Happy 92nd Birthday, Jack Kirby!

As has been widely covered on the comics blogosphere, today would have been Jack Kirby's 92nd birthday. So, in celebration, I would like to focus on one important fact about the King:

Jack Kirby spoke the otherwise unknown language of primitive man, and he translated it to us for communicative purposes!

From Devil Dinosaur 1 (1978), the most historically accurate comic ever published!

Happy 91st Birthday, Jack Kirby!

As tomorrow is Jack Kirby's 91st birthday, I wanted to post a couple of thing here in celebration. I recently added to my collection a bunch of 70s Kirby stuff, mostly his work for DC that came out after the Fourth World books ended, such as Sandman and the Dingbats of Danger Street issue of First Issue Special (which, in and of itself, may be the pinnacle of human creativity). But I was struck by some stuff that appeared in some late issues of Challengers of the Unknown just before Kirby's arrival at DC in 1970.

When the Challengers series was coming to a close at this time, DC had resorted to reprinting the early Kirby stories from the beginning of the series rather than creating new material (the series did return with new material, in fits and starts but without being renumbered, in 1973 and again in 1977, just before the DC Implosion). DC was heavily promoting Kirby's return throughout its line, as in teasers like this one from the same issue of Challengers:

But these final issues of Challengers also seemed to be especially suited to promote Kirby's return, as they could serve as a kind of warm up for readers who weren't familiar with some of his earlier Silver Age DC work.

On the letter page for Challengers 76, we get some commentary that makes for a nice little piece of textual history regarding this important time in comics, which is often cited as a key transitional moment from the Silver Age to the Bronze Age:
While this may have seemed like hyperbole at the time coming from editor Murray Boltinoff (or one of his assistants), but comic history truly was about to get made.

Also, if the dates in this text are accurate, we recently saw the 38th anniversary of Jack Kirby's Fourth World that debuted with his first issue of Jimmy Olsen.

And just for the sake of showing some great Kirby art, here's the introductory page for the Challengers of the Unknown that was originally printed in Showcase 7, but here is reprinted in Challengers 75.

"Kill Me with Wagner!"

According to Amazon, DC is going to publish a hardcover collection of Jack Kirby's 1974-75 run on The Losers from Our Fighting Forces 151-162.

This, of course, makes me extremely happy, and it leaves just a few things from Kirby's fantastic 70s output for DC to reprint (including all the great stuff from First Issue Special, Kobra 1, and a few issues of Sandman--though I wonder if DC can reprint the two issues of Justice, Inc. Kirby did, since that is a licensed property. There are also the two magazines he did for National: In the Days of the Mob and The Spirit World.).

Of Kirby's 70s DC work, The Losers probably gets the least attention. Kirby did this series while he was doing Kamandi and OMAC, his most famous post-Fourth World work. But the war stories that Kirby did in this year-long run are real gems.

As with his other work from the period, Kirby uses a text page in the first issue as a mission statement for his run. I think "varmints of the vicarious" should be the new name for this blog.

Kirby claims he will be showing the war from the experience of the normal soldier, or "everyman," and he uses his own authority as a WWII vet to back it up. And he says something about my Aunt Jenny that I don't quite understand. And I love this part:

"Follow me, dum-dums, and you'll have a whale of a time, not getting hurt. If you think this is the old sarge bit, forget it. I never made it past PFC. I merely like a good war book, too,--and, something in it which goes beyond paper mache bravado."

I know I always have a whale of a time not getting hurt.

So, what does Kirby give us in this foray into realistic war comics?:

"Kill Me with Wagner"!

In Kirby's story, the Losers are sent into France to work with the French Underground--or Maquis, as Kirby so educationally informs us--to rescue famed pianist Emma Klein. The only catch: no one knows what she looks like.

Meanwhile, Gunner of the Losers is captured by the Germans, and he is taken to a Wagner-loving Nazi major (which is a bit redundant, I guess), who also happens to be looking for Miss Klein. In order to expedite his search, the major has Gunner pick the pianist out of a line-up, or he will start executing hostages:
Unfortunately for the major, the Losers arrive before any executions start, and the hostages join in by kicking some Nazi ass:
Sarge's critique is hard to dispute.

In the end, Emma Klein turns out to be the major's silent maid, who was under his nose the whole time:

She decides to send him to heaven before sending him to hell by playing "Ride of the Valkyries" as the Allies bomb the crap out of the Nazis in awesome Kirby style: That's right--I got yer dammerung right here!

AND WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT?

The Parallax View

As I've stated before, I'm a big Warren Beatty fan, and I'm particularly fond of the films he made in the 1970s, where he used his star power to back some edgy, unconventional projects like Shampoo and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, along with the more conventional--but still very funny--comedy, Heaven Can Wait. The problem, of course, with discussing the career of Warren Beatty is that he's so damn picky about his projects, leading him to make only a few movies in a given decade. So, when he makes a clunker like The Fortune (1975)--a film that should be so much better than it is due to the teaming of Beatty with Jack Nicholson, and the presence of director Mike Nichols--or his last two movies, the sense of disappointment increases. But even with The Fortune, one can see what Beatty wanted out of the project, teaming with his good friend and one of the most successful directors of the period.

This, in fact, has often been a hallmark of Beatty's career: he picks the best people to work on a film. And with a paranoid thriller like The Parallax View, Beatty worked with director Alan J. Pakula, who would achieve even greater success with his next film, All the President's Men. The screenwriters, David Giler and Lorenzo Semple, Jr., were also on a roll at this time, Semple moreso than Giler. Both had come out of television, working together on "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and Semple having written a huge chunk of the "Batman" TV series. (Giler also worked on the Dr. K-approved Southern Comfort and on one of my favorite bad movies, Myra Breckenridge.) Semple later contributed to the screenplay for the great revisionist spy movie, Three Days of the Condor, as well as the 1980 Flash Gordon movie. In fact, just looking at Semple's credits, he is responsible for a significant chunk of the pleasure I've experienced in my movie-going and television-watching career.

In The Parallax View, Beatty plays a newspaper reporter named Joe Frady who begins to investigate an elaborate conspiracy involving the assassination of a US Senator during a campaign event atop the Seattle Space Needle. Frady is at first skeptical about the conspiracy when it's first proposed to him by fellow journalist and former lover Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss). However, as more people who were present at the assassination begin to die in mysterious circumstances, Frady pursues the investigation, leading him to the mysterious Parallax Corporation, a company that seems to be in the business of political assassination.

After watching this movie recently, I'm kind of shocked by the way it relates to the political events of its time, and the way it seems to casually reference the fact that political assassinations had become common by the early 70s. The film is also pretty unrelenting in its cynicism, giving the absolutely clear sense that good simply cannot triumph over evil, especially when evil takes the form of a large, faceless, powerful, rich, and politically connected corporation. In fact, the movie makes the moral "good vs. evil" binary irrelevant, shifting it into one of "power vs. powerlessness," and the powerless have no chance of penetrating into the realm of the powerful. A film with such a cynical message wouldn't have a chance of making it out of test-screenings today, but then, this was a special time in Hollywood.

The cynicism is compounded by the fact that we discover, by the end of the film, that we, through Joe's eyes, have gotten only a small piece of the whole story, and the events that we've been watching were all manipulated by an unseen hand. Even though he doesn't realize it until it's too late, Joe plays the role in which he's been cast perfectly. In a sense, it is as if there were a bigger movie that we are not getting to see. Director Pakula and Cinematographer Gordon Willis provide a visual cue to this limited perspective by using long lenses that flatten the planes of action and focus in on a particular element of the scene while other, important action is also taking outside of the frame or on its periphery. In a broad sense, this movie undermines itself by calling attention to the dangers of its own manipulation: the audience is manipulated along with Joe, and in the end, even though we know the truth of the Parallax Corporation's plot, we are also complicit in perpetuating the lie as the camera slowly pulls back during the verdict from the hearings on the film's final assassination. We simply leave the room, more paranoid than when we came in.

As Joe Frady infiltrates the Parallax Corporation, he must undergo an "audition" to become one of their assassins. The audition takes the form of a montage of still images accompanied by music. And though it takes up about six minutes of the film, it's a fascinating piece of work that stands on its own as a filmmaking achievement.


Glenn Erickson, the DVD Savant, has an excellent and thorough review of the brilliant montage, and I can't really add more to what he wrote. Erickson explains how the "audition film" fits into the 70s zeitgeist, stemming from earlier works like The Ipcress File and A Clockwork Orange, among others. His conclusion, that "Perhaps the lesson of the 'Audition Film' of Parallax should be that EVERY SHOW and every image we see has the potential to affect us, and that none of us is immune," sums up well the power and significance of this short film within a film, and how it ties in to the film's overall theme of the manipulation of images. (Thanks to Will Pfeifer for pointing me to that essay.)

Another thing about the audition film I love is the use of Jack Kirby art, including the cover to Thor 131, which is a comic I've had since I was a little kid, though my copy is pretty beat up.


The Parallax View remains shockingly effective, and it ranks as one of the great political thrillers of all time. I'd rank it slightly below The Manchurian Candidate, which should stand at the very top of such a list.

Jack Kirby's Atlas

From the cover for the upcoming Superman 678, it looks like new Superman writer James Robinson is going to be reviving this Jack Kirby creation:


Atlas, from the very first issue of First Issue Special (April 1975). To my recollection, this will be the first time this character has been revived since his one-issue debut 33 years ago. First Issue Special was a series designed like DC's earlier Showcase to introduce new characters in the hope that they would prove popular enough to launch their own books. First Issue Special, however, proved to be a failure on this end, launching only Mike Grell's Warlord and a revival of Jack Kirby's New Gods (sans Kirby) as ongoing series and featuring the one and only appearance of many characters, like Codename: Assassin, The Dingbats of Danger Street, The Green Team, Lady Cop, and The Outsiders. Some of these characters have made brief appearances since their debuts--most notably, the version of Starman that James Robinson revived in his classic Starman series, and who is also returning in Robinson's Justice League spin-off.

With the revival of Atlas, the appearance of Beowulf in the most recent issue of Wonder Woman, and the return of Joe Kubert's Tor, DC is bringing back a lot of short-lived properties from the 70s, which is all right by me, since I fit squarely in the target audience for this kind of nostalgia.

Just looking at the cover, one can tell that this lone appearance of Jack Kirby's Atlas is a kick-ass comic. In the opening pages, Atlas takes a stage in the kingdom of "Hyssa, the place of the winged lizard," and offers to fight anyone who will stand against him. Kargin takes the challenge, claiming to be the strongest guy around, and the crowd backs him up. I think we can all guess what happens next:

In one punch, Atlas drives Kargin right through the stage, and the fight is over. That is one awesome Kirby splash page.

The people of Hyssa can't believe that their beloved Kargin could be so easily defeated, so they call shenanigans on Atlas. This draws the attention of a local nobleman, who sics his soldiers on Atlas.

"Try it ... and regret it!" is some kick-ass dialogue. And what happens next?

Trying it.

Regretting it.

Not taking the hint, the nobleman starts mouthing off to Atlas, causing Atlas to administer a lesson in Marxist dialectics by kicking over the nobleman's litter or, if you prefer, palanquin:

The local army soon arrives with a team of archers, and Atlas casually holds out the nobleman in front of himself to block the arrows.

And that's just the first few pages. While Atlas faces down the firing squad, a voice he hears serves as the madeleine cake that launches him into a Proustian reverie through his own past. However, like most stories in the First Issue Special series, this one ends with a cliffhanger, as Atlas faces down the king of Hyssa himself. Nonetheless, the inconclusiveness of the story should not detract from the fact that this is one kick-ass comic.

With the upcoming Omac and Demon collections and the recently completed Fourth World Omnibi, DC is doing a good job of reprinting Kirby's great work from the 1970s. Once the major work is completed, I'd like to see DC put together a nice anthology of the more random stuff Kirby did in the 70s, like this, Manhunter, Dingbats of Danger Street, Sandman, Kobra, and Justice Inc. (though the rights to the latter may be unavailable).

DC Comics Trades and Collections May-June 2008

DC recently announced its upcoming trades and collections for the beginning of the summer, and the list is up here. As in previous lists, I found some things worth commenting on.

DC is really pushing out the Batman stuff to coincide with the upcoming film. Joker: The Last Laugh is really best forgotten, but I guess it makes sense to put this out from a business standpoint, since the Joker will be all over the place this summer. Paul Jenkins's Two-Face story, Batman: Jekyll and Hyde, is an interesting choice: despite good art, the series was just okay, and it's pretty easy to get in cheap back issues. However, that book, combined with the Batman vs. Two-Face trade, seems to indicate a spoiler about the movie: Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent will probably turn in to Two-Face by the end of the movie. The Two-Face collection, which features random appearances from throughout the character's history, looks good. It contains the Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams story, which is one of my all-time favorite Batman comics.

I also want to mention that I'm glad I'm not buying the current Ra's al Ghul crossover in single issues, as the collection is being pushed out pretty quickly. In fact, I'm surprised how many collections are announced for storylines or miniseries that aren't even over yet. DC seems to be showing its support for the new Infinity Inc. series by issuing a quick trade, though that comic got off to a pretty boring start.

While the number of Batman books on this list is understandable, I'm not sure why DC is putting out so much Superman stuff, especially collections of stories from John Byrne's revamp, like the World of Krypton collection. Also, if DC is going to do a collection like this, that mixes pre- and post-Crisis Krypton stories, why not include the first World of Krypton series from 1979, which has the added importance of being DC's first real miniseries (plus, it has some nice art by Howard Chaykin and Murphy Anderson)?

It's also interesting to see what DC added to the Bizarro World hardcover to get a collection out of the recent 3-issue story.

The Showcase Presents volumes are an interesting lot, in that all are continuations of series that already have volumes, like Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, and The Haunted Tank. I'll be curious to see what other series get the Showcase treatment later this summer.

On the flipside of the Showcase books are the Archive collections. Rumor has it that the two listed here--for Seven Soldiers of Victory and The Doom Patrol--are the last of this format, and DC is going to move more series into the Omnibus format, like the nice Starman collection. Speaking of that book, I probably won't be getting it because I have all the single issues, but I can't recommend it highly enough. It's one of my all-time favorite series, and I'm glad it's being released in this format.

The real exciting news in this list, however, is the announcement of the harcover collection of Jack Kirby's OMAC series in a format similar to the Fourth World Omnibi. At last summer's HeroesCon, I asked DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio at one of the DC panels if they would release OMAC in a format similar to Kirby's Fourth World. Clearly, I have some pull, as this collection will be out in less than a year from the time I asked the question. At the next opportunity I have to talk to Dan DiDio, I will use that influence more ambitiously.