The Truth

The multi-billion dollar industry that we now know as "the Marvel Universe" was mainly created by one man.

Jack Kirby created it.

Jack Kirby wrote it.

Jack Kirby illustrated it.

He had no "co-creator". Just a meddling editor who lied in his position as company shill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jack Kirby's comic book alter ego, Ben Grimm.

The Creator: Jack Kirby.

Tales of Suspense #20 Interiors

Zowie!

This is one of my favorite Kirby covers from the pre-hero Marvel period.

Here is what the the production of the early Marvel bullpen looked like as the teams were coalescing, waiting for the day when Marvel would make the move to go toe-to-toe with DC Comics in the creation of new superhero books.
Most of the monsters created by Jack Kirby made a single appearance. He wrote and illustrated hundreds of such stories. But every once in a while he would go back to a creature he'd created before, or perhaps there was enough fan reaction (generally in the form of sales) so that Stan Lee would ask for another story featuring one or another of Kirby's monsters. So it was with Colossus. Kirby seemed willing and able to revisit this monster with this yarn: "Colossus Lives Again"!

Kirby would often break up a story into parts or chapters. He'd end with something of a cliff-hanger or story break, and continue the tale with a unique chapter title. He excelled at imaginative ways to delineate a story by way of text and balloons and sub-titles. Here we see him at work with this gimmick, but without as much flash as in some of his stories.

Don Heck was generally called upon to do one of the stories in the sf and horror books. But in this issue it was Dick Ayers who got the job. Ayers was one of Stan Lee's go-to journeymen. He was mainly an inker, working with just about everyone who did pencils for Goodman's outfit. But sometimes he was given a job to pencil. This one was just such a situation.

A typical and absolutely wonderful Ditko title page. He excelled at these things. Every time I open one of these pre-hero Marvels I find myself wondering if Ditko was perhaps challenged by the older and frankly more talented Kirby. Did he use the other man's work as a kind of goal, or a bar against which he might measure himself? I sometimes think so, and at times he met and exceeded that bar.

I love this last page. The story is one that I can see appealing to Ditko. The mindless masses too stupid and incurious to grasp a chance when it comes to them. One sees the wise, bearded philosopher-king at the end. That last panel is intriguing, too. It pre-dates both Roger Dean's and AVATAR'S airborne islands.