I agree, if he wanted a mass readership. My dirty secret is that I never made it through his Fourth World material. Because when you come home from a hard day of work you want something super easy. You want mind candy, noit more work. But when I make the effort to read Kirby in depth I find his dialog so much more rewarding than other writers. It's like Shakespeare: takes some effort to plough through the first time, but is so worth it.

Take this scan for example, from Romberger's article on Captain Victory. If this is not shakespearian, what is? The words have to be read slowly, like the atomic poetry that it is. I would not change a single delicious syllable.


Or this beautiful exchange. Imagine these lines delivered by great actors in a great movie, under a great director, with just the right pauses:



Or even this: there is no poetry in the rhythm, but there is so much depth in these ideas. 

The context of that last picture is that when Darkseid (called Blackmass) and Orion (the Captain's father) destroyed themselves in battle, in theory Orion won. But it sent the message that violence was the answer. So in truth, violence won. Thus the disembodied voice of Darkseid continues, urging people to believe that a moment of violent glory is better than a lifetime of mediocrity. Kirby urges us to ask who was right here. I think that Captain Victory is not just the biggest of Kirby's creations (what began on a lone human scale in Captain America 1 is now on a galactic scale) but is about the final victory of ideas over violence. This is symbolised by how the Captain himself is nameless. And when he dies a new body takes on his history and memories. This is a concept of humanity that can literally span galaxies and live forever, one that violence can never defeat. And yet the love of violence is always there, the battle inside continues.

For my money (literally) Kirby writes the best dialog in the world. 

The Phantom Stranger stories, on the whole, work pretty well in black and white, doubly so when Aparo comes on board.

Less successful are the early issues where PS has a squad of teen sidekicks and Dr. 13 (who I usually like) keeps showing up to yell at him, but color wouldn't do anything to help that.

Maybe I am projecting, but to me he is impatient: the words get the idea across. Polishing the words just wastes time, like drawing every eyelash on a face. Plus real dialog tends to be cliched, highly imperfect and sometimes confusing. There is a real-ness to Kirby's dialog that I find refreshing. Polishing it, like polished movie dialog, makes it more fake, to me. With Kirby's dialog I instantly know exactly what is going on and how they feel, in the minimum words, and without worrying that I might have misinterpreted.

NOPE. The scripting, as...idiosyncratic, let's say...as it is, is part of what gives those books their energy.

1) if it is something creator-owned like Capt. Victory their license may not include digital distribution so they cannot do it

2) they have to go through a middle man like Comixology who gets a cut, and may not want to devote time/effort to carry a book they may not feel will sell enough to make it worth their while, so even if a publisher wants to the distributor may not want to carry it (just like Diamond has a minimum expected sales threshold before they will deal with print copies of books)

3) if it is something older, they may not have usable digital files and the effort/opportunity cost of cleaning up copies/artwork/making scans may not be worthwhile to them if it is something they think may not sell much. Sometimes it comes down to do we do book a or book b on the production schedule and if book A is a low demand project like say an obscure 80s Kirby project and project B is something with more current demand, they go with project B. Newer comics, which have digital files as part of the initial creation process, are much easier to make available digitally. Stuff produced before the digital age will have production costs and obstacles. If it is something that has been made into and released as a trade paperback/hardcover already in the digital age, then the work has already been done for the print project. Something that has not been collected needs to sell enough to cover those production costs because they will not have already recouped those costs with print sales.

So it is not as easy as oh let's make this thing available on Comixology because someone might buy it and it would all be profit. Obviously it is less expensive to produce because there is no printing costs, but the production costs for turning something into a print or digital copy are the same in this digital age, plus reprint royalties, distributor cuts, etc. all eating into the bottom line and determining if something is viable to release. Again stuff already in digital format cut out a lot of those costs, but something like Capt. Victory probably does not exist in digital format since it has not been collected.

-M

They made the digital files for Avengers 56 long ago when putting together either a Masterworks, Essential or other trade, so making it a digital comic now probably costs little, just adjusting the format to be used by the various readers.

Now what I don't know is if Marvel makes all their older books available through comixology because they also sell them through Marvel.com (not sure if it uses Comixology or not if you buy it there) where you can also redeem those free digital copies of new comics, and then there is of course Marvel Unlimited-not sure if they make something available to all formats at once or have windows of exclusivity for themselves at .com before it goes to Comixology on the older stuff, etc.

What it would cost is usually the salary of someone in the production department prepping the digital files for release and maybe someone from the tech department prepping them for the various formats digital readers use-a lot easier if the digital file already exists. However, those are the same people who have to prep their new releases and other things that will probably sell more and be more profitable than an older part of their catalog that has been available in other formats for some time, so there is opportunity costs and resource management issues to consider as well.

You or I could probably prep an issue if we had the source material, a good enough scanner, the right software and the technical know-how to prep the files for the various readers-I've sat through seminars how to do this for self-publisher of prose as part of the Writer's Track at Origins, and it's not that expensive once you purchase the software (assuming you have an up-to-date computer and are capable of making a PDF for a word file-you would need other software for visuals/artwork), but can be time consuming if you aren't 100% familiar with the ins and outs of the various formatting issues. Employees for Marvel would be more savvy with the process so it would take less time but there is still a question of cost-benefit analysis, is the book going to sell enough digitally over time to justify the time and resource expenditure to make it available. Again easier and less expensive if the bulk of the work is done and it already exists as a digital file, but if they are only going to sell a few hundred digital copies at 99 cents each, is it really worth the time and effort to make it?

-M

Dude, I do the same thing.