Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott!

When Jack Kirby was working on THE FANTASTIC FOUR he was teamed with a number of embellishers (also known as inkers). Just about all of these men were very talented and dedicated, but sometimes the inking styles contrasted with Kirby's pencils and layouts and the results were not what they should have been. In the case of some of the guys who worked with him on other titles, they cut corners to produce more work in less time and the results of those efforts were almost criminal.

But, by and large, Kirby had a lot of great collaborators when he did FANTASTIC FOUR. I always very much enjoyed seeing Steve Ditko ink Kirby's art, but this was a rare teaming. Dick Ayers generally was quite good, but worked with Kirby less and less as the years passed. Everyone has their favorite inker over Kirby's pencils, and I am no exception.

My favorite inker for Kirby was Joe Sinnott. His inks were very crisp and exacting and he tended to make the reader more aware than most of the other collaborators on just how skilled Jack Kirby really was. And nobody...NOBODY...understood the character of Ben Grimm (aka "the Thing") better than Joe Sinnott. He brought the brutish hero into perfect clarity like no other inker who had preceded him. In fact, even after Kirby abandoned his creations at Marvel, Sinnott continued to carry that understanding of how to ink those characters over the pencils of artist/writers who followed in Kirby's massive wake.

So here's to my favorite Kirby inker, Joe Sinnott!

This image is, to me, one of the best illustrations I ever saw of Ben Grimm.

 

A great battle issue by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott.

An early appearance of The Inhumans, another Kirby creation!

I've always felt that Ben Grimm was Kirby's romanticized version of himself. That's why Grimm seemed to dominate the title, and why the character was so rich and fully realized that he was the book's fan favorite.

Jack and Joe!!

Joe Sinnott and Vince Colletta.

Joe Sinnott is regarded these days as one of the finest inkers the superhero comic industry ever saw. And I would have to agree with that assessment.

Vince Colletta, on the other hand, is today almost universally reviled as among the worst of the Silver age inkers in superhero comics. Many particularly hate him for what he did to Jack Kirby's pencils.

I can cover this topic in detail later. But basically both of those assessments about the two men hold merit, and I will write about it at another time. Currently I'm too busy working on a new novel.

However, two of the newest additions to my FANTASTIC FOUR collection just arrived. One issue was inked by Joe Sinnott, followed by an issue inked by Vince Colletta. Sinnott's work shines. Colletta's...well, the word "suck" comes to mind.

My copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #45. Cover and interiors inked by Joe Sinnott.

My copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #46. Cover inked by Joe Sinnott, interiors inked by Vince Colletta.

FANTASTIC FOUR #51

This has always been one of my favorite issues of the FANTASTIC FOUR. Kirby had been writing and illustrating multi-part stories for quite some time and this issue represents a break from that pattern. The explosion of creativity that had been on display from issue #44 through #50 was taking a brief sabbatical. It was as if Kirby was just resting, taking a deep breath before dazzling the fans with the remainder of this eruption of new characters and concepts that would finally draw down in issue #53.

The story here is very simple. It's a story of jealousy and revenge. A brilliant scientist whose work has long been overshadowed by that of Reed Richards has developed a way to get even. This typical comic book mad scientist plot involves the scientist trading places with Ben Grimm by stealing the superhero's powers and physical appearance. In something of a stroke of brilliance, Kirby had the evil scientist be already similar in size and bone structure to the soon-to-be-victimized Grimm.

From there, the story continues as the bad guy plans exactly how he will do away with Richards now that he has gained entrance to the Baxter Building. The sudden appearance of the real Grimm, now in his human body, fails to convince Reed and Sue Richards that a change has taken place, and they accept the doppelganger in their midst as that old companion and reject the real Grimm. And soon after, the villain finds his chance to see Richards die as part of one of Mr. Fantastic's experiments.

Kirby was able to tell this story in a typical one-issue tale. He opens the yarn with a gorgeous splash page of Ben Grimm standing, forlorn and alone, in the midst of a pouring rain. The inks here are by the extremely talented Joe Sinnott, one of the best inkers the comic industry has produced, and the finest inker to be teamed with Kirby's pencils. Gone were the less talented inkers who had worked over Kirby's penciled pages. I am especially happy that Vince Colletta never inked any of the FF stories during this run. Lee had placed him with Kirby on the THOR title, so the FANTASTIC FOUR was spared his slapdash work.

And so, the run of new characters would recommence in just one more month, with the introduction of the first black superhero in the Silver Age: T'Challa, the Black Panther. But in issue #51 we were treated with a work of truly inspired pathos.

Another dramatic cover from Jack Kirby.

As soon as I cracked the cover, this no-dialogue illustration had me hooked.

The evil one steals Grimm's power and likeness.

The real Grimm tries to convince his team mates, but who can argue with the power of The Thing?

Kirby not only told the story in a single issue, he laid several full page splashes on us.

Another of the unique collages that Kirby was using in FF. Sometimes I think it was his way of competing with some of the innovations coming from Marvel's other superstar artist, Steve Ditko.

In the end, villain sees the error of his ways and becomes the hero whose abilities he had stolen.

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!

Tales of Suspense, Covering Previous Territory

By the time TALES OF SUSPENSE was an entrenched title at Martin Goodman's publishing outfit, the art team assembled for the book was also well established. Stan Lee was always searching for artists who could produce the work in a timely manner and who also had a certain style that would appeal to the fans. In Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Don Heck he had managed to assemble such a reliable team. I think Lee was always looking for someone like Joe Maneely who had died in such a horrible manner some years earlier. Maneely could draw anything and do it well and on time. He was the glue that held the books together and Stan Lee had him exclusively for a time. Just before Maneely's untimely death he was getting ready to head out for greener pastures, wider exposure, and richer pay checks. His death had been a major blow, especially to Stan Lee who had come to depend on him.

Well, it didn't take him too long to land several more artists to fill that creative void. Jack Kirby in particular was a workhorse unlike any other the comics industry had seen. I've read that in one year he produced well over 1,200 pages of penciled pages. This is a phenomenal pace, especially when you understand that he was also writing most of the stuff that was credited to a certain someone else. Most of the monster and sci-fi comics that Goodman was publishing were held up by the three guys editor-in-chief Lee came to depend upon: the already mentioned Kirby, Ditko, and Heck.

Often joining in to add to that triumvirate was Joe Sinnott and Dick Ayers and a host of other artists who later filtered into the Marvel offices as the small company grew into a publishing juggernaut. But in those early days it was mainly Kirby, Ditko, and Heck.

I already had a copy of this issue (#5), so I'll sell off the lesser of the two books.

This was another book I kept trying to nab on Ebay but always failed to get. There's something about the cover that I really like. It's not the monster--Kirby created some really striking monsters and this isn't one of them. I think it's just the construction of the scene that appeals to me.

I've never run across this book before, so it's going to be fun to see what's inside. I'll post interiors of some of these books after I've read them and gone through the tales.