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Post by berkley on Oct 1, 2017 23:19:31 GMT -5
I was interested in the Hulk's sort-of appearance... I don't have those issues but does this mean that Kirby meant the Eternals to be part of the Marvel universe? It looks to me like there was pressure on him to make it so and this was his way of handling it - giving them a Hulk that was not a Hulk and leaving it ambiguous as to whether the facsimile was based on the "real" Hulk and hence the whole thing took place within the MU, or on what was a fictional character to its creators, and hence it took place in some other universe in which there was no real Hulk, just a comic book featuring that character. He also has SHIELD agents in another issue, though they seem much more like regular secret agents rather than the wild, semi-superhero-ish Agents of SHIELD we're used to. It seems to me that Kirby didn't really think too much about it because he didn't realze that the MU was in the process of becoming this all-encompassing thing where everything was inter-connected. But it also seems to me that the inner logic of the whole Eternals concept only works if it does not take place within the Marve Universe with its myriads of super-powered humans and awesome cosmic beings. The Celestials, for example, won't work the way they're meant to if Earth has already faced the threat of Galactus multiple times (or even just once!). The Eternals and Deviants as branches or sub-species (if that's the right term) of humanity won't work if you already have mutants not to mention all the other superheroes and super-villains. Where would the surprise be? The Eternals as analogues of the Greek Gods won't work IMO if you already have the "actual" Greek Gods of the MU. (This is one reason why the Thor/Eternals epic works best for me as a kind of What If story.) So I suspect that if anyone had asked him at the time, he'd have shrugged and said, "Sure, if you want it to be in the Marvel Universe, that's fine." But at the same time, I very much doubt he would ever have introduced any crossovers with or guest appearances of major MU characters. I think the interior evidence of those first 13 issues + Annual show that he had a story to tell and that he didn't need the Marvel Universe to tell it. It's just that he needed Marvel to get it published and the Marvel Universe, for better or (as I think) for worse, came along with that. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 2, 2017 7:18:55 GMT -5
I was interested in the Hulk's sort-of appearance... I don't have those issues but does this mean that Kirby meant the Eternals to be part of the Marvel universe? It looks to me like there was pressure on him to make it so and this was his way of handling it - giving them a Hulk that was not a Hulk and leaving it ambiguous as to whether the facsimile was based on the "real" Hulk and hence the whole thing took place within the MU, or on what was a fictional character to its creators, and hence it took place in some other universe in which there was no real Hulk, just a comic book featuring that character. He also has SHIELD agents in another issue, though they seem much more like regular secret agents rather than the wild, semi-superhero-ish Agents of SHIELD we're used to. It seems to me that Kirby didn't really think too much about it because he didn't realze that the MU was in the process of becoming this all-encompassing thing where everything was inter-connected. But it also seems to me that the inner logic of the whole Eternals concept only works if it does not take place within the Marve Universe with its myriads of super-powered humans and awesome cosmic beings. The Celestials, for example, won't work the way they're meant to if Earth has already faced the threat of Galactus multiple times (or even just once!). The Eternals and Deviants as branches or sub-species (if that's the right term) of humanity won't work if you already have mutants not to mention all the other superheroes and super-villains. Where would the surprise be? The Eternals as analogues of the Greek Gods won't work IMO if you already have the "actual" Greek Gods of the MU. (This is one reason why the Thor/Eternals epic works best for me as a kind of What If story.) So I suspect that if anyone had asked him at the time, he'd have shrugged and said, "Sure, if you want it to be in the Marvel Universe, that's fine." But at the same time, I very much doubt he would ever have introduced any crossovers with or guest appearances of major MU characters. I think the interior evidence of those first 13 issues + Annual show that he had a story to tell and that he didn't need the Marvel Universe to tell it. It's just that he needed Marvel to get it published and the Marvel Universe, for better or (as I think) for worse, came along with that. I fully agree about the Celestials (as conceived by Kirby) not fitting in the MU... but I can also imagine Jack saying "sure, fine, whatever" when asked about continuity issues! Thanks, berkley. |
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Post by MDG on Oct 2, 2017 8:39:26 GMT -5
I haven't read much of Kirby's work at Marvel during this period, but I get the feeling that he'd pretty much moved on in terms of the stories he wanted to tell (and how he wanted to tell them) while Marvell wanted more of the same.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2017 14:12:16 GMT -5
It looks to me like there was pressure on him to make it so and this was his way of handling it - giving them a Hulk that was not a Hulk and leaving it ambiguous as to whether the facsimile was based on the "real" Hulk and hence the whole thing took place within the MU, or on what was a fictional character to its creators, and hence it took place in some other universe in which there was no real Hulk, just a comic book featuring that character. He also has SHIELD agents in another issue, though they seem much more like regular secret agents rather than the wild, semi-superhero-ish Agents of SHIELD we're used to. It seems to me that Kirby didn't really think too much about it because he didn't realze that the MU was in the process of becoming this all-encompassing thing where everything was inter-connected. But it also seems to me that the inner logic of the whole Eternals concept only works if it does not take place within the Marve Universe with its myriads of super-powered humans and awesome cosmic beings. The Celestials, for example, won't work the way they're meant to if Earth has already faced the threat of Galactus multiple times (or even just once!). The Eternals and Deviants as branches or sub-species (if that's the right term) of humanity won't work if you already have mutants not to mention all the other superheroes and super-villains. Where would the surprise be? The Eternals as analogues of the Greek Gods won't work IMO if you already have the "actual" Greek Gods of the MU. (This is one reason why the Thor/Eternals epic works best for me as a kind of What If story.) So I suspect that if anyone had asked him at the time, he'd have shrugged and said, "Sure, if you want it to be in the Marvel Universe, that's fine." But at the same time, I very much doubt he would ever have introduced any crossovers with or guest appearances of major MU characters. I think the interior evidence of those first 13 issues + Annual show that he had a story to tell and that he didn't need the Marvel Universe to tell it. It's just that he needed Marvel to get it published and the Marvel Universe, for better or (as I think) for worse, came along with that. Having the Hulk was definitely an editorial diktat - I've read a number of interviews of people who were around at the time, who have said the same thing. Dumping the Hulk in there was a panic reaction (presumably to bad sales, though I can't remember that detail) You and I are probably about as far apart on our views of the Eternals as it's possible to be, but I think we can both agree that it makes no sense at all for them to be in the MU. As a melange of Greek gods of myth, Erik Von Daniken, and Kirby's own line of space-gods, it makes internal sense ... but to merge them and try to rationalise them as "oh well, sometimes it was the Greek God and sometimes it was the Eternal with the same powers" sort of works, except coincidence is stretched beyond breaking point when the characters with the same powers also have the same names! I don't honestly know why Marvel thought it was a good idea to incorporate them, other than (a) at that time, just about everything they were publishing was being brought into a cohesive MU... even the likes of Conan & the Eternals that had no sane reason to incorporate them; (b) Marvel's unending desire to strip-mine every idea Kirby ever had and (c) probably the hope that the Eternals could be Marvel's equivalent of the 4th World at DC. To my mind, it never really worked - and every time the Eternals have been seen since, they've been kind of crow-barred into MU continuity. There have been a few recent stories that have kind of got away with using the Celestials (notably Al Ewing's excellent Ultimates series), but the core characters are just irredeemably broken as part of the MU, IMHO |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2017 14:24:53 GMT -5
Well, you're probably right about it not being a popular opinion, Simon, but I tend to agree with you. I'm also not the biggest fan of Kirby's second coming at Marvel. Pretty much the only thing I really liked of his output from that period is Captain America: Bicentennial Battles. I think the biggest problem with his work in his 2nd Marvel stint (and his DC stuff as well, to be honest) is that the audience had moved on from the audience that were reading his stuff in the early 60s at Marvel - they were older, used to more sophisticated stories and subtler art (even if half the artists couldn't hold a candle to him for actual storytelling). After seeing the likes of Adams, Aparo, Buscema, Cockrum, Starlin, Ploog, Wrightson, Chaykin etc, his art just looked old-fashioned and clumsy, with the weaknesses in his output (the terrible faces, square muscles, stiff poses and dubious use of light and shadow) just totally over-shadowing the good parts, and his writing was just horribly klunky and juvenile - coming onto Captain America after Englehart's run, and Black Panther after McGregor, was going to be difficult even if the writing was good, but when it was badly written as well... I know there's been a lot of claims that Marvel staffers at the time loaded the letters pages with anti-Kirby sentiment, which may well be true, but at the same time, there really was a lot of resistance to the stuff he was putting out... I know that at the time it came out, I hated it and so did all the people I knew at the time that were into comics; I still find all his post-Marvel first stint stuff almost completely unreadable. |
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Post by tarkintino on Oct 2, 2017 15:41:44 GMT -5
I did not like his art as much when he returned to Marvel. ... About a decade ago I started re-reading his Black Panther series, and just couldn't get past 3 issues. Yes the art is cool, but again a bit sloppy, almost a caricature of the Kirby style. I hated the plots, and dialog, of those Black Panther books, just not a fun, a real chore to get through. It's obviously not going to be popular opinion on this thread, but I would say that all the material Kirby did for Marvel after his return was poor (I would actually go with "dreadful", but let's not quibble) - the art just looked klunky and old-fashioned, particularly the incredibly stiff covers he did for non-Kirby books like Avengers, and as for his writing ...! Agreed. I've revisited Kirby's 1970s Marvel work (earlier in this thread), and it simply suffered from being robotic and/or repeated the same kind of flat, "loud, just because" layouts he used all decade long. There's an astounding lack of dynamism in the work, all too apparent when compared to other artists using most of the same subject matter. On that note, compare John Romita's cover for the Defenders #10 (1973) to Kirby's Hulk cover for The Eternals #15 from 1977--  Although one source claims Romita touched up the Hulk's face on the Kirby cover (and clearly not much else), the differences in composition (of essentially the same cover message / intent) between the two covers could not be more glaring. In the Defenders cover, there's real energy in the faces, body positions--even the debris on the ground beneath their feet; for line art, one can see if not feel the struggle between Thor and the Hulk, as if neither would be moved before everything around them is destroyed. Even the vignettes of the group sell the intensity of the conflict(s). That was an effective, powerful cover that lived up to its purpose: make readers instantly want to purchase the comic, even knowing that kind of masterful comic art was not to be found telling the actual story within (BTW, that was left to Sal Buscema & Frank Bolle). If 1970s always Kirby worked with inkers (actually pencilers) who were able to retain his basic layout, but add their more realistic, energetic skill/style to the work, his overall work woud have been striking, as in this example of Romita inking Kirby for the Cover of Captain America #193--  You were not going to get that with Royer. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2017 16:13:53 GMT -5
That Eternals cover really is atrociously bad - there's no sense that Ikaris and Hulk are actually in contact - it looks like Ikaris is well in front of the Hulk with some mysterious flash happening between them, rather than there being any contact between them: this was a perennial problem with Kirby's later work - if you follow the lines of building and characters, they're supposed to be touching, but they're often not actually in the same plane. There's also no sense of a punch being thrown, it's just two characters in a static pose.
As for Ikaris' left arm... attack of the mutant Orang Utan! If you compare his arm to the size of his torso (and bearing in mind that the arm is supposedly further away from the viewer, so should look shorter not longer), it's wildly out of proportion - apart from just being too long, the elbow looks too far along the arm, and the bend of the forearm is, just wrong. FWIW, he also looks to have dislocated his left knee and/or left ankle, which is going to be a disadvantage in his fight. Also, he seems to have misplaced his neck. Which maybe related to his the reason his fist is bigger than his head - though I guess you could argue that the fist is "closer" to the viewer, but then why wouldn't that t apply to his legs?
The Captain America cover is superficially much better, but as you start to look at it you can see that Cap's also suffering from 'dislocated left knee syndrome' as well as 'too long leg' and 'weird ankle structure' - based on the angle of his lower leg, the foot should be where the white-shirted guy in the backgroun behind his leg is - instead to make the picture work, the length of his leg and the angle of lower-to-upper leg and foot-to-lower leg are cheated
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 2, 2017 17:35:32 GMT -5
Okay, the move is over, so back to reviews as soon as the unpacking is done.
The Eternals trades include notes that pretty much confirm that The Eternals was conceived to be a stand-alone series; but, editorial pressure led to a dialogue reference to the government agents, who try to infiltrate the landing site, to be from SHIELD, when they look more like your average CIA team. Kirby resisted and threw out things that could either place it in the MU or just reference its existence via comic books. To him, this was a sort of extension for what he had been doing in the 4th World, just from a slightly different angle. Marvel seemed to want something more superhero and less cosmic and Kirby wanted the reverse. The audience probably wanted what Marvel did.
As far as the sophistication of the audience, it's debatable that capturing the people who liked Starlin and Chaykin and McGregor/Russell, etc who have helped sales, as those books didn't last long either. They had more of a cult following. I think the expectations were that Kirby would return to do more things like Fantastic Four and Thor, possibly Cap, like in the 60s; and, Kirby had long ago moved on.
You can say what you like about whether the stories are stiff, or the dialogue cornball, or whatever; the attraction, for me, lies in the concepts and ideas he threw out. Most were way ahead of the game and it took 10-20 years before anyone else started travelling in that territory, in large ways (leaving aside things like Starlin's Thanos, which was cosmic larceny, under the best definition). Kirby was also more of a stream of consciousness plotter, so he meanders in his stories. As Mark Evanier said, in writing about the 4th World; Jack would tell them the story for an upcoming issue and the actual printed work bore no resemblance to what Kirby described.
I don't think most of his second coming work is as good as the first; but, I do think that a lot of the concepts he had were more interesting. I do think the collaboration with Stan added more of a focus to his work and that Jack probably wasn't the best person to self-edit. I also think that if he had been justly compensated, he could have spent more time on the material. Whether that would have stifled that creative mind is another question.
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Post by Rob Allen on Oct 2, 2017 18:52:16 GMT -5
I've said before that the high point of Kirby's return to Marvel was when Stan announced it at the Marvel Con in 1975. I bought all the comics he put out, enjoyed some more than others. Eternals was probably the best. The key was to see them not as Marvel comics, but as Kirby comics. I was interested enough in Jack to want to see what he was doing.
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Post by berkley on Oct 3, 2017 2:23:58 GMT -5
It looks to me like there was pressure on him to make it so and this was his way of handling it - giving them a Hulk that was not a Hulk and leaving it ambiguous as to whether the facsimile was based on the "real" Hulk and hence the whole thing took place within the MU, or on what was a fictional character to its creators, and hence it took place in some other universe in which there was no real Hulk, just a comic book featuring that character. He also has SHIELD agents in another issue, though they seem much more like regular secret agents rather than the wild, semi-superhero-ish Agents of SHIELD we're used to. It seems to me that Kirby didn't really think too much about it because he didn't realze that the MU was in the process of becoming this all-encompassing thing where everything was inter-connected. But it also seems to me that the inner logic of the whole Eternals concept only works if it does not take place within the Marve Universe with its myriads of super-powered humans and awesome cosmic beings. The Celestials, for example, won't work the way they're meant to if Earth has already faced the threat of Galactus multiple times (or even just once!). The Eternals and Deviants as branches or sub-species (if that's the right term) of humanity won't work if you already have mutants not to mention all the other superheroes and super-villains. Where would the surprise be? The Eternals as analogues of the Greek Gods won't work IMO if you already have the "actual" Greek Gods of the MU. (This is one reason why the Thor/Eternals epic works best for me as a kind of What If story.) So I suspect that if anyone had asked him at the time, he'd have shrugged and said, "Sure, if you want it to be in the Marvel Universe, that's fine." But at the same time, I very much doubt he would ever have introduced any crossovers with or guest appearances of major MU characters. I think the interior evidence of those first 13 issues + Annual show that he had a story to tell and that he didn't need the Marvel Universe to tell it. It's just that he needed Marvel to get it published and the Marvel Universe, for better or (as I think) for worse, came along with that. Having the Hulk was definitely an editorial diktat - I've read a number of interviews of people who were around at the time, who have said the same thing. Dumping the Hulk in there was a panic reaction (presumably to bad sales, though I can't remember that detail) You and I are probably about as far apart on our views of the Eternals as it's possible to be, but I think we can both agree that it makes no sense at all for them to be in the MU. As a melange of Greek gods of myth, Erik Von Daniken, and Kirby's own line of space-gods, it makes internal sense ... but to merge them and try to rationalise them as "oh well, sometimes it was the Greek God and sometimes it was the Eternal with the same powers" sort of works, except coincidence is stretched beyond breaking point when the characters with the same powers also have the same names! I don't honestly know why Marvel thought it was a good idea to incorporate them, other than (a) at that time, just about everything they were publishing was being brought into a cohesive MU... even the likes of Conan & the Eternals that had no sane reason to incorporate them; (b) Marvel's unending desire to strip-mine every idea Kirby ever had and (c) probably the hope that the Eternals could be Marvel's equivalent of the 4th World at DC. To my mind, it never really worked - and every time the Eternals have been seen since, they've been kind of crow-barred into MU continuity. There have been a few recent stories that have kind of got away with using the Celestials (notably Al Ewing's excellent Ultimates series), but the core characters are just irredeemably broken as part of the MU, IMHO Yes, even though we disagree on the merit of Kirby's 70s work, I totally agree that the Eternals does not work at all within the Marvel Universe. I also think you're spot on about the reasons Marvel has been in denial over such an obvious fact. You can see it in the things they try to change and in how their sporadic efforts to exploit the Eternals as their answer to DC's New Gods all tend to repeat themselves, though written by very different people. You can almost see them scratching their heads and wondering, "Where's our Darkseid?". |
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Post by berkley on Oct 3, 2017 3:25:48 GMT -5
Well, you're probably right about it not being a popular opinion, Simon, but I tend to agree with you. I'm also not the biggest fan of Kirby's second coming at Marvel. Pretty much the only thing I really liked of his output from that period is Captain America: Bicentennial Battles. I think the biggest problem with his work in his 2nd Marvel stint (and his DC stuff as well, to be honest) is that the audience had moved on from the audience that were reading his stuff in the early 60s at Marvel - they were older, used to more sophisticated stories and subtler art (even if half the artists couldn't hold a candle to him for actual storytelling). After seeing the likes of Adams, Aparo, Buscema, Cockrum, Starlin, Ploog, Wrightson, Chaykin etc, his art just looked old-fashioned and clumsy, with the weaknesses in his output (the terrible faces, square muscles, stiff poses and dubious use of light and shadow) just totally over-shadowing the good parts, and his writing was just horribly klunky and juvenile - coming onto Captain America after Englehart's run, and Black Panther after McGregor, was going to be difficult even if the writing was good, but when it was badly written as well... I know there's been a lot of claims that Marvel staffers at the time loaded the letters pages with anti-Kirby sentiment, which may well be true, but at the same time, there really was a lot of resistance to the stuff he was putting out... I know that at the time it came out, I hated it and so did all the people I knew at the time that were into comics; I still find all his post-Marvel first stint stuff almost completely unreadable. The writing in things such as the Fourth World stuff and OMAC at DC or the Eternals at Marvel is juvenile only in the most superficial sense, to my eyes and ears. In the Black Panther, I think he was very deliberately making a straightforward heroic adventure comic, so if that makes it juvenile it was done on purpose, I would say. Sophistication is a tricky word: personally I see much more complexity in Kirby's New Gods and Eternals than in the kind of comics most readers would consider more sophisticated. In my view, what those readers usually mean, without realising it, is that they like comics that sound more like what they're used to hearing in the movies or tv shows they watch or the novels they read. But how sophisticated are those movies, shows, or novels? Not very, in my experience. To take novels, they're not reading George Eliot or Joseph Conrad or James Joyce or anyone else whose work I'd agree actually was sophisticated. All too often they're thinking of some middle-brow writer who happens to be in fashion - or worse, some modern fantasy or best-seller that sounds "normal" to them. That's not to say that I'm comparing Kirby's writing to Joyce or whoever: no, of course not. But for the most part, his captions and dialogue do what he wanted them to do and function perfectly well for the kind of story he was trying to tell. But - and this is a crucial point - the kind of story he was trying to tell was totally different from the kind that most people think of when they try to imagine "sophisticated" writing. What I think most people have in mind when they use that term is a something like realistic depiction of the internal psychology of the individual characters and the external, social interactions amongst them - expressed of course, as mentioned above, in speech patterns that don't offend their ears. And I agree that this is a desirable goal - but only in certain kinds of writing. To assume it's necessary in any writing whatsoever is a sign of a very narrow perspective, IMHO. What Kirby was doing in The Eternals and the New Gods was something different: he was creating a modern mythology. And one of the first implications of that difference is that the characters don't really have internal psychology: they are an external representation of internal psychology. So they're going to act and speak in different ways that reflect the ideas dealt with in the story. This is where so many of the modern attempts to update the Eternals go wrong: writers can't get their heads around what the original series was all about and they start looking for something more in keeping with their - I'm sorry to say, abysmally limited - view of what a story should be. So they look at the Eternals and they say, they think, "Ajak, what's his story, we gotta give him some motivation, something. "Oh, I know, we'll make Makarri the guy that talks to the Celestials, so Ajak will be jealous and go into a depression!" - because that gives them the kind of story they're comfortable with. Or, "Well, there's that Thena, what does she do? How come she doesn't have a boyfriend? She had the thing with Kro and then it just stopped! Let's develop that!" Because it's the human drama, the human relationship they want, not having the faintest clue (as far as I can tell from their work) that the Thena/Kro story had to stop, that there was an entire symbolic significance to it that meant it had to play out as it did. Or, ... well I could go on with more examples but you get the idea. All too often, so-called sophistication is just limited thinking. Trying to make Kirby's Eternals or New Gods more "sophisticated" all too often just results in the feeblest and most clichéd soap opera dramatics. Because that isn't the kind of story they are. |
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Post by kirby101 on Oct 3, 2017 7:50:59 GMT -5
berkley; you make excellent points. We know dialog was not one of Kirby's strong suits, but I think he really suffered from readers being used to Stan's jaunty, breezy style. Kirby was more operatic and admittedly stilted at times.
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Post by MDG on Oct 3, 2017 8:48:57 GMT -5
I think the biggest problem with his work in his 2nd Marvel stint (and his DC stuff as well, to be honest) is that the audience had moved on from the audience that were reading his stuff in the early 60s at Marvel - they were older, used to more sophisticated stories and subtler art (even if half the artists couldn't hold a candle to him for actual storytelling). After seeing the likes of Adams, Aparo, Buscema, Cockrum, Starlin, Ploog, Wrightson, Chaykin etc, his art just looked old-fashioned and clumsy, with the weaknesses in his output (the terrible faces, square muscles, stiff poses and dubious use of light and shadow) just totally over-shadowing the good parts, and his writing was just horribly klunky and juvenile - coming onto Captain America after Englehart's run, and Black Panther after McGregor, was going to be difficult even if the writing was good, but when it was badly written as well... I see it more the other way: Kirby moved on, while the audience wanted "grown up" versions of what he did in the 60s. |
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Post by tarkintino on Oct 3, 2017 9:29:36 GMT -5
You can see it in the things they try to change and in how their sporadic efforts to exploit the Eternals as their answer to DC's New Gods all tend to repeat themselves, though written by very different people. You can almost see them scratching their heads and wondering, "Where's our Darkseid?". Very good point. At the time, I thought The Eternals was just watered down New Gods, with Kirby stuck in "repeat" mode, but if there's any weight to the Marvel tinkering idea, then it seems The Eternals was sort of doomed no matter which direction the title turned. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2017 10:39:38 GMT -5
I don't think Kirby lacked sophistication, what he sometimes lacked was subtlety. He was exploring themes and ideas that went beyond what most super-hero or big 2 comics of the day did, but the way he did things was always big, bold and in your face. He was also drawing on material that wasn't typical comic book fare, everything form radical ideas in paleontology and anthropology, to cutting edge science, things like Toffler's Future Shock etc. He was interested in telling adventure stories exploring those ideas, what he wasn't interested in was doing world building adding wings to what DC and Marvel built (often through his own toil and labor). He wasn't interested in telling super-hero stories using DC or Marvel characters or being bogged down by things like the burgeoning fetish of continuity among fandom, he wanted to tell his own stories and explore the things that interested and inspired him, and this I think was perceived as a rejection of the Marvel Universe and DC mythos by fans who wanted more of the same things that they were interested in and wanted more continuity and universe building, so they in turn rejected what Kirby was doing in many ways. And both DC and Marvel were more than happy to take what Kirby was doing or had done and cycle it into their continuity mansions as new wings whether Jack wanted that or not.
As a kid, I loved the big boisterous adventures I got glimpses of when I got a couple of his Cap issues, a Black Panther issue and random issues of things like Machine Man and Eternals, but I never got stuff regularly enough to really dive into it until much, much later in my life, and when I did I really dug what Jack was doing, the big bold ideas, the two page spreads, etc. I was less enamored of his covers (with rare exceptions) but I got a sense when I looked back on them that Jack was just churning out the covers to pay the bills so they would let him do his thing on the books he wanted to. I don't think he was as interested in doing super-hero covers as he was exploring the ideas that fired his curiosity and storytelling senses, and it showed in how lackluster some of them were.
I think I remember reading something along those lines that corroborated that idea in the Amazing Heroes #100 Kirby issue, which as I mentioned really is what turned me onto post-1st Marvel stint Kirby as a whole. But I could be projecting or misremembering as I haven't read that issue since the late 80s.
-M
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