Monday, March 04, 2013

Collecting Comics is Fun!

Now it's time to start zeroing in on the later issues of the Jack Kirby run of FANTASTIC FOUR. I've got most of the middle of the run (issues between #16 and #70), now I'm plugging the holes between #71 and #99. Today, I finished off the Kirby annuals, so I don't have to search for those anymore.




Toward the end, I think Kirby was trying not to create anything new for Marvel to steal from him. To that end, he was using characters he'd already established in the FF pantheon. This annual also contained a particularly good story that featured the Silver Surfer in a solo tale. It's an effective story that illustrates what a superb writer Kirby was.





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4 comments:

  1. Kirk G - The Thrifty Rocketeer6:26 PM

    I was there for most of these books after #55...the exception being the Annuals... for some reason, they either weren't stocked in my little town,OR, I didn't understand what they were.
    I didn't feel that Kirby was "faking it" until we got to #86 when the quality of the stories started to dip, and the quality of the art suffered. It peaked again with all the detail in the Skrullworld-Slave-constest arcs, but after that, it's clear he'd given up on Marvel.
    Some have said the two part Inhumans story was a retread,and that the Wizard story was supposed to be a three part arc that got interupted by a done-in-one nod to Wyatt Wingfoot in #80. So it goes.

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  2. James Robert Smith7:35 PM

    I'm catching up on reading the stories as I buy the books. In some cases, I haven't read the issues since I was a little kid.

    The #90-93 arc was, I think, Kirby's last hurrah on FF. He only created one new major character, TORGO, who hasn't been much use to Marvel over the years. The story was the thing with that arc and it was classic Kirby. It would have been almost impossible for Stan Lee to fuck that one up with his meddling after the fact. And I think Kirby wanted to put one last great Ben Grimm story on the page before he took his leave.

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  3. MarkGelbart8:32 AM

    Are you going to collect Kirby's work from his stint at DC?

    Some of the characters he created were interesting.

    He created the New Gods, the Demon, Mr. Miracle, and Kamandi: Boy of the Future, plus he worked on Jimmy Olsen. (Like Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen had his own comic book for awhile).
    I have some early issues of the Demon and some of the others.
    Kamandi was kind of a rip-off of Planet of the Apes.

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  4. James Robert Smith10:59 AM

    Yes, I'll get to the later DC stuff when I'm done with FF.

    I liked KAMANDI. Yeah, it was a riff on Planet of the Apes, but imaginative and effective. MR. MIRACLE is a personal favorite of mine. I'll never forget that when it was coming out, my mom picked up a copy of the first issue and started reading it. My mom was no dummy--very high IQ--and she said, "This comic is quite good. I like the dialogue." After that, she was a fan of the book.

    I've always liked the dialogue between Scott Free and the supporting characters. Puts a lie to those who say he never wrote effective dialogue.

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