Jack Kirby Does Drama

The two greatest Silver Age comics artists at depicting and handling high drama were Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. I've already covered Ditko's amazing talent at drama and angst in earlier essays, so today I want to (very) briefly cover Kirby's ability to use building drama in his stories.

The two-issue story arc in FANTASTIC FOUR #39-40 was commercially supposed to be a way to showcase the relatively new Marvel character of Daredevil. Lee and Goodman had probably not been especially happy with the sales of their new superhero title and so they'd recruited Wally Wood to write and illustrate the title. And the general practice at Marvel was to do crossover stories with the characters to show that everything in the Marvel Universe was connected and contiguous and related. DC already did this to some extent, but their characters were far more autonomous than at Marvel--and this kept fans grabbing more than one title, to watch the continuity that Jack Kirby kept up with his amazing juggling act.

Kirby decided to utilize the FF's greatest villain, Dr. Doom, for this story. It bleeds over in many ways from the FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #2, at the end of which Dr. Doom was basically drugged into believing that he'd killed his arch-nemesis, Reed Richards. Brought out of this drugged stupor, Doom is of course enraged beyond reasoning with the way the FF had fooled him, and so sets about getting a new measure of revenge.

The first part of this story (FF #39) was inked mainly by Frank Giacoia, using the pseudonym of Frank Ray. This was, I've heard, a common attempt to fool editors at other companies so that their competing bosses didn't cop that they were working elsewhere. The inks are okay, but not the best. However, all of the figures of Daredevil in this issue were inked by Wally Wood, the man who was writing and illustrating the DAREDEVIL title. This was a cool tactic on Marvel's part, and I wonder if it was Kirby's idea, or Wood's, or Goodman's. I'm sure someone out there knows the answer to that one. At any rate, it was a cool move and I really liked it when I was a kid.

By the second part of the story, the inks were being done by unfairly reviled Vince Colletta. The inks are not the best, but are decent. However, gone is the gimmick of having Wally Wood ink the Daredevil figures in each panel. Why? I have no idea. Had Wood tired of the move? Was he too busy writing, penciling, and inking the regular DAREDEVIL title? Or had he already moved on. His tenure at Marvel was not a happy one, as he locked horns with Lee and did not appreciate having to give up his writing credits on DD. At any rate, Colletta inked every bit of the issue.

Previously, the main rivalry in the Fantastic Four was between Richards and von Doom. This was always the way it had been and that's what the readers expected. But in this issue, Kirby turned the tables somewhat by focusing on what had become Ben Grimm's absolute, white-hot hatred for von Doom. This animosity builds and escalates over the course of the story which ends with Grimm using his inhuman strength and impervious body to power through Doom's gadgets and to literally crush the villain's body. It's one of the most intense sequences I read in comics when I was a kid and I never forgot it.

This seemingly simple, two-issue story arc shows what a phenomenal story-teller Jack Kirby was. It is a crime that over the years the wrong man has received credit for these accomplishments.

 

My copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #40.

Inks in this one are mainly by Frank Giacoia, but ingeniously all of the Daredevil figures were inked by Wally Wood, who was writing and illustrating the main Daredevil title at the time.

Most inkers didn't quite know how to handle the Thing. Colletta was no exception. He wasn't the worst inker to delineate Kirby's alter-ego, but he darned sure wasn't the best. However, second-tier inking could not hide the sheer emotion that Kirby poured into his illustrations of Ben Grimm.

The final battle between Grimm and Doom goes on for almost half the book! Doom keeps throwing his earth-shattering technology at Grimm and the Thing keeps fighting through it, eager beyond description to get his hands on the bad guy.

And when Grimm finally gets his mitts on Doom...well, he doesn't pull any punches. He crushes not only von Doom's metal gauntlets, but the flesh and bone fingers beneath them. In a great move, it takes Doom months to physically recover from the beating he suffers at the hands of Grimm. You want drama?! Kirby delivered it up, ten-fold!

DAREDEVIL #16

For some reason I've had a fit landing a copy of DAREDEVIL #16 for my collection. It's not particularly rare, but because it guest-starred Spider-Man, it's in higher demand than other issues of that title. Daredevil was never one of Marvel's best selling books in the early days of their transition to superhero comics. It's one of the few characters that wasn't obviously created by either Steve Ditko or Jack Kirby. Bill Everette did the artwork. Everette, best known for creating Namor, the Sub-Mariner was not one of the core creators of Marvel's superhero renaissance.

I suppose that, arguably, Daredevil might actually be a superhero that Stan Lee did create, although in this one Jack Kirby did the initial character designs (including Daredevil's unique "billy club" device) so even here Lee's creator credits are highly suspect. At least in very basic concept, it's barely possible Lee did some work. The character name was not new, however. In the Golden Age of comics there had been a relatively popular superhero named Daredevil. This book had been published by an outfit called Lev Gleason that went out of business in the mid-50s. The original character had been published by a man (Leverette Gleason) who had been accused of being a communist sympathizer in the 1950s. I don't know the hows and whys of Marvel having ownership of the trademark for "Daredevil", but apparently Martin Goodman figured they could use it and the story goes that he instructed Lee to create a new character around it.

DAREDEVIL #16, in excellent condition. I have to say, a pretty nifty and typically dynamic cover from Marvel. Lee excelled in getting these kinds of efforts from his stable of artists.

To get back to adding this book to my collection, I had a hard time landing a copy, but finally managed to get one in much higher grade than I was willing to settle. This one is in the very fine range and presents well. Initially, when it came to Spider-Man books, I only wanted the issues written and illustrated by the character's creator, Steve Ditko. However, I eventually settled on some conditions--one of them being to get all of the books in which the character appeared while Ditko was working on the main book. This included some peripheral appearances that Marvel would publish from time to time to pump up the sales of other titles. In the case of DAREDEVIL #16 and #17, the use of Spider-Man was apparently to give the Daredevil artist, John Romita a chance to try his hand with the character. Because by this time Stan Lee either suspected that Ditko would soon leave Marvel (he did) or that Lee and Goodman would just take the character way from Ditko (they did).

Romita handled Spider-Man well in the two-issue storyline, which is understandable because both Daredevil and Spider-Man were very similar characters, physically speaking. They both used similar methods for moving about the cityscape, and both were hand-to-hand combatants. The action in both books was similar, as were the villains that each faced.

I liked this issue when it first appeared when I was a little kid, and the story isn't too bad when I revisit it as an adult. However, knowing the history behind it--the fact that it was part of the writing-on-the-wall for Ditko's exit from Marvel, makes it all rather sad.

My copy of DAREDEVIL #17. I didn't have any trouble at all getting a copy of this book, although I settled for one in lesser condition. I do, after all, like to actually ready my old comics. It was this two-issue story arc that settled Lee and Goodman's concerns over who was going to follow Steve Ditko on THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. One way or the other, Ditko was going. And this tryout settled it for the publisher and his nephew.

Some people figured that Daredevil #16 merely featured Spider-Man as a guest because The Amazing Spider-Man #16 featured Daredevil as a guest. But there were more nefarious reasons afoot. I always laugh when I see Ditko doing covers like this one. Apparently one of Stan Lee's bugaboos was butt-shots. He hated having his artists show the heroes in ass shots. So of course Ditko did them anyway. I've always assumed he would get away with some of them by turning in the art too close to deadlines to allow Lee to have the art redrawn.