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Jack Kirby, the "King" of Comics

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« on: June 30, 2007, 01:42:23 am »


Premiere (March 1971) of The New Gods, flagship of the Fourth World titles. Cover art by Kirby & Don Heck.


Later career
 
Kirby returned to DC in the early 1970s, under an arrangement that gave him full creative control as editor, writer and artist. He produced a cycle of inter-linked titles under the blanket sobriquet The Fourth World including a trilogy of new titles, New Gods, Mister Miracle, and The Forever People, as well as the Superman title, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen which he worked on at the publisher's request. Kirby claims to have picked this Superman family book because the series was between artists and he did not want to cost anyone a job. The central villain of the Fourth World series, Darkseid, and some of the Fourth World concepts appeared in Jimmy Olsen before the launch of the other Fourth World books, giving the new titles greater exposure to potential buyers.

Kirby later produced other DC titles such as OMAC, Kamandi, The Demon, and (together with former partner Joe Simon for one last time) a new incarnation of the Sandman. Several characters from this period have since become fixtures in the DC universe, including the demon Etrigan and his human counterpart Jason Blood; Scott Free (Mister Miracle), and the cosmic villain Darkseid.

Kirby then returned to Marvel Comics where he both wrote and drew Captain America and created the series The Eternals, which featured a race of inscrutable alien giants, the Celestials, whose behind-the-scenes intervention influenced the evolution of life on Earth. Kirby's other Marvel creations in this period include Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man, and an adaptation and expansion of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. He also wrote and drew The Black Panther and did numerous covers across the line.

Although often artistically successful, the books did not connect with an audience to the same extent as his earlier work for Marvel in the 1960s. Many of the themes of his 1970s work - aging and immortality, helplessness in the face of unknowable and inconceivable powers beyond one's control - were those of a man in late middle age and were not likely to connect with younger readers.

Still dissatisfied with Marvel's treatment of him, and their refusal to provide health and other employment benefits, Kirby left Marvel to work in animation, where he did designs for Turbo Teen, Thundarr the Barbarian and other animated television series. He also worked on The Fantastic Four cartoon show, reuniting him with scriptwriter Stan Lee. He illustrated an adaptation of the Walt Disney movie The Black Hole for Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales syndicated comic strip in 1979-80.



 
Topps Comics' Bombast #1 (April 1993). Cover art by Kirby

In the early 1980s, Pacific Comics, a new, non-newsstand comic book publisher, made a then-groundbreaking deal with Kirby to publish his series Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers: Kirby would retain copyright over his creation and receive royalties on it. This, together with similar actions by other "independents" such as Eclipse Comics, helped establish a precedent for other professionals and end the monopoly of the "work for hire" system, wherein comics creators, even freelancers, had owned no rights to characters they created. Kirby also retained ownership of characters used by Topps Comics beginning in 1993, for a set of series in what the company dubbed "The Kirbyverse".

In 1985, screenwriter and comic-book historian Mark Evanier revealed[citation needed] that thousands of pages of Kirby's artwork had been lost by Marvel Comics. These pages became the subject of a dispute between Kirby and that company. In 1987, in exchange for his giving up any claim to copyright, Kirby received from Marvel the 2,100 pages of his original art that remained in its possession. The disposition of Kirby's art for DC, Fawcett, and numerous other companies has remained uncertain.

Kirby died at age 76 of heart failure in his Thousand Oaks, California home.

Kirby's daughter, Lisa Kirby, announced in early 2006 that she and co-writer Steve Robertson, with artist Mike Thibodeaux, plan to published via the Marvel Comics Icon imprint a six-issue miniseries, Jack Kirby's Galactic Bounty Hunters, featuring characters and concepts created by her father.

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