Comic Books 101

by Chris Ryall

  KIRBY UNLEASHED

  Kirby often referred to “The Pact!” in New Gods #7 (February 1971) as his favorite of all the stories he'd created. It's easy to see why. Before this, the story moved along at a breakneck pace, introducing concepts and characters non-stop. In “The Pact!” we get the first glimpse of backstory in the saga. Dark-seid engineers the murder of the wife of his enemy Izaya, the Highfather of New Genesis, setting off the war between the idyllic paradise New Genesis and Darkseid's hellish planet Apokolips. The ferocity of war and the despondency of Izaya as he realizes war has ravaged his once-verdant world is portrayed as only Kirby could. The moment is both evocative of his best work at Marvel yet entirely new, and uniquely Kirby.

  As for Darkseid himself, he's probably Jack Kirby's single greatest creation. Over the years, Darkseid has become the most dominant villain in the DC Universe. His thirst for power motivates his every action, with his schemes for conquest often taking years to come to fruition. Looking as if he is carved from solid stone, Darkseid doesn't exhibit the weakness for honor shown by other Kirby villains, such as Doctor Doom. One of Darkseid's few weaknesses is emotion, namely pride in his son Orion, who opposes him at every turn. Kirby found interesting ways to convey this visually: when Darkseid is meant to be intimidating, implacable or otherwise inscrutable, his eyes are a solid mass of red, conveying no emotion. However, when he's exhibiting fear, concern or jealousy, he's drawn with normal pupils, appearing more human and mortal.

  If New Gods provided the grand epic in Kirby's new universe, Mister Miracle was meant to show off a ground-level, human struggle on top of the requisite Kirby high adventure. Mister Miracle recounts the adventures of Scott Free, son of Izaya, who escapes the slave pits of Apokolips and flees to Earth, where he performs as Mister Miracle, escape-artist extraor-dinaire. According to Kirby biographer Mark Evanier, Kirby saw the Mister Miracle comics as an analogue to his own life, “writing of his feelings of imprisonment in the comic-book industry and certain employment situations.” Mister Miracle is probably the most creatively successful of Kirby's “Fourth World” books thanks to its down-to-earth setting, human appeal and extremely likable characters Scott Free, his love interest Big Barda, and Oberon.

  The Forever People tells the story of five adolescents from New Genesis who explore the Earth on their Super-Cycle, protecting the planet from Darkseid's threats while learning about Earth's people and customs. Basically, super-hippies from outer space. Though well-intentioned, Forever People lacks the high-octane drama of New Gods and the character appeal of Mister Miracle, and is the weakest of the three series.

  Mark Evanier paid proper tribute to his old “boss” in this 2008 biographical art book.

  KIRBY: KING OF COMICS © 2008 MARK EVANIER. PUBLISHED BY ABRAMS PUBLISHING.

  Kirby's New Gods characters had some limited, but still pretty cool, media exposure in the popular Super Friends animated series, Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show and The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. Over the two seasons (1984–1986), Darkseid and his gang of villains on Apokolips are featured as the primary antagonists. As a running subplot, Darkseid has a curious fixation with Wonder Woman, probably an easier sell to kids (and more important, to network executives) than Darkseid's usual murky motives.

  In conjunction with the animated series, Darkseid, Desaad, Kalibak, Mantis, Orion, Mister Miracle and other Kirby characters were also featured in the popular Super Powers action-figure line from Kenner. Not only were the figures very well done and quite faithful (some nowadays go for big money on the collector's market), but the toys and characters for the TV show were redesigned by Jack Kirby himself, thus providing him with his first royalties in over forty years of comics work. (DC Comics has occasionally remarked, with no undue pride, that it paid Kirby more for creating Darkseid than Marvel did for creating its entire universe.)

  After leaving DC Comics in the early 1980s, Kirby was courted by a new publisher, Pacific Comics, one of a few new independent publishers to arise during the birth of the direct market. Pacific offered Kirby something he'd never had in his long, storied career — full ownership over his creations, as well as royalties on the comics he produced for them. Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers and Silver Star sold well for Pacific but were never received with the same fanfare as Kirby's earlier works. Some other creations that Kirby had intended for Pacific ended up at another new publisher, Topps Comics, after Pacific folded in the early 1990s. Topps let the King create Jack Kirby's Secret City Saga, also referred to as “the Kirbyverse,” again offering him ownership of his creations.

  Although we're sadly unable to enjoy any new work from the King, between hardcover archives, trade collections and back issues, we're still constantly delighted by new, never-before-seen Kirby material. Long live the King.

  RECOMMENDED READING 101

  JACK KIRBY

  The Fantastic Four Omnibus

  Jack Kirby's The Demon Omnibus

  Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, Vol. 1–4

  Jack Kirby's O.M.A.C.: One Man Army Corps

  Kamandi Archives, Vol. 1–2

  The Losers

  LEE AND KIRBY

  At this stage of the game, no one can really know for certain who invented what in the Lee/Kirby partnership. All we have to go by are their interviews and their work.

  In interviews, Stan has always credited Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko (and others) as co-creators. He's been seen going out of his way to do so many a time. People who want to discredit Lee for being in the press for all these movie premieres need to realize that Kirby would be too, if he were alive. (And as for Spider-Man co-creator Ditko, it's his choice that he hasn't allowed a photograph of himself to be taken in decades, not Stan elbowing him to the side.) As far back as the 1970s, Stan was crediting Kirby and Ditko as co-creators of Marvel characters, in print, well before any lawsuits or movie deals.

  As for Kirby, many of the interviews in which he claimed sole credit for works such as Fantastic Four and Hulk took place toward the end of his life, when he was embroiled in a lawsuit with Marvel over his artwork, and in our opinion anyway, may have been getting some poor advice from people who encouraged him to hit the comics press and make headlines.

  It was during that period that Kirby was even claiming creator credit on Spider-Man, of all things. True, Kirby did an early sketch of Spider-Man, but it mostly resembled an earlier work he did called The Fly, and looked nothing at all like Ditko's Spider-Man.

  So, if interviews are inconclusive to prove Kirby's claim, let's look at the work. Together, Lee and Kirby created the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, the X-Men and Nick Fury, to name just a few. Now let's remove Kirby from the equation. With Steve Ditko, Lee created Spider-Man (arguably the company's greatest success) and Dr. Strange. With Don Heck, Lee created Iron Man. With Bill Everett, Lee created Daredevil. It seems difficult to believe that the common denominator in these successes was not the editorial hand and writer's voice of Lee.

  Now let's look at the reverse. Some of Kirby's solo creations include the New Gods, Mr. Miracle, the Forever People, Kamandi and the Demon. All of these are extremely strong concepts with innovative designs and knockout storytelling. However, the absence of Stan Lee's dialogue and editorial eye is noticeable. Another example of the two masters' strengths as a team is evident in their work on Captain America compared to the later work that Kirby did on the title when he returned to it as both writer and artist. Are we saying that “Kirby can't write,” as his detractors are wont to do? Certainly not. What we are saying is that if Lee had as little to do with the process as Kirby alleged, then his absence should be less apparent in Kirby's post-Lee and post-Marvel work. And that's not the case.

  To us, Lee and Kirby were an artistic collaboration in the best sense of the word, each suitably complementing the other's strengths.

  6 Steve Ditko

  While it's a common enough sentiment to refer to Marvel as “The House That Stan and Jack Built,” there's
a third column holding up the theoretical structure, one as absolutely essential as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. His name is Steve Ditko.

  Ditko had been with the company since its days operating under the name Atlas Comics, illustrating science-fiction and monster comics for the publisher since the mid-1950s. In 1963, when Lee decided to introduce a new teen hero called Spider-Man, he felt Jack Kirby's power-packed approach was a bad fit for the “everyman” kind of hero he had in mind, and instead turned to Ditko to design the character and illustrate his adventures. Ditko's lanky, outlandish style was a perfect fit for Spider-Man, and his shorter, wiry hero was the perfect counterpoint to all the other musclebound hero-types on the racks.

  The design for Spider-Man's costume was also a brilliant stroke: bizarre and almost completely non-representational, with only the webbing and small emblem really getting across the spider motif. As a result, Spider Man's costume (and often outlandish physical poses) came to signify the character more personally than most other great superhero archetypes; he doesn't look like a spider at all, but like Spider-Man. The Lee/Ditko run of The Amazing Spider-Man introduced almost all of Spider-Man's rogues' gallery and most of the significant supporting characters. It also established the baseline for the character, one that all successive Spidey creators would follow. If Marvel's eventual domination of the comics industry can be chalked up to Spider-Man's runaway success, then Ditko deserves as much of the credit as Lee and Kirby.

  Following the success of Spider-Man came another Lee/Ditko collaboration, Doctor Strange, Marvel's master of the mystic arts. Whether the character was originally the brainchild of Lee or Ditko is unclear, but its success can most definitely be attributed to both. Lee's knack for creating insanely catchy names and phrases that easily roll off the tongue was at full bore in this strip, as evidenced in Doctor Strange's opponents, like the Dread Dormammu, his spells and mystic talismans, like the Eye of Agamotto, and his expressions: “By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!” Thanks to Stan's dialogue, Doctor Strange sounded like nothing else out there, and thanks to Steve Ditko's psychedelic dreamscapes, it looked like nothing else, too. As for the storytelling, Ditko's conception of, for example, Strange's astral form leaving his body and entering the dreamworld was groundbreaking stuff in comics back in 1963, and his heavy use of inks and shadows gave the book an overall sense of moodiness not seen in any other books Marvel was publishing at the time.

  Ditko left Marvel in 1966, and no one knows precisely his reasons. The most common belief is that Ditko disagreed with the decision by writer-editor Stan Lee to reveal Spidey's enemy the Green Goblin as Norman Osborn, the father of Spider-Man's best friend. Ditko felt crime in general to be anonymous, and to reveal the Goblin as someone Peter already knew went against Ditko's intentions, and the very point he was trying to make. Ditko has denied that this was the reason for his departure from Marvel. More likely, it was Ditko's increasing frustration with his lack of control over his work, as well as a lack of credit; Ditko was reportedly doing most of the plotting on The Amazing Spider-Man, while Lee still received full credit as writer. Whatever the reason, by 1966 Ditko was gone, baby, gone, and smaller publishing rival Charlton Comics was only too happy to give him a new home.

  RAISING THE QUESTION

  In an earlier, pre-Marvel stint at Charlton, Ditko had (with writer Joe Gill) created the character Captain Atom. When he returned to the publisher in 1966, he returned to the character, as well. Ditko also created two more characters that would come to be what Charlton is best remembered for: the Blue Beetle and the Question.

  A revamped version of a pre-existing character, Ditko's Blue Beetle was reminiscent of his work on Spider-Man, an acrobatic jokester with an aptitude for science. However, it was on The Question that readers would first see Ditko spread his wings. It was soon evident in examining Ditko's new work that his new employer was giving him the freedom to express himself more fully, a freedom he'd never enjoyed at Marvel. Suddenly some of Ditko's politics and personal beliefs began to come into play.

  With the Question, Steve Ditko created an unforgettable character in both visual design and philosophical concept in just a few appearances. The Question is a hero with no face (a specially designed featureless mask obscures his identity), no compunctions about using intimidation to get answers, and such a secure moral high ground that he's willing to allow criminals to die in the course of their criminal acts. What was Ditko saying in making his hero faceless? A comment on the nature of heroism, that the individual must sacrifice himself to the greater good in order to stand against evil? Like all really intriguing ideas, there are no easy answers, and Lord knows we'll never get any out of Ditko.

  Ditko took his Question concept even further in his later creation Mr. A, a similar character who wears a steel face mask with a suit and fedora, and leaves a calling card just like the Question. Unlike the Question's card — just a question mark — Mr. A's card is half black and half white, symbolic of the character's belief that there is pure good and pure evil, and no moral gray areas.

  Perhaps the best — and one of the only — thorough explorations of Ditko's work was released last year.

  STRANGER AND STRANGER: THE WORLD OF STEVE DITKO © 2008 FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS.

  After leaving Charlton, Ditko moved over to DC in the late 1960s, where he created characters like the Creeper, and Hawk and Dove. He even returned to Marvel, although never to the characters he'd made famous, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.

  Maddeningly protective of his privacy, the almost-never-photographed Steve Ditko still resides in New York, refusing to give interviews, although on rare occasions he releases statements regarding his comic-book work. While we have to respect the wishes of a man so steadfast in his convictions, we can't help but wish that he'd lower his guard just a little, to allow the countless fans who've gained so much from his work the opportunity to say “thanks.” Hopefully, he at least knows we're out there.

  RECOMMENDED READING 101

  STEVE DITKO

  Action Heroes Archives, Vol. 1–2

  The Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus

  Essential Doctor Strange, Volume 1

  7 Chris Claremont

  Think back for a minute to, say, high school or college. A pretty sizable chunk of your life, right? Now imagine spending four times that long writing a single group of characters.

  Sixteen years. That's how long Chris Claremont was the writer on Marvel's The Uncanny X-Men, the series he revitalized, which in turn revitalized the American comic-book market with its breakthrough success, and supplanted Spider-Man as Marvel Comics's trademark series and primary cash cow.

  Claremont got his first break at Marvel writing Iron Fist, about the company's kungfu hero, before being assigned X-Men just as the series returned to print in 1975 after a long layoff. Although the new team and its superheroic mutant characters had been earlier created by Len Wein for their debut appearance in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (May 1975), their personalities and relationships were the sole creation of Claremont, who took over the series with issue #94 (August 1975), the first to follow their Giant-Size return.

  In Claremont's hands The Uncanny X-Men was like nothing Marvel was publishing at the time. Claremont was plotting for the long haul, with lengthy, continued storylines that would last for months at a time, and subplots that would linger on for years. In Claremont's hands, the book was a true ensemble, with all of the team members getting a fair share of the spotlight (with the exception of Professor Xavier, who Claremont had a tendency to remove from the picture so as not to let his perhaps-too-powerful psychic abilities solve things too easily and too often). Another trademark of Claremont's run was strong female protagonists, from Jean Grey, Storm and Moira MacTaggert in the series' early years to later additions Rogue and Kitty Pryde.

  CHRIS SAYS

  In addition to being revered for his work on X-Men (and its spin-off book, New Mutants), another skill of Claremont's was to write nearly every character in its perfect “voice,” whether it
was one he'd handled before or not. Beyond fully developing new X-Men like Wolverine — particularly in a groundbreaking miniseries he and artist Frank Miller produced in 1982 — Claremont's deft touch included memorable interpretations of Marvel icons as disparate as Spider-Man (Marvel Team-Up), the Avengers (The X-Men vs. the Avengers) and even the Micronauts (The X-Men and the Micronauts). For kids of the 1980s, there weren't too many superhero books better than those helmed by Claremont.

  From a narrative perspective, Claremont made great use of third-person narration, almost to the point of intrusion, although, Claremont managed to keep readers drawn in, thanks to his elegant turns of phrase. In terms of theme, Claremont found the right tone to make X-Men constantly relevant to young readers. He keyed in on the feelings of alienation and awkwardness familiar to adolescents, allowing readers to strongly identify with the characters. At the same time, he used the antimutant hatred as a stand-in for very real issues such as racism and homophobia.

  “The Fate of the Phoenix!” capped off a brilliant and creative storyline in a tragic way, as you could surmise by the issue's sub-title.

  UNCANNY X-MEN #137: © 1980 MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT, INC. USED WITH PERMISSION. ART BY JOHN BYRNE AND TERRY AUSTIN.

  Claremont's best work is probably his most famous one, “The Dark Phoenix Saga” from the pages of The Uncanny X-Men, which traumatized a generation of young readers with the unexpected death of the series' lead heroine, Jean Grey. However, to really appreciate the scope of what Claremont accomplished, you have to look at his sixteen-year X-Men run as a whole. The more than 4,000-page literary work continues to influence popular culture to this day. Many of the X-Men comics currently created bear its influence, and hundreds of X-Men-themed television shows and movies still mine Claremont's work for material.