More Kirby Comics!

This has been a good week for patching the gaps in my Fantastic Four collection. A lot of these books I haven't read since I was a kid. As I've said before, these stories were written by Kirby during a period when he just wasn't keen to create any new characters for his thieving employers. Funny how his so-called "creative" boss didn't come up with any new material during this time when Kirby was effectively working in what amounted as a slow-down, and Ditko had fled Marvel.

The information I've heard in recent years is that Kirby was supposed to have quit Marvel along with Ditko years before. But at the last second he got cold feet and decided not to leave. That thing of worrying about his family was always paramount to Jack Kirby. I could never blame him too much for staying around when he was worried about being able to keep his income stream moving.

The Silver Surfer was one of the more Biblical of Kirby's creations. I think Kirby felt a special kinship to this character and he seemed to enjoy laying further claim to him whenever possible. Alas, Lee and Goodman finally gave the Surfer his own book and knifed Kirby by handing the writing/illustrating work to John Buscema.

When this book came out I really did not care for it. At all. The only thing I liked about it was one of the splash pages featuring Ben Grimm and Thor. Looking at it, you can see that Lee and Goodman had Romita go through the book and re-draw many of the panels featuring Spider-Man. Goodman had never liked Ditko's Spider-Man and when they finally had Romita completely revamp the look of the character, Goodman did not want that look adulterated. Years later, Kirby would suffer a similar insult when the editors at DC had Curt Swan paste over all of the faces that Kirby had illustrated of Superman so that they would look like the Curt Swan-produced house style of their bread and butter character. (Even the Spider-Man figure on this cover has been re-drawn, likely by Romita.)

As Kirby was toiling away, this was the kind of story he was producing for Marvel's flagship title. Fun, effective, dynamic...but almost no more new and marketable material for the men who had already fleeced him.

I always liked this cover. A lot. Here Kirby was falling back on the first super-villain he had created for Marvel Comics: the Mole Man. One of the least of the characters he'd concocted at Marvel, but he had to put someone in the book for the FF to fight.

More Kirby Stuff

Over the past week or so I've made some online purchases of back issues of the Kirby comics that I'm missing in my collection. Mainly Fantastic Four, but also a couple of other titles. At this point I'm only missing a very few issues between #21 and #102 of FANTASTIC FOUR. As soon as I plug those gaps in the collection I can concentrate on getting the most expensive issues.

Issue #57 was the first part of a story arc in which the Fantastic Four's arch-villain, Dr. Doom, succeeded in stealing the cosmic power of the Silver Surfer. This meant that Doom had managed to make himself almost god-like. This story was written during a period when Jack Kirby was producing some of the most amazing superhero comics ever created. His concepts and his scripts were second to none. Jack Kirby--and Jack Kirby almost alone--created nearly the entire Marvel Universe of the Silver Age. What he did not contribute to the pantheon, Steve Ditko did. There was no one else at work on these titles as far as conceptual work was concerned.

Comic Collection Pick Ups

Landed a few more vintage comics for my collection.

I nabbed this lower grade copy of STRANGE TALES #107. These days this issue is in high demand because of the Sub-Mariner/Human Torch battle story. The feature story is not very good--scripted by Larry Leiber and written and penciled by Dick Ayers. Ayers was not one of Marvel's better writers in those days...there's a goofy quality to his stories that never sat well with me. Yeah, I know that they're for kids--but some of them were too silly for me even when I was a child.

Kirby was so creative that it's hard to fathom how he did it. Here we see his S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury and Hyrdra ideas. These are iconic works that are still being exploited today to the tune of well over a billion dollars. And Kirby got none of that reward and his family gets none of that profit, all because of a thieving bastard shill.

I bought a number of war comics by Sam Glanzman. Glanzman is probably the best war comics writer/artist to work the industry. The guy is brilliant and is one of the most underappreciated comic creators in the industry.

Camping Trip?

I'm seriously thinking of going camping at Linville Gorge soon. Not sure. I do have some days off coming up so I may go there to camp and wander around.

The parking area on the eastern rim.

The famous Tablerock Mountain of Linville Gorge.

Extreme rock formations beneath The Chimneys.

At the Chimneys.

At the base of the Chimneys. I climbed about 3/4 of the way to the summit that day. If I go back, I'll scramble all the way to the top. Class IV, I think.

Random Photos from RMNP

I took all of these in the Rocky Mountain National Park.

Too busy working on my latest novel to write any essays. Sorry.

Nice Mother Nature artwork beside a glacial tarn.

Aspens aglow and Longs Peak.

Longs Peak. Yeah, baby!

Heading above treeline on Longs Peak.

A waterfall draining Chasm Lake on Longs Peak. I was sick as shit and loopy when I took this photograph.

Mushroom Rock. It was damned cold.

I think I was pretty altitude sick when I took this. But it was interesting so I took the time to photograph it despite being hideously nauseous. Classic intrusion geology.

Addendum:

Here's what Ed Frank says about this last photo:
I think your "Classic intrusion geology." in the last photo is really nice and is really gneiss - a metamorphic rock and not an intrusive. Most intrusive bands are straight and fill cracks and joints in the initial rock. In high grade metamorphism the rocks are exposed to high amounts of heat and pressure and the mineral elements migrate and reform to form bands of minerals different from the initial rock. These form the curved contorted bands you see in the image.

Once and For All: The Space Shuttle was a Piece of Shit.

Every once in a while I'll have a friend link me to an article about the old Space Shuttle. About what a great vehicle it was and how proud some city or another is to have part of the mothballed fleet in their community museum.

I get really sick of this. Because the Space Shuttle was a piece of shit. It was poorly designed and poorly utilized. It was a failure in so many ways as a space vehicle that it's hard to get your mind around how feeble it truly was.

It was supposed to have heralded the inception of the regularly scheduled reusable orbital spacecraft. In fact, though, it was a money-pit and dangerous for people who not only had to fly it, but who had to work around it. In all of the years it was used it never lived up to its hype and by the time it was discontinued it had the reputation of being a truly dangerous vehicle.

Some people have argued the point that it flew X-number of missions with only two failures and wasn't statistically as dangerous as I say it was. In fact, though, they're working from the wrong model. The fleet was five-strong. Of the five vehicles, two had catastrophic failures that resulted in the total destruction of the vehicles and the deaths of their entire crews. That means that 40% of the fleet ended up killing everyone who was aboard.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I was asked to use a vehicle that had a 40% failure rate that resulted in everyone on it being killed, I wouldn't even think about climbing aboard. What if 40% of every Ford Falcon had disintegrated, causing the death of everyone driving and riding in them. Would you honor such a vehicle or wish to use it? I might write a column about how shitty the concept was, but I'd be damned if I'd be proud of it.

So, to my pals who keep sending me links about the fucking Space Shuttle: cut it the fuck out.

It was a piece of shit and a lasting shame to our space program.

Cemetery

Shots of a cemetery that we visited in the National Forest.

A nice view if you're not dead.

The cemetery is old, as they go here in the States. But hardly neglected.

Kirby's Last Fantastic Four!

I got a copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #102 today. This is the last of the issues that Jack Kirby wrote and illustrated before he left to do the Fourth Worlds series at DC Comics. I had forgotten that he'd done such a good job on the art in this issue. You'd think that a man leaving the company would possibly not put everything he had into the tail-end of a project as he walked out the door. Especially for an outfit that had stolen so much from him.

Instead, Kirby turned in a wonderful effort.

What is interesting is that the cover for the last issue he did in that run was by John Romita and not by Kirby. I do know that the editor had chosen Romita to take over the book, so perhaps he wanted the Spider-Man writer/artist to get some time in to get a feel for the characters.

Unfortunately, Romita had no business illustrating the Fantastic Four. His rendition of the characters--truthfully and bluntly--sucked. He didn't have the slightest clue what he was doing when drawing Ben Grimm. The rest of the team looked like refugees from Spider-Man.

At any rate, that was the last of the late Kirby issues that I needed. Now I'll have to begin the slow walk backward from issues #20 to #1.

The story was written and illustrated by Kirby. But the cover for Kirby's last issue on the book was by John Romita. It is absolutely awful. Romita had no feel for the characters, at all.

And I have always figured that Kirby knew he wasn't going to do the cover for #102. Instead he delivered this very symbolic cover for #101.

Miscellaneous Shots from Mount Rogers National Recreation Area

Here are just a series of miscellaneous photos that I took wandering around the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area.

 

Gnarly old tree in the Little Wilson Creek Wilderness Area.

Crossing Third Peak to head down to Scales. The big peak about to be covered in clouds beyond is Mount Rogers. The thunderstorm was moving in fast and I was in a hurry to get off the ridge. The horseback riders, however, were eager to ride right up into that shit.

Gnarly tree sitting isolated in a meadow between Second Peak and Third Peak.

Mother Nature reminding me that Summer is coming to an end.

Flower and little critter.

In the mist on Whitetop Mountain.

This is the upper part of the Fox Creek Falls. They're cascades, actually. Quite pretty. The water was silted because of nearby horse camps. Horses utterly wreck the trails and cause severe erosion. I'm sick of the National Forest having to cater to horseback riders.

These salamanders were sheltering under the wheel chocks of my travel trailer.

Virginia Creeper Trail

Carole and I decided to ride the Virginia Creeper Rail Trail again. In the past when we've had the opportunity to ride it we had passed. That's because the first time we biked it we rode it with Roy and Cindi Aiken and their kids, James and Emily. We had such a good time that day that the idea of going without them kind of made us depressed. So we didn't go when we had the opportunity a couple of times.

On this trip, however, we decided to ride it once more. It was fun, but not as much as the first ride with the Aikens. We made the 17-mile trip in three hours. It can easily be done in one hour if you don't stop and linger. The first time we rode it I think we took about five hours to do the ride. Because there was live music at one spot on the trail and we stopped a lot more to take photos and just absorb the beautiful scenery.

One thing about this stretch of the trail is that it's almost all downhill. And the brief parts that aren't downhill are level. If you start at the Whitetop Station and ride all the way into Damascus, you lost almost 1800 feet of elevation. That first section between Whitetop Station and Green Cove Station is pure adrenaline fun. Just coasting you can reach really wonderful speed. Even lard asses and people in just general bad physical shape and do this trail with absolutely no problem.

The Green Cove Station. My favorite of the train stations along the trail. This was the only one that was an actual station. It was in operation until 1977 when it was finally closed. It had a store and a post office.

Inside the store section which is mainly a museum now. Operated by volunteers.

One of several abandoned homes along the trail.

This place was for sale. Located directly on the rail trail. It comes with 23 acres and a barn and creek frontage. Only $350K.

A store along the trail. There's a footbridge allowing access from the trail. We stopped here for a while when we rode the trail with the Aikens because they had live bluegrass music that day.

Looking down from one of the high trestles.

Nice waterfall on the trail.

The bridges and the constant water cement the appeal of the trail.

One of the many views.

The trail goes through this guy's farm. What a panorama!

This is where we stopped for lunch. Creekside.

The Buchanan Inn at Green Cove Station. This is where the people who ran the Green Cove Station lived. It's now a vacation rental.

A Black ratsnake on the highest of the trestles on the trail. There were three of them using the side of the bridge to sun themselves.

Yellowjacket Apocalypse

Remember the yellowjacket nest? Well, my mother-in-law was as good as her word. She killt them. She's pretty good at it. What you have to do is go out to the nest after dark. The yellowjackets are all but dormant after sunset and less likely to swarm and sting. So she went out with a small bottle of gasoline and poured some into the entrance to the nest. She didn't drench the ground or anything. Just poured a little in there.

She repeated the process for three days.

After the third day she went out and to check the nest for activity. What she found was that instead of a small entrance tunnel buzzing with yellowjackets she saw a large hole in the ground!

The yellowjackets were obviously dead. Where the nest had been there was now a deep hole. Something had come to the now-vacant nest and had dug it up for the grubs in the combs.

Typically, there are three animals who would do this. Yellowjacket grubs are pure fat and protein. Some mammals like them so much that they'll risk getting stung severely to feast on the grubs. The calorie reward outweighs the pain. Black bears have been known to travel through the forest digging them up and feasting on the nests.

But this hole, while decent, was certainly not made by a bear. So, the three local critters at the top of my list are: raccoons, skunks, and foxes.

Whatever dug that hole was really good at it. Raccoons can dig, but I've never seen one construct such an efficient excavation. Skunks are exceptional diggers, but Faye said she never smelled a skunk around, and they're hard to miss. So my guess is that the nest was dug up and consumed by a gray fox. There are lots of them around that part of the county. I've seen them, mainly in the evening.

No more yellowjacket nest. Faye killt the adults and this left the grubs vulnerable. Of course they'd have died anyway without the colony to feed and care for them. Or it's even possible the same gas fumes that killed the adults did in the grubs.

Must not have affected the flavor, though, because there was not one grub left.

Hole where the nest had been.

There were bits of yellowjacket nest scattered around.

You can see that the grubs were all gone...gobbled up.