I've tried to stay neutral here and let people have their say, even when I disagree; maybe add my two cents to a point. However, my intent is to celebrate Kirby's work, as I love it, even when the story isn't very good. There is always something to like in even Jack's worst story; and, his worst is heads and shoulders above the industry average. However,I do take exception at a couple of statements that read like attacks on his character. Every human being has foibles and ego and negative traits to their personality; but, in dozens of interviews and hundreds of tributes, I have never read anything to suggest that Jack Kirby ever had a diva ego, ever did anything because he thought he could do whatever he wanted, because he was editing, ever treated anyone, fan or colleague, with anything other than the utmost in courtesy and respect and was anything other than a good, decent, hard-working man. Kirby was in a position to demand much of publishers and yet demanded little, until he had been so crapped upon that he started fighting back. Even then, all he asked for was fair compensation: the return of his specific artwork, without special conditions that no other artist faced. Jack had his weaknesses; dialoguing wasn't his strong point and some of his stories were probably written on too broad a scale. However, even when his morale was low and he was looking for an out, he didn't phone the work in. No creator has a perfect record, when it comes to storytelling. Sometimes an idea never quite reaches the place it needs to be and Jack certainly had some of those.

First and foremost, Jack understood that comics were a business. He created his stories to by read by what he perceived as the main audience. That audience was not the fan press, comic dealers, and critics; it was the average comic book buyer. Up until the dawn of the 80s, that was, mainly, children between the ages of about 6 and 14 (give or take a year or two). Jack produced art within that commercial vision, because he was a true artist. He embraced comics from the moment he entered the field, while others sought more "legitimate" pastures. In his later years, Jack was more interested in the grand, mythological stories, than he was in stories about guys in long underwear punching each other. Pro wrestling already provided that and Jack had already done pro wrestling, in comics. Jack wanted to get to the heart of epic storytelling and that is myth. While other, younger creators at Marvel were busy trying to emulate their favorite writers and filmmakers (to an ever shrinking audience); Jack was pointing the way to archetypes, a path soon tread by Hollywood mavericks, like Lucas and Spielberg, when other comic creators were trying to be Friedkin, Scorsese, Cimino, Kubrick, and the Hollywood New Wave, as well as writers like Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey, Joseph Heller, Puzo and the other darlings of the late 60s early 70s. Jack was being Homer, by way of Warner Brothers gangster films and pulp magazines.

Jack rarely stuck up for himself, especially when he should have. He had a family to support and came from extremely poor beginnings and had much to lose, in his eyes. He was born and raised in the tenements of Hell's Kitchen, in New York, and he grew up to own a home in California, with a swimming pool. Jack worked like a dog to provide that home for his family, so they would never know the life he had. It took a lot for him to leave Marvel and head to DC and it took even more to come back. He swallowed pride, ate EXPLETIVE and called it ice cream, because he had to provide. If Jack had had half the self-promotional mindset that Stan had (not a knock; Stan knew how to promote his own brand, as well as the Marvel brand), he could have called Martin Goodman and Carmine Infantino's bluffs; but, he didn't. However, he was a fighter and he stood up to protect others. Eisner tells stories of Kirby chasing mob shakedown artists from his shop, Mark Evanier tells of Jack threatening to beat the crap out of a conniving thief who ran Marvelmania and who was harassing Evanier; and, more famously, while other comic people stayed stateside, in cushy billets, Jack was on the frontline, fighting the Nazis, just like the heroes he created.

I have been called a negative person, by those who know me. I love comics and have spent my time on the negative aspects of the medium. It's easy to do online. I am here to talk about what I love and I love Kirby and his stories, from the epic to the goofy, the grand to the incoherent. I try to point out the awesome, poke a little fun at the weird, and admit when something doesn't quite work for me; but, try to find the good in even the worst story. 2001 isn't Jack's best work; it can't be, it wasn't his story. However, as far as quality of work on an comic book adaptation of a movie, it is light years better than the average. I have read plenty of those from Marvel, DC and Western and it is almost universal that they were the lowest priority at the company and are rarely anything more than "okay." Jack's 2001 isn't Kubrick's. It also isn't a Dan Spiegle adaptation of a Disney movie (and Spiegle was great). It is a visually interesting attempt at capturing a visually interesting film, that is rather weak on the kind of storytelling at which Jack excelled. I love 2001; but, you do have to infer and interpret a lot in that movie. Reading Clarke's novel explains alot. Reading Kirby's comic, you get the general sense of the movie, as best you can in the limited number of pages and without motion) and you get some amazing visuals. You also get a Jack Kirby who has grown tired of getting kicked around, has figured out he is being pushed to the curb by younger turks, who are working on his creations (or Ditko's, or other pioneers), without ever generating their own. It wouldn't be long before Jack would head off to the world of animation, where he was treated with the respect he had earned, was compensated well for his talents, and was given the security and benefits that he should have had, in the first place.

I am not out to stifle any discussion here, not even in what I consider to be "my" threads. I started them to share a love of something and not everyone has the same experience and reaction to every comics and the medium is the better that they don't. However, if you have made your point, then let's move the discussion forward, rather than running the same argument over and over again.

I have that entire Black Panther series and most of Eternals, but I've never quite gotten the urge to read them. Seeing how bizarre both stories
look, I'm kind of intrigued now. I read his Captain America when it was coming out, and I have to admit, I thought it was pretty bad back then. But
revisiting those books in the last few years, I appreciated them more. Still, I feel like he was maybe so determined to do things his own way that
he hurt the stories by trying to be so different than what people expected. I'll probably read BP first, because it looks like it's action packed at least.
Does it seem to anybody that he went out on his own tangents in the 1970's Marvel stuff as an act of spite? I have the impression that Jack Kirby was
angry at the world and carried a chip on his shoulder because he felt mistreated, and just wonder why this stuff doesn't compare to his great work
before he left Marvel the first time. In my opinion, of course.

I think that if self-publishing alternatives like Image or IDW or Dark Horse had been in the marketplace when Jack left DC, he might have taken things like Eternals, Devil Dinosaur and other stuff there and done it his own way. He did so when Pacific offered the opportunity, but Jack was at the tail end of his career then, and the rewards for smaller publishers then are not what they are now, so Jack may have opted for the secure paycheck from Marvel still, but part of me would have liked to see what Jack could have done when he was at his peak if he had been given the freedom of today's creator owned indy publishing opportunities. But at that time, you had to get your ideas out through the big 2 and that meant having to shoehorn the stuff into their integrated universes to some degree whether it fit or not.

-M

Only to you. Most didn't find it as egregious a failure as you did. (and some of those adaptations you mentioned weren't that good).

Most of us read it for what it was and moved on to his new work. It in no way defined his second act at Marvel.

codystarbuck - Excellent Review on Black Panther #3.

Those were amazing images. King Kirby indeed!

Perhaps a bit of Doc Savage too in the Panther, if we take Doc Savage as the first of all the pulp heroes who were also scientists and had access to all kinds of cool, advanced technology.