
After meeting up at New Street (sorry, Grand Central, the station’s been a New York Wannabe since 2015 now!!), we went to the new-ish Wetherspoons there for a long lunch. We had fish & chips, and I had two or three of those refillable coffees (Paul stuck with tea! Very English!).
This was a great opportunity to pose for an awkward selfie with me squinting at the camera screen…
Note my Darkseid badge! I brought Paul one too. After eating, I had a “commission” to do…
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Jack Kirby Draws Arnold Schwarzenegger
As many of you will know, comics legend Jack 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.
As well as generating original ideas such as Thundarr, R-S also dabbled in licensed properties—Kirby 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 one season, 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 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 “representational” value.
Towards the end of Kirby’s R-S stint in 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!
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Underrated Artists I Love #2: Herb Trimpe
This has been a long time coming, and, for me, an obvious choice! You can see #1 here.
Ah, Herb Trimpe. Some people actually don’t like Herb’s work—and some people dismiss him simply as a “Jack Kirby Clone”. These people are horribly & completely wrong. I found Herb in the mid-’70s, as a little kid, in UK reprints of his Hulk stories via the weekly Mighty World of Marvel. In spite of initially reading his last name as “tripe” (yeah, yeah, those people above would agree!) (I was just learning to read at the time), I immediately took to his work—and I’ve never changed my mind.
Incidentally: as any real fan knows, Herb’s last name rhymes with shrimpy.
If you’re with me thus far, I’ll assume you agree that Herb Trimpe was an awesome Hulk artist. Here’s Herb’s back cover for Marvel Treasury Edition #5 (1975), which is a fine example of how good a match H & H were…
Someone made him angry…
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2023 Viewing (Q1-2)
OK, let’s cover the first two quarters of 2023—that’s half a year! 2023 is half-over, already! It never stops. The previous viewings are here, as ever. This is the antique episodic TV we’ve watched so far this year…
The Fugitive seasons 2-3 (DVD)
Kojak seasons 1-4 (DVD)
The Munsters season 2 (DVD)
The Invaders season 2 (DVD)
Harry O season 1 (download)
It was watching the original Kojak TV movie, The Marcus Nelson Murders (1973), which is a terrific and very gritty film based on real events, which prompted a full rewatch of the ’70s classic…
Kirby Art Inside Amazing Fantasy #15
Of course, everyone knows that Jack Kirby designed the original version of Spider-Man, which never got used. We know, also, that Kirby pencilled the cover to Spidey’s first appearance, in Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962)—because the original cover Ditko drew was rejected by Stan Lee.
But how about Kirby artwork inside this landmark comic? Well, surely, the iconic origin story is fully-pencilled & inked by Mr Ditko. But there’s one aspect I never paid much attention to before—the teeny-tiny Spidey figure at the top right of the opening splash page…
Comics: The Dying Craft Of Lettering
I no longer mind being called a Luddite. It might’ve bothered me once. Now, it’s become a lazy catchall slur meant to target anyone who has any kind of reservation about technological ‘progress’—because, after all, progress is an unalloyed good which everyone must believe in like obedient cult members.
I was all for digital tech and online stuff back in the day. And by that, I mean 15+ years ago. Maybe you have to be immersed in something for a while to start seeing the dangers properly. Digital has an insidious tendency to slowly, creepingly replace everything it touches with a digital facsimile. Often as not, the craft or physical actuality it replaces gets killed off completely… or, in cases like, for instance, film being made on film, a few stubborn holdouts will keep the organic original alive (Tarantino, Nolan, etc).
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The Ring Of The Nibelung (1989-90)
Written by Roy Thomas. Drawn by Gil Kane (w/assist by Alfredo Alcala). Lettered by John Costanza. Coloured by Jim Woodring. Edited by Andrew Helfer. Published in 1989-90 by DC Comics.
Summary: A squarebound, four-issue mini-series adapting Der Ring des Nibelungen, Richard Wagner’s epic musical drama, aka the Ring Cycle, based on Norse Legend and the German epic poem Nibelungenlied.
Read more about Der Ring des Nibelungen on Wikipedia. (Saves me writing a synopsis!)
The Ring has also notably been adapted in comics form, at much greater length and more faithfully to the Wagner source, by P Craig Russell in 2000; and of course, there is the two-part 1924 silent movie by the great Fritz Lang, Die Nibelungen. The Thomas & Kane version is perhaps not so different from their work on various Conan projects—it has an old school adventure comics feel. If you like those books as much as I do, you won’t see that as a drawback.
Epic Kane art from THE RING Book One.
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Cyberleader & New Gods
Just a couple of new drawings finished recently. First up is a portrait of David Banks and his alter ago, whom he portrayed in the classic run of Doctor Who during the 1980s, namely, the Cyberleader (of the Cybermen). Secondly, a pinup of Orion and (as a large floating head!) Darkseid, from Jack Kirby’s New Gods.
