You would have thought that he'd have wanted to write and illustrate a Herculean book for the 100th issue of FF. In those days, how many men had created, written, and illustrated 100 straight issues of a single superhero title?
But he was chafing under the conditions at Marvel and had opted to leave. So I've always figured that the 100th issue of FANTASTIC FOUR was just a shade of what it would have been if he'd not been robbed of the credit that should have been his.
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| My very high grade personal copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #100. I usually don't buy copies that are close to mint condition for my collection, but sometimes I end up with them. This was just such a situation. |
That is such a nice cover.
ReplyDeleteGreat cover, but I always thought that Kirby's heart wasn't really into the story in that issue. It was almost as if he was just going through the motions. Either he didn't want to do a double-sized issues, or Marvel wouldn't allocate the pages for a king-sized book. Whatever the reason, it just seemed a subdued non-event to me.
ReplyDeleteHe was gone from Marvel in just two more months. He was merely winding down and closing up shop.
I have to agree. The figures in #100 are so small. The panels are almost all 9 per page, 3 x 3 as I recall. The figures are not rendered with any detail, and it just feels like an excuse to do a retrospective of the whole 8 years or so.
ReplyDelete"Gee, Jack, let's do one of those bang up, everybody who ever appeared type of stories, like Don Heck used to draw in Avengers #24 when there are hundreds of figures on each panel, all fighting and stuff. You can do it, can't you?"
"--Goodbye, Stan..."
If Stan Lee asked for anything at all, I'm sure it was for something along the lines of FF Annual #3. And Jack Kirby gave him a regular-sized book with a lackluster story. "Go ahead, Lee. Fuck it up."
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