Getting Lost

Thinking again of the time I got lost in the woods and panicked. I'll probably scribble up another essay on that for tomorrow.

Add screaming here.

FANTASTIC FOUR #37

I spent several years collecting all the issues of The AMAZING SPIDER-MAN that were written and illustrated by its (one and only) creator, Steve Ditko. Since then, I've been steadily assembling a collection of the FANTASTIC FOUR issues that were written and illustrated by its (sole) creator, Jack Kirby.

These two books and all of the characters connected to them were the foundation upon which the most successful comic book company in modern history was built. Without Kirby and Ditko there would not have been a Marvel Comics as we know it. And I love being able to refer to the actual issues when the urge hits me to review them.

An ingenious cover that keeps the villains a secret until the fan gets into the story.

Unusually good inking by Chic Stone.

Today I landed a copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #37. This issue came out during a relatively pedestrian period for the title, but even during this calmer time Jack Kirby was showing the kind of story-telling chops he had. This stand-alone issue features a brief adventure of the Four as they journey to the Skrull homeworld during which time they are stripped of their powers and find themselves at the mercy of enemies against whom they'd been pitted from time to time since issue #2 of their book.



Although Kirby was not introducing any major new characters in this story (or even in the run leading up to issue #44) he was still doing some amazing things. Kirby had introduced a new kind of continuity to superhero comics with the books he was producing for Marvel. The stories were all interconnected. They were connected not only between one issue and the next, but between one title and another. The things that went on in Fantastic Four could (and often did) influence the things happening in X-Men and the Avengers (and other titles).

Another of Kirby's collage pages.

This issue holds true to that form created by Jack Kirby and which was then pretty much completely unique to superhero comics. We see again the Skrull Empire. This was yet another facet of storytelling that would lend itself to the further adventures of the Kirby characters, and which other writers and artists would be able to mine long after Kirby had departed the company. We see in this book that Skrulls--while at odds with humans--are possessed of the same emotions and desires as humans. They may be antagonistic toward the Fantastic Four, but they were shown not to be without their own reasons, and not to be without compassion. Keep in mind that Kirby was creating this type of intergalactic empire building blocks long before we ever saw this method of continuity in television shows like Star Trek or motion pictures such as Star Wars.

Kirby action!

And we see Kirby using continuity and humor with the ongoing story of the wedding between Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) and Susan Storm (the Invisible Girl). As the story closes, we are left with a panel of the four going through a wedding rehearsal, a buildup for the story that Kirby would give us in FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #3 (which I covered in a previous blog).

How many superhero comics had shown a long-running romance of two superheroes culminating in their marriage?

(Chic Stone was never my favorite inker on Jack Kirby's pencils. However, sometimes he did an exceptionally good job. But this issue's work is so uneven that I wonder if it was, in fact, the work of several inkers. For instance, the first page I posted after the cover shows top-notch skill, while the work on this last page--and especially that last panel--don't seem to have been done by the same artist! I'm sure there's a comic book historian out there who knows if this issue was inked by a team of artists. To be fair, I've read that Stone was a very busy artist--taking as much work as he could get, so maybe it really is all Stone inks in this issue...some when he'd had his first cup of coffee of the day, and some when he was falling asleep at the drawing board.)

By Accident! By Jove!

A few decades ago I met a great author and didn't even know who he was.

At the time, I was selling back issue comic books for a living and was at a show in Asheville, North Carolina. Somehow the promoter had gotten a few science-fiction authors together to appear at the event. During this period I was reading almost no science-fiction and I must admit I didn't really know who any of these authors were, and I was woefully ignorant of their collective works.

It also happened that due to serendipity, the time in our nation's history, and the sad location of Asheville (the deep South), there was another convention going on in the same building: a gathering of Southern Baptist religious fanatics. As an atheist I did my utmost to ignore these cattle when I'd wander into the lobby or another part of the hotel. Frankly, I'd shudder in fear and disgust at them, but after years of experience I'd learned to zone them out as best I could.

Sitting at my table, waiting for customers, one of the science fiction authors wandered up. The first thing that I noticed was that he was wearing a large button declaring--in so many words--that he was an atheist. I was impressed--because it frankly took balls to wear something like that around an army of religious fanatics. I asked him if he was catching any flack from the other (more heavily attended) convention in the building.

"They're all too stupid to notice," he told me. He introduced himself and we talked a little about the history of comics. He'd been writing a long time and had known many of the science fiction writers who had also worked in the comics industry on occasion. Our conversation was brief, but pleasant, and he left to attend to other responsibilities at the show.

It was only a few months later that I realized that I did know of the man to whom I'd spoken so briefly that day. I'd read ICEWORLD when I was about 19 years old and had been stunned by the mixture of fancy and hard science. But for one reason or another I hadn't read any of his other novels. I'd been in the company of science fiction great Hal Clement and hadn't realized exactly who he was or the extent of his much deserved reputation as one of science-fiction's best writers.

I never did get a chance to meet Hal Clement again. I wish I had. As for his courage to walk among the religious hateful that day in Asheville, I later discovered that he'd been a bomber pilot and had flown 35 missions over Nazi-controlled Europe during the time when the Luftwaffe was still a most dangerous opponent. Nerves of steel and the intellect to back it up.

My copy of MISSION OF GRAVITY, perhaps Clement's best known novel.

What the Future Holds

For years, we've been fed scenes like this of what the future of human habitation will look like:

However, if we survive the coming extinction event, what few humans remain will have something more like this (if they're lucky):

Be a Smartass the James Robert Smith Way!

People often ask me, "Bob! How can I be a great online smartass?"

To be truly effective as an online smartass, to be called "negative" and (my favorite) "unfair" you have to be not only confrontational, but also completely dismissive of the targeted idiots.

To this end, the following links are invaluable.

Tagging these brief bits as replies to the idiotic rantings of a subnormal are always a good choice, as long as you place them in a manner befitting the inane babbling of the average moron. These won't necessarily make you an effective cynic, but the links can help in ensuring that your journey to becoming a genuine online smartass is on the right track.

First in a series of instructional posts.

Salt Springs!

One of our favorite places in Florida are the big springs in the Ocala National Forest. And one of the best of these is Salt Springs. We're definitely going there in May. Can't wait to get back there!

Wild Azaleas

I forgot to post some photos of one of my favorite heath flowers yesterday, that being the Flame azalea. These grow wild all over the southern Appalachians and are among the first of the heath wildflowers to bloom every Spring. When I was a kid living in the mountains of north Georgia, we had these growing all over our 120-acre property.

Heath Tunnels

If you go hiking in the southern Appalachians you will hike through a heath tunnel. All of the common heath plants (azaleas, mountain laurel, rhododendron) tend to grow thickly and create vast, woody barriers to hikers. Trails in such places are generally hacked through laboriously (sometimes based on bear trails). This almost always produces a tunnel through the vigorous growths of heath plants.

During the spring and early summer flowering season, it is a pure delight to hike through such a tunnel. Flame azalea, white mountain laurel, pink catawba rhododendron--they all lend blazes of color to the trails and environs. And when the plants are not in bloom, it's still a great pleasure to hike through the heath tunnels that mark the trails of our southern peaks.

Cool-ass rhododendron tunnel leading to the even cooler summit called Pickens Nose.

Black Mountain Crest Trail.

Trail to Mooney Falls.

I had to stop at that spot. Just beyond was a cliff (hidden by rhododendron) dropping hundreds of feet off Ridgepole Mountain in the Southern Nantahala Wilderness Area.

Rhododendron.

 

Boogerman Trail, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

 

Side trail in Panthertown Valley.

I don't even recall where I took this shot.

 

Panthertown Valley in the snow.

Mountain laurel.

Trail to Granny Burrell Falls in Panthertown Valley.

Southwest Virginia

Another of my favorite spots is the area in southwest Virginia. Carole and I used to go there periodically because it's close to where her land is located at the North Carolina/Tennessee border. The mountains there are relatively high so there's a great diversity in forest type. Plus, there are many streams and lots of waterfalls.

The place is also where a lot of cool towns have been built. One of the nicest is Damascus, Virginia, often referred to as "the friendliest town on the Appalachian Trail". It deserves the title, in my experience.

There is so much to do and see in this compact vicinity that even though Carole and I have been visiting it extensively for years, we feel that we've barely scratched the surface.

Backbone Rock, just across the Tennessee line near Damascus. Often called the world's shortest tunnel.

Just below the summit of Whitetop Mountain, the second highest peak in Virginia.

Typical scenery in southwest Virginia.

Wetlands at Beartree Recreation Area.

Waterfall along one of the highways near Damascus.

As I was crouched on a rock to take the waterfall photo, I looked down to see this fellow slithering under me.

Rage!

Forget about the lies and propaganda you've heard over the years about how the Marvel Universe was created. Set aside the legend of the company shill who put his name on everything so that the family-owned business could steal the intellectual property of the two men who actually did almost all of the creative work at Marvel Comics.

Fact: Jack Kirby created the lion's share of the characters at Marvel Comics between 1961 and the time he left the company to travel over to DC Comics. The characters that Kirby didn't create were manufactured by Steve Ditko. They had no co-creator, despite what you may have heard and read.

Which brings us to the two-story arc of FANTASTIC FOUR #68-69.

Kirby was an intelligent fellow. He had been reading the works of Ayn Rand and was mystified why anyone would be attracted to that dreck. So he set about writing a story based on the idea of men out to create the perfect human--an impersonal, objectivist human.He had definite ideas about what he wanted to do and say with the story.

But there was a fly in the ointment, that fly being his editor, Stan Lee, the company owner's nephew. No creator himself, all Lee could do when the art and scripts arrived from Kirby and Ditko and Heck and Ayers and the other artists/writers at Marvel was to punch up the dialog and alter the captions. As a rule he tended to do a decent job with this simple task. But, for some reason, on this story, he decided to take it a step further and completely change the temperament and direction by mainly ignoring Kirby's dialog and switch the impetus of the story.

It was bad enough that Kirby was creating books that were selling tremendously on the stands and not getting to enjoy that success beyond his page rate. It had to be infuriating to see his characters turned into toys and TV shows and yet not be involved in the licensing of those characters. And to write stories only to have another man take credit for that writing...I cannot imagine having to endure that.

But the total altering of the HIM storyline in FANTASTIC FOUR #66-67 was a new and terrible blow. To have the story wrecked by clumsy dialog that did not fit the theme of the tale...a new low.

And I think the insult of that experience resulted in the two-issue story arc of Ben Grimm going quite mad and rebelling against his comrade, Reed Richards.

In the past I've stated that, to me, Ben Grimm was Jack Kirby's alter-ego in comics. Some point out that Reed Richards bears a physical resemblance to Kirby, and that's true, but it was the spirit of the man that I saw in Ben Grimm that's the most important. Richards was from a well-placed family and college educated. Grimm was poor and had been brought up in the rough and tumble world of a tenement neighborhood in New York...just like Kirby had. In later years, when I saw the illustration of Ben Grimm dressed in tallit, yarmulke, and studdying Torah (by Kirby) I knew that Grimm was indeed Kirby's alter-ego.

So I've looked upon the "By Ben Betrayed" storyline as an exhibition of Kirby's righteous anger at being used and abused by Goodman and Lee. Here they were making millions from his creations, and not only was he not being suitably rewarded for that, he was being further insulted by having the intent of his work blunted by the manipulations of an editor.

I will assume that the only way he was able to put up with this state of affairs was that he wanted to keep drawing comics and making enough money to support his family. It was always the immediate needs of his wife and children that were his biggest concern--not a battle to capture the rights to his own property.

Grimm: Humiliated, used and abused.

In the very issue in which this story appeared, Kirby had to see an ad for a Saturday morning ABC Network cartoon show based on characters he had created, written, and illustrated. But not his to sell. Not his from which to profit.

Sub-conscious, or intentional?

The latest addition to my growing Jack Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR collection. More on this tomorrow.

Observe, if you will, the rage evident in the visage of one Mr. Benjamin J. Grimm.

FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #6

Every year the readers of FANTASTIC FOUR were treated to a special story from Jack Kirby. That story was always wrapped up within the ANNUAL issue. Marvel had been doing annuals for some of its titles since before superheroes took hold. It was a way of making money out of stories that had already been paid for and published. You wrapped them up and reprinted them in a larger king-sized format and turned an extra profit. Just about every comics publisher had been doing that same thing, or something very much like it, for decades.

But with Kirby you got something special. He would pitch the reader a story that went out of its way to be different, to be unique, to make the reader hand over 25 cents when they were accustomed to paying 12 cents. The annuals were still mainly reprints--Goodman was going to get his bargain in labor one way or another--but Kirby also served up a new cover and a new story within the annual.

And what great stories! Kirby gave us the FF's best antagonists in unexpected yarns that tweaked curiosity and expectations. He might throw in a gimmick like guest-starring every other Marvel superhero and supervillian. Or introduce new characters. Give us the marriage of Susan Storm and Reed Richards. Or the birth of their child. Each year Kirby found a way to write us a story to make us look forward to that King Sized Annual.

However, the last time he did that was FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #6. After that one, Marvel tended to lean on just reprints for the FF Annuals. Why? I can't say. Perhaps it was the fact that Kirby soon left Marvel for DC. Or maybe it was because sales didn't warrant new stories for annuals that would sell just as well with all reprinted contents.

But the last annual of FANTASTIC FOUR that Kirby produced for his fans was a great one. The birth of the child of Susan Storm and and Reed Richards, wrapped up with a battle with, and introduction to, one of the FF's most inhuman foes, Annihilus. I don't think Kirby ever used Annihilus in another story. Like all of Kirby's creations, he was utilized many times by many other comics creators working at Marvel. Just one more example of the sad theft of Kirby's intellectual property.

My copy of FANTASTIC FOUR Annual #6

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.