My Two Favorite Comic Stories

As a kid, I loved superhero comics. As an adult...not so much. Except, of course, in the realm of nostalgia. I still adore those comic stories that inspired and fascinated me as a kid and enjoy looking at them through the lens of decades of history.

My two favorite superhero comic book yarns were written and illustrated by (of course) my two favorite creators of that period of my life: Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby. I won't get too much into the history of the pair of stories that so influenced me, except to reiterate that Steve Ditko created, wrote, and illustrated The Amazing Spider-Man; and Jack Kirby created, wrote, and illustrated the Fantastic Four. Neither man had a "co-creator"--just an editor.

I've also covered both of these stories in past essays here in my blog. So I'll just list the stories and the issues in which they appeared and leave my earlier words to stand; and perhaps add some depth to those essays on another day.

The first of these great stories was the Master Planner story arc that ran for several issues of The Amazing Spider-Man. This is, as far as I'm concerned, the finest super-hero story ever done. Ditko outdid not only himself with this adventure, but all other super-hero comic creators before or since. A few have come close to capturing the depth and breadth of what he was achieving, but no one has surpassed the sheer power of this tale.

When he was allowed, Ditko could create some of the finest covers being done in comics.

Yeah, the fans had never seen Spider-Man done like this.

Despair was never portrayed quite like this. Someday I need to do a study of the way Ditko utilized the imagery of water in his comics.

Years later, after Ditko had left his employment at Marvel Comics and abandoned his amazing creations there, his former colleague was winding down his own tenure at that company. Jack Kirby pretty much created not only most of the characters at Marvel, but the company itself. No one else was as important to that company as Jack Kirby. I have studied his run on his most popular title there, FANTASTIC FOUR, and always noticed that he seemed to let up on the gas after the "Him" storyline in issues 66 & 67. Further research led me to the conclusion that his editor there had wrecked his story, almost completely nullifying its effectiveness and mucking up the dialog pretty much beyond belief. Thereafter, the explosion of creativity that Kirby had lavished on the book to that point ceased. The stories were still excellent and the art was still the most dynamic around, but there were almost no new characters coming out of the book. Kirby was, I am convinced, fed up with seeing the sweat of his brow being capitalized by his employers with nothing for him beyond his page rate. Further, not only was his intellectual property being robbed from him, his stories were often being mangled by the ego-mad idiot editor under whom he worked. Thus, the flow of new properties to his bosses slowed to a trickle.

Then, in issue #90 of the title, a new story arc appeared. The Skrull/Slave arc. It could be argued that the plot was partially based on the germ of an idea from the TV series Star Trek. But beyond that it was all classic Kirby. Kirby had always been fascinated by mob characters and science fiction. And so he plunged his comic book alter-ego, Ben Grimm, into a long story steeped in mob culture and a pure science-fiction, planet-spanning adventure. It was, I now know, Kirby's fond farewell to his character of Ben Grimm as he planned his move away from Marvel and to fields greener for his creative energies.

Symbolism. One of Kirby's earliest creations for Marvel was the alien race, the Skrulls, who were shape-shifters. Here, he is tricked and kidnapped by a Skrull posing as his friend, Reed Richards. Fooled again, sucker!

Ben Grimm, in chains!

One of the most effective and dramatic covers I've seen in superhero comics.

The finale. Torgo was the major character (I can't say "villain" because he truly was not such) that Kirby created for this story arc. However, for all the emotional power of Torgo, Kirby chose to give him a kind of generic android appearance similar to the kind of thing he'd been handing off to his employers since issue #68 of the title. Let them create their OWN unique images to exploit!

The King's Last Hurrah

With the obvious theft of his intellectual property, Kirby had to be thinking of moving on well before he finally did take his leave of Marvel. I cannot imagine creating, writing, and illustrating any number of comic book properties, only to have authorship and ownership of them taken by a slimy shill and the corporation for which he worked.

I had long noticed that Kirby had all but ceased to create major characters for Marvel after issue #67 of FANTASTIC FOUR. In that issue he gave us the artificially generated superhuman that we would later come to know first as HIM and then as WARLOCK. I think that negative experience (Stan Lee utterly wrecked the narrative with his clumsy interference) showed Kirby that unless he had some solid editorial control, his work would continue to be misinterpreted and the products of the sweat of his brow stolen at every turn.

After the #66-67 storyline, Kirby pretty much stayed with established co-stars and villains with his flagship title. He would, of course, always find a way to toss in one of his unique monsters, but by and large he kept that strictly to his signature androids, robots, and aliens.

And the last great story arc he gave us with the book spanned four issues from #90 through #93. It's been said that Kirby was highly influenced by the original Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action" in plotting this tale. That's quite possible. Kirby was obviously a movie fan and sometimes film influenced his work. If so, Kirby left that influence in a relatively minimal stage here.

He sets up the story on a world where, although possessed of advanced technology, the residents are stylistically and socially influenced by Prohibition-era USA. We have gangsters and street toughs and the dress and cityscapes of 1930s Chicago or New York. But instead of dealing in prohibited alcohol, the gangs who rule the roost trade in slaves, who are pitted one against the other in hand-to-hand (and lethal) combat in Roman-style arenas.

This story was classic Kirby and ALL Kirby. It was his life and his youth that was steering the content and the storyline. Not that of a middle-class wimp who had sat in an office his whole life and had never known poverty or hunger or been in the midst of a bare-knuckled fight in a ghetto neighborhood.

The Skrull-Slaver  arc was a story that only Jack Kirby could have told and he laid it out in such a simple way that not even that jackass sitting in the editor's chair could fuck it up. And this was Kirby's final moment not only to shine, but to show off his finest superhero creation, Ben Grimm.

The story begins with Grimm (Kirby) being fooled by a shape-changing Skrull disguised as Reed Richards (Stan Lee, his boss) who betrays him, gasses him, locks him up on a starship, and sells him into slavery (steals his ideas and intellectual property and making him a wage slave while the publisher grows rich). Even if on a subconscious level, this one is almost too obvious for words.

During the four issues, we are treated to some of the best writing Kirby was able to get past his unneeded (and fake) "co-creator". As I said, it was very difficult for even that jackass to fuck up Kirby's work here. There is great gangster speech, wonderful plot twists, and tons of action as only Jack Kirby could show it. And all during this long story, Kirby really only introduces one new character, that being Torgo, the gladiator who is supposed to defeat and kill Ben Grimm. And Kirby drew Torgo to resemble nothing so much as one of his robots so that it would be difficult to utilize him later in the way of merchandising.

Here then was the last great story-arc for Kirby on the FF. After this, he didn't attempt anything of such magnitude. It was his final big shout-out to his fans on the title, and probably at Marvel Comics.

Ben is betrayed and kidnapped.

Taken to a Skrull slave world in chains!

Fated to fight to the death against TORGO! (One of the best covers Kirby ever illustrated!)

The fight to the death!