Kirby and Ditko

This is the (great) cover for STRANGE TALES #79. The pencils are by Jack Kirby and the inks by Steve Ditko. Although they didn't team up this way very often, I've always found Ditko's inks over Kirby's pencils to be quite a nice combination. Marvel kept both artists extremely busy during this period, but generally not working together. Ditko tended to ink his own pencils, so I've always assumed he was too pressed for time to find any gaps in his schedule to ink Kirby's work.

For his part, Kirby was like a machine. He was regularly producing more than 1,000 pages of comic art per year all during the 1950s and early 1960s. Kirby was creating the framework that was keeping Goodman's company afloat. I know of no other comic book artist who was so heavily utilized in so many ways for a single publisher. Marvel owes everything to Kirby, and yet has paid him virtually no credit, at all.

Layouts and pencils by Kirby, inks by Steve Ditko. The titans who created the Marvel Universe.