comic books

Jack Kirby’s Genius Of Composition & What We Can Learn From Him

/ grailrunner / 1 Comment

captain-america

So it’s a bit of a thing to people who particularly dig the history of comic books to credit either Jack Kirby or Stan Lee for some of the huge, transformative things that happened to Marvel in the sixties after the first Fantastic Four issue came out…but not both. A silly debate, because it was both of them with incredible chemistry and the beautiful, messy mix of amazing timing and talent that only happens a precious few times in any art form.

But I was watching this documentary about Jack Kirby that got me thinking about him in a different way than I ever had. If you don’t know who the guy is, you should google that right now or go to a place like here to see his style – you’ve seen it, maybe you just don’t know it. The guy’s American history and has influenced a majority of the guys illustrating comics today – it’s worth your time to know more about him.

The documentary I’m talking about is here:Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

What got me thinking was this: several of the artists they spoke to about Kirby said something I’d thought a lot when I was a kid – why does this Kirby guy keep getting work when he doesn’t know how to draw? Yet they kept going back to him because there was something there they found magnetic. The anatomy is wrong. The rules of perspective are twisted. Things don’t contort that way. It’s just all wrong. Yet the more they went back to him, the more influential he got to them. It soaked into their heads, like it did mine, because it was so different, because it broke the rules so irreverently, because it laid a new vocabulary of action and power and movement for an art form that was still trying to figure itself out. People needed to know how to say things graphically; and they needed to break out of some of the tried and tested methods because they were boring and tedious and based on a weird and forced application of old school comic strip doodling methods to prose stories. Instead, Jack Kirby was blasting fists out of the page and drawing gargantuan freaking alien ships or drawing guys who were just supposed to be sitting, but looked like they were about to rip the paper they were printed on apart. He put energy on the page and ignored what was going on everywhere else.

He worked from noon till early morning mostly, in a cramped basement with little space and crappy air conditioning, surrounded by science fiction pulps. When he was helping shatter and shape an entire industry for decades, that’s the kind of place where he was doing it. He’d reach behind him and grab a pulp, steal an idea and rejigger it till it was his, then charge it like a spring and draw it. Guys that watched him draw said he’d start at one corner and incredibly just make his way across to make it all work somehow, like it was all in his head to begin with.

  1. Kirby’s work ethic was inspiring. If I get bad news of some kind or if it’s a sunny day, or if I’m still stressed from work, I let a novel go for days without touching it. Like a little baby, whining. This guy jetted for half a day or more, never once missing a deadline, no matter how ridiculous it was.
  2. He paid attention to what other people were doing, sure, but set fire to it and crafted his own way of doing things that was entirely original, instantly recognizable as his and his alone, and didn’t let the things he knew technically get in the way of that. This advice is screaming at me.
  3. Just as an add-on, I always love to hear stories of guys who made the big time and weren’t too in love with themselves to bring folks into their world. Kirby and his wife, Roz made lunch for fans who made the trek to their little house – he’d show them around and even give them artwork. Actors now get a lot of credit for this kind of thing, when publicists really set them up.

Go look up some Kirby and remember what he managed to accomplish. If you think it’s wrong at first, pay closer attention and see if your opinion changes. He gets in your head, man. He gets in your head.

More Than Movies To Some Of Us

/ grailrunner / Leave a comment

I was a geeky kid and alone often when I was growing up. I dug comics and science fiction, probably because Star Wars came out when I was six and my cousin had a million comics. Or maybe it was something else. Not sure how I got started; but I got started. One thing I was very consistent about was that DC comics – the ones with Superman, Batman, the Legion Of Superheroes and all those guys for the uninitiated, were boring to me; and I couldn’t relate to anyone in them. Marvel blew my mind. I would look for the Stan Lee box in the letters page and though I had no idea what, ‘Excelsior’ meant, it was awesome because he kept saying it. He could have said, ‘Baba ginouj’; and I’d have thought that was awesome too. Whatever. Guy was and is a genius of both marketing and mythmaking. I’ve at least made sure my kids have seen him a couple of times and heard him speak, so they crack up when he does all these cameos in the Marvel movies.

My point though, is this. The big stories we’re seeing in movies now that draw a billion bucks each time out, the ones drawing all the crowds, I read those stories the first time around. They were amazing on the page; and I felt just as excited back then sprawled under a pool table or up in a tree reading those on a summer day as a kid. I felt like Peter Parker was a buddy of mine, just a little older; and I absolutely rooted for him whether he was in the red and blue tights and swinging around buildings or getting crap from somebody at school because he was smart and quiet. He made sense to me. I remember being shocked that they’d actually let Bullseye kill Elektra, that Jean Grey was going crazy as Dark Phoenix, that all those X-Men were actually dying in, ‘Days Of Future Past’, and how awful and sad it was that Captain Marvel (the one that was a guy) had cancer like my grandmother did. One big thing I understood well was just how badly Peter Parker just really missed his uncle, and that, even though these were picture stories, Uncle Ben wasn’t coming back. Wow, you know? Those guys like Chris Claremont and Stan and Frank Miller made things that are timeless and powerful.

So my family makes fun of me when I see Captain America or some of these other guys up on the screen now and they’ve nailed the character so well. I watched, ‘Superman Returns’ and ‘Man Of Steel’ and thought they were awful. I’ve seen every X-Men movie; and they’re okay. I avoided, ‘Batman V. Superman’ because I’m just done with crappy adaptations that dodge the heart behind these stories and make slap-happy noise that looks like a video game. Somehow though, for whatever reason, the people at Marvel under Disney have managed (mostly) to make changes where it doesn’t matter at all and to keep the things that were so great. No joke, when I watched ‘Civil War’ with my wife and kids and Tony Stark was recruiting Peter Parker in Pete’s bedroom, pulling down the uniform, I was almost wiping away tears. That’s the Peter from when I was a kid! He was nervous and hiding his secret and smart and awed by being around the Avengers. They nailed it. Again. I don’t know who to credit for that; but they’re bringing back some old stories and some old friends that I hadn’t thought of in years and making me feel like I’m up in a tree on a July day with a comic book rolled up in my hand, munching on a fruit roll-up. Keep it up, guys!