An Exercise in Speculation on Our Favorite Stories, and What Could Have Been...

Redartz: Happy Friday, everyone! Just for fun, to start off the weekend, here's a little brain teaser. A game inspired by a recent comment from Martinex1, in which he speculated on the Avengers' "Celestial Madonna" arc, if it had been done by Steve Englehart and John Byrne/Terry Austin. The object of the game is deceptively simple: pick one of your favorite stories, and devise a creative team that might have made that story even more awesome. Blending eras is fine. For example: say, Jim Starlin inking Jack Kirby on the "Galactus Trilogy", or Steve Gerber handling Disney's Uncle Scrooge (now I would have read that...).

I will start off with a pick not too far removed from Martinex's posit: What if the Avengers/Defenders War had been brought to life by Englehart, Byrne, and Austin?  We know what a great co-plotter  John Byrne has been -- who knows where might that story have gone? And oh, the artistic possibilities... Byrne's skilled at drawing just about everyone; we saw him on Avengers -- he would have been loads of fun on the Defenders. Plus, with Terry Austin inking, we might have had Popeye make a background appearance in the domain of the dread Dormammu!

OK, now it's your turn. Can you think of a great story that might even have been greater? It's open season, and all's fair. Let's see what you've got!

"In the Conversation for Greatest of All Time"

Doug: I have an anecdote I've been wanting to share for the better part of a month, and various real-life tasks and events (well, and writing comic book reviews) have conspired to keep me from bringing this to you. It's Friday evening as I write this, and I will alternate my attention between this post and the Olympics coverage.

Back in mid-July, as I've done for the past six summers, I helped with the facilitation of two national teacher conferences at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. During one of the sessions at the English/language arts conference, teachers from around North America were discussing whether or not they'd use Art Spiegelman's Maus with middle school/junior high-aged students. Several voiced concern that the material was a bit too mature for that audience. One of the young teachers in the room raised her hand and remarked that her husband was an artist, and his grandfather had written a graphic novel that fit the bill. I was in the back of the room observing the session, but you know my ears perked up -- face it, it's not just anyone who can say their grandfather wrote a graphic novel. She went on to say that the graphic novel that she has successfully taught from was called Yossel. The author? Joe Kubert. I about fell off my chair.

When the session ended I approached the young teacher who'd offered the suggestion to her fellows. I just wanted to express to her, and to her husband, how much joy their grandfather had given me, really since the time I was six or seven years old. She was very grateful, and said that she had never actually met Kubert but had heard so many things about him. She added that her father-in-law, Joe's son-in-law, would be at the conference on the next day and would I like to meet him. I agreed, and later was able to express many of my same sentiments. It was a wonderful conversation, and everything I'd ever heard about Joe Kubert as a human being was confirmed by his son-in-law.

Yesterday marked four years since Joe Kubert's passing (it is the same date, in some crazy comic cosmic twist of fate that Mark Gruenwald and Mike Wieringo passed as well). One of the things I wanted to say to Joe Kubert's family was that Joe was a treasure; the man is in the conversation of the greatest artists of all time in the comics industry. They appreciated that so much.

http://comicsalliance.com/joe-kubert-rip-passes-away-hawkman-sgt-rock-legendary-artist-age-85/

When I returned home from Washington, DC, and I've mentioned this, the Jack Kirby's Thor Artist Edition was waiting for me. On the first day I was able to look through the book with some degree of detail, I was also telling my wife the Kubert story. But when I got to the last pages of the Kirby book I had to add on. Near the end of the last text piece in the book was the date Jack Kirby died: February 6, 1994. I shrugged, and said aloud that I remember exactly where I was when I heard that he'd died. There aren't many figures in comics history who would merit mention on a national radio newscast, but Kirby did. I was about to get out of the car with our oldest son, then 2 1/2 years old, to leave him at childcare before I headed to school. It's one of those types of dates that gets burned into the human mind. I told her that the artist of the book I had was one of the greatest creators ever.

http://www.hqfan.com.br/2015/06/top-criadores-de-quadrinhos-que-foram.html

I sat at the desktop computer in our living room some 14 years ago when I found out that John Buscema -- my all-time favorite penciler -- had died. Place, time, setting -- I'll never forget.

So that brings us to this weekend's conversation, and it's multi-faceted. First off, maybe the important question is "how does a creator make your list of all-time greats?" Is it pretty objective? For example, I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with the work of Alex Toth, but I'll accept the opinions of those who say he's in the conversation. Same with Frank Frazetta. For both men, a large chunk of their important output was before my fandom. Or, is your all-time list populated by your personal favorites?

For me, I would have to say that people like Kirby, Kubert, Toth, Jack Davis, Frazetta, John Severin, and others are pretty much pillars of the industry. But can I add Buscema, Neal Adams, Wally Wood, and even John Romita to the mix?

What about you?

BAB Book Review: Jack Kirby's Thor Artist Edition

Jack Kirby's Thor Artist Edition 
IDW Publishing, July 2016

Doug: On July 16th I returned home from my annual work at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. While it was great to be back home after what had been 11 days away, it was also wonderful to finally lay eyes on this book. I'd ordered it many months ago, and as seems to be true with projects of this ilk I sat through a few publication delays. It arrived just a couple of days before I did, but trust me -- the wait was worth it!

For those of you who were with me a few weeks ago when I offered my thoughts on Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns Gallery Edition, I will again be using photographs of this text as opposed to scans. Similar in size to John Romita's Amazing Spider-Man Artifact Edition (and larger than the Dark Knight book), this is a cumbersome tome.

To get things rolling, how about this two-page spread to greet the reader/viewer?

To you stats geeks, here's the "tale of the tape" -- from the good folks at Comic Book Daily.com:

Jack Kirby’s The Mighty Thor Artist’s Edition
Includes Journey Into Mystery #s 111, 117-118, Thor #s 134-135, Thor Annual #2, plus a gallery of covers, splashes and pages.

• Publication Date: July 06, 2016 (solicited for May 2016)
• Publisher Series Number: 42
• ISBN: 978-1-63140-603-4
• Diamond Item Code: JAN160388 (In Stock)
• 15″ x 22″
• 160 pages
• $125 USD
• Initial Reported Sales: No data available yet
• Variants: none

Right after the frontispiece pictured above you'll find the Table of Contents, which is really nice, and I display it for those of you who might consider at some point purchasing this volume. I especially like that it shows the inkers involved in these artifacts. Toward the end of the post I'll show you some of the samples from the "gallery section", which really, really enhance the already wonderful offerings contained between these covers. Think about it -- six complete Jack Kirby Thor stories!

Once you're into the nitty gritty of the book, this is what greets the reader:

Oh, you said you wanted words? Well that splash sure had 'em! I love the way the page is marked up at the top, and it's amazing the lines that get lost in the printing process. I also enjoyed seeing the trim size of the final product (here at 6 1/4" x 9 1/4"). That brings me to something many of you are already wondering... what of Kirby's margin notes? Karen and I discussed offline how great this book should be, especially in light of the ongoing conversation of who did what creatively between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Personally, I've always felt that Kirby was the storyteller and Stan was the wordsmith. Does that give one man more credit than the other? To me, no. The symbiosis of their collaboration, the gestalt of the work, is what matters. All the rest seems minutiae in the face of the greater work. My opinion. However, I'm sorry to report that some of those margin notes are not fully viewable in this book. I do not know if that's due to trimming at the printer five decades ago, or trimming in the photo process by IDW Publishing (I assume the former). However, there are abundant pages where Kirby's notes are complete, as in the examples below:

I included the image of Balder below (in civvies, no less) because there's some crazy white-out on his jaw/mouth. I hope my photographic reproduction shows it, as it really leapt off the page at me while looking through.

Here's another shot of the Destroyer, in a great splash from Thor Annual #2; he's a great looking character, one of my favorite Thor villains. And dig the Kirby Krackle!!

A favorite panel in the book. One can see how Kirby might have been an influence on the likes of John Buscema (which he was -- many of you know that Stan handed stacks of Kirby-drawn books to artists new to Marvel, regardless of their pedigree).

Splash pages. What would a Lee/Kirby Thor book be without the Odinsleep? And how about the Big G? Wowza!

Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch made a cameo in Thor #134. Kirby didn't handle them during the Kooky Quartet era, so it's interesting to see his take on the twins. As I said above, note Kirby's extensive margin notes on this page, lost forever to the trimming of the page at some point in the reproduction process.

The High Evolutionary and Kirby machines. That wolf ain't gonna be pretty once the High Ev. gets done with him!

Yes, you in the back of the room. You say you're in need of some more Kirby Krackle? Why... by all means...

As noted above, the end of the book contains a gallery section of awesome covers. I really got a kick out of these, with all their paste-up/white-out/stat glories! I also own the Marvel Covers Artist Edition, and the use of paste-ups was predominant on Marvel's covers. Obviously the logos, corner box art, etc. would have been stats. But you might (or might not) be surprised at how often art was glued onto the cover's bristol board.

Lastly, this Artist Edition contained several of the very earliest Thor pages, from Journey Into Mystery #s 83 and 85. It was a nice idea, and really showed the evolution of the character not only in Kirby's mind, but also from the introductory inks of Joe Sinnott all the way through much of the pages shown in this volume, inked by Vince Colletta. Specifically in regard to Vinnie, and I'm sure many of you want to ask, is it possible to see where Vinnie erased Jack's pencils? I've only been through the book twice, and haven't actually read from it. I also didn't take any sort of care as to "proper lighting". But my first impression is that "no", you can't really see any erasure marks. I will scrutinize further, but can report that I did initially feel disappointed that I could not find any evidence of Kirby's original intentions.

Why not close with a bang? One of the best ongoing tussles in all of Marveldom...

Doug: EPILOGUE!! On July 21st IDW Publishing announced at the San Diego Comicon that 2017 will see the publication of the first volume (read that again, effendi) of the Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four Artist Edition. The book will contain Fantastic Four issues #s 82-84 and Annual #6, all inked by Joe Sinnott. You know this guy cannot wait for that. In fact, I've recently fired up the sell-off machine again, so some books and action figures are going to get converted to cash for this baby. Of course I'll let you know if and when I have it in hand.

Buried Treasures: Smash's Captain America and Thor

Doug: Only two more installments in our retrospective of the superhero features contained within the youth magazines Smash and Dynamite - look for the final one in a couple of weeks. Today we're excerpting from Smash's "Fantastic Foes" series with 3-page spreads on the Red Skull and Loki. As you've done in the past, feel free to comment on the art, the source material, and the magazines. We're happy that you've been enjoying these relics!

Buried Treasures: Dynamite's "Super-Heroes Confidential"

Doug: Hey, friends -- I'm back with another peek at some wonderful memories from elementary school. Near the beginning of the month I gave you a look at the comic book features found in Smash magazine. Today we're looking at one of Smash's competitors, Dynamite. The latter may be more familiar to several of our readers. But in regard to the comics-related material, I always found myself a bit partial to the content and lay-out of the Smash articles. I particularly enjoyed the villain pages at the conclusion of each reprinted comic adventure. As you'll find below, Dynamite went with a sort of Q&A or FAQ format for their third page. It's OK, and for the novice was probably quite nice. But for the budding comics savant that I was at the ripe old age of 9, those pages were just a wasted opportunity to show some more art.

I'm thinking I may have seen the Captain America feature below before Jack Kirby had come back to the Cap monthly mag. As such, I am sure I thought the Tales of Suspense #63 reprint in this feature was awesome. Man, I did not care for Kirby's Marvel art in the high Bronze Age. I'm still not its biggest fan, although I have warmed to some of it. But this -- this is really exciting, and if memory serves was my introduction to Cap's origin (although I may have seen it on reruns of the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon -- can't recall).

You can check out the third page for yourself; I'd love to hear some opinions as to its merits, especially as compared to the villains' bios we saw a few weeks ago.

Below is the first DC feature I've shown (so far -- more to come). I'm not sure I'd have identified Carmine Infantino as the artist here. Tough to say if he was at Marvel by this time, and my overall knowledge of DC's Silver Age was certainly lacking in the Bronze Age. As I said above in regard to Kirby's 70s Marvel art, I was also not a fan of Infantino's 70s Marvel work. And, also as I remarked, I have warmed to some of it since. But what really strikes me about the contents of the feature below is the costume on Elongated Man. At this point I'd owned a smattering of Dick Dillin-drawn Justice League of America issues, but had no idea that ol' Ralph Dibney had once worn gray. News to this 4th grader!

The content of the final page for this feature differs from the Cap material above. Opinions on this more focused approach? Is more (above) better?

Buried Treasures: Smash's "Fantastic Foes"

Doug: Karen has had so much fun showing some of the treasures hidden deep within her collection of comics and memorabilia, I thought I'd get in on the act. I'll be back next Monday with our regularly scheduled comic book review. But perhaps for you, and I know for me, this should be a fun respite.

"Back in the day", as they say, I attended elementary school at South 78th St. School in Milwaukee. I was there for my 2nd-4th grade years. But it was during my final year there that the gems below landed in my hot little hands, courtesy of the folks who published Smash magazine. As I recall, each month there would be a 3-page spread spotlighting some denizens of the Marvel Universe. To rabid young Doug, this was gold. And, in several cases it was my introduction to the seminal years of Marvel Comics.

To the best that my wife and I can recollect from our childhoods, Smash and it's competition mag Dynamite (we'll check that out in a later installment) were available as part of a monthly book order from Scholastic and maybe another company whose name neither of us can remember. For ridiculously low prices, such as $1 or even less for a paperback book (Sharks: Attacks on Man scared the heck out of me in the summer of Jaws...), students could place orders and have a veritable care package dispensed within a couple of weeks. It was like Christmas, but throughout the school year.

So once I found out that Smash contained these comic book features I was hooked -- or, as hooked as I could be when Mom approved the orders. At some point, maybe during a family move or some such thing, I cut the comics-related pages from the magazine and discarded the rest. Consequently, I have very little to offer in regard to the other contents of a given issue, or even which issues contained the material depicted below. In fact, searching the Internet for information on Smash yields little. However, you can make the jump to Al Bigley's blog, where he has published posts similar to today's. Later, much later, as I was creating data pages for my comic collection (indexed, updated prices, separated by dividers, stored in a 2" binder) I decided to 3-hole punch the pages I'd saved from Smash and Dynamite and insert them within the corresponding sections of my notebook.

An annual rite of summer in our home is the garage sale. Just days after finishing the spring semester I was down in the comic room cleaning out the closet. Those of you who've been with us for some time know that I've sold off all of my comics and quite a few other items. When I opened the box that contained my collection binder I was of course swept with a wave of sentimentality. But I was also very pleasantly surprised to again see the pages we've been discussing. So although the binder went in the trash and its pages in the recycling bin, these gems were preserved for your perusal and amusement. Today I'm featuring the origin of Doc Ock and a Dr. Doom/Thing tussle. I'll leave it to you to provide the source information. Be prepared to be overwhelmed with some serious Silver and Bronze Age artistic majesty from the likes of Ditko, Romita, Andru, Kirby, Sinnott, and Buscema. What a visual tour de force!