Additions to My Comic Collection.

In my quest to collect every issue of THE FANTASTIC FOUR written and illustrated by its single creator, Jack Kirby, I landed four books that I didn't have today. Now, with the exception of #48, I have every issue that Kirby did after #20. Hopefully, I'll find a decent copy of #48 soon. Then I'll concentrate on getting all of the issues that I don't have before #20.

I've always liked this cover. Not sure exactly why, except that it intrigued me and impressed me when I was a kid. The Mad Thinker ended up becoming one of the villains that Kirby utilized the most in his run as writer/illustrator of FANTASTIC FOUR. Toward the end, I think he was using him so much to avoid creating any new characters for his employers to steal from him.

This was another cover that grabbed my attention and would not let go when I was a kid.

One of the first continued storylines to be used by Kirby in the book.

This one had been very tough for me to locate! It's the first appearance of Kirby's brilliant character, The Black Panther, aka T'Challa, Prince of Wakanda. Rumor is that the Panther will become a movie character in the near future, so the value of the book has been on the ascendancy.

Joe Sinnott!

Jack Kirby was one of the busiest comic creators of all time. He was arguably the hardest-working man in comics. From what I've read, he didn't like to ink his pencils. They say that once he'd finished writing and penciling the story he was anxious to move on to the next project. Therefore, he generally gave his penciled work over to another artist to ink, thus leaving him free to create new stories.

Because he was such a prolific artist, many people inked his work. His pages were, I would assume, easy to ink because they were so dynamic and so logical in construction. But some guys were just uniquely suited to ink Jack Kirby's pencils.

To me, the best of the lot on Kirby's work was Joe Sinnott. Sinnott had a very smooth, fluid way of inking any pencil artist he was given to delineate. Sinnott's inks were always solid and seemed to bring out the best in the artist over whom he was working. In fact, my favorite work by John Byrne, George Perez, and other 1980s and 1990s-era pencil artists were inked by Sinnott. He improved their art and made it all friendlier to the printed page and to the viewer.

Other folk could do a creditable job of inking Jack Kirby, but the best of the best was Joe Sinnott!

Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott! What a team!