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Post by tolworthy on Dec 14, 2020 5:48:36 GMT -5
"blue beetle" was a 1930s-era slang term for a police squad car. Thus there was more to that hero's name than a simple echo of the Green Hornet. Another example is "Mr Zimmer" from Kirby's short lived series "Read To Us, Mr Zimmer". Turns out that Kirby was a fan of Heinrich Zimmer, the legendary story collector who in inspired Joseph Campbell. Once you know that, weak parts of the story suddenly become the strongest parts. I recently explored some of Kirby's character names from the 1940s and 1950s. Turns out they are not as random as the appear. Usually you can see where the name came from, even though Kirby probably chose them unconsciously. Some examples: - June Robbins (the computer programmer who joined the Challengers) looks a bit like Julia Robinson, the then-famous mathematician.
- Cherry Romaine ("Gun Moll") is about an innocent girl who lost her innocence and had a bitter life. Cherry romaine was a salad, and she lost her salad days. Cherry also means innocence or virginity. And romaine lettuce was routinely used at Passover as the "bitter herb". (Kirby, a practising Jew, would be well aware.)
- Bucky Williams, the reporter in Blue Bolt who refused to give up. "Buck" means goat, an animal famed for being stubborn, and "William" literally means strong willed: I bet that Kirby, as a history buff who collected odd facts, would at least be vaguely aware of that.
- Phillip Hannah, the newly drafted soldier in "A Dream Saved His Life". Kirby knew his classical history, and also went to Hebrew school. So he would probably know that Phillip was a popular warrior king name (e.g. at least five kings of Macedonia, including Philip the Great, father of Alexander the Great). And he would definitely know that Hannah in the Bible is a story of God's grace, and the name means "grace". Those names pretty much describe the story.
- "Richard Temple" is the man who explains dreams in "Strange World of Your Dreams": "Richard" means "strong and noble" - even if he didn't know that, it was a really solid boy's name at the time. And the temple is the usual name for the synagogue, where the rabbis explain ambiguous things.
- "Madelon Roberts" from "The Girl in The Grave". The story is about a girl who gets her first job after a lot of trying, but is still extremely worried. Her worry seems overblown until you think about the name. "Madelon" is not a common name. It's a variant of Magdalene, from Mary Magadeline in the Bible. Mary Magdalene was a reformed prostitute. "La Madelon" was a famous wartime song about a girl called Madelon who was a friend to all the soldiers. The lyrics are clean, but it does not take a genius to read between the lines. The most famous Madelon in Kirby's youth would be the eponymous character from the Oscar winning 1931 movie "The Sin of Madelon Claudet", a piece of misery porn about the poor woman's suffering. (There was also the model Madelon Mason, "America's Cover Girl": while that was just her name, it no doubt helped to have a hint of bad girl sexiness.) Once you see the name "Madelon" in that way, the sexy things the girl does (endlessly putting on more lipstick, passionately kissing a stranger) and her fear of rejection make more sense.
- And so on and so on
Sometimes I see a name that's so oddly random that Kirby MUST surely have some reason for choosing it. Even if the reason is unconscious. But Googling reveals nothing. Probably it was some childhood friend of Kirby's, or a pun on something else that only a 1930s New Yorker would know. But now it's just a random name in a comic. We have lost a lot of the richness of the stories because all those details don't mean anything any more. |
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Post by tolworthy on Dec 9, 2020 3:43:44 GMT -5
What is the worst published comic book art you ever saw? I'll start. From Fight Comic issue 1.  Any more? |
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Post by tolworthy on Oct 28, 2020 16:48:24 GMT -5
Hi guys, sorry I haven't been around for a while. Been racking my brains to remember something, and then I recalled that this site is where the friendliest experts hang out, with the longest memories. So my question: Do you recall the blog where a woman reads Silver Age Marvel for the first time, in order? her boyfriend was a comics fan, but it's all new to her,. She had some great insights. Especially about movitations, like why people did things in the stories. But now I can't find the link! Any ideas? I definitely feel like I saw that blog at one point.. but it was quite a while ago. I tried my meager google fu on it, but without success. FOUND IT!  "Adventures in the Marvelous Zone" by "Chrissy". Highly recommended! And I am happy to report that she is still at it! |
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Post by tolworthy on Oct 28, 2020 16:42:55 GMT -5
Hi guys, sorry I haven't been around for a while. Been racking my brains to remember something, and then I recalled that this site is where the friendliest experts hang out, with the longest memories. So my question: Do you recall the blog where a woman reads Silver Age Marvel for the first time, in order? her boyfriend was a comics fan, but it's all new to her,. She had some great insights. Especially about movitations, like why people did things in the stories. But now I can't find the link! Any ideas? I definitely feel like I saw that blog at one point.. but it was quite a while ago. I tried my meager google fu on it, but without success. Thanks for trying. It's quite sobering, how easily information can be lost in the Internet. |
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Post by tolworthy on Oct 27, 2020 16:05:22 GMT -5
Hi guys, sorry I haven't been around for a while. Been racking my brains to remember something, and then I recalled that this site is where the friendliest experts hang out, with the longest memories. So my question:
Do you recall the blog where a woman reads Silver Age Marvel for the first time, in order? her boyfriend was a comics fan, but it's all new to her,. She had some great insights. Especially about movitations, like why people did things in the stories. But now I can't find the link! Any ideas?
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Post by tolworthy on Jan 22, 2020 17:34:13 GMT -5
Thanks for the tag! The first ten issues are an absolute inspiration -- so fresh, groundbreaking, and full of ideas, as well as rich and compelling I agree. They are very different from the issues that follow, in many ways. According to Ray Wyman, in The Art of Jack Kirby, the first ten issues were planned on a single day before the first issue launched. Wyman got his information from interviews with Kirby and others. After that, we get mixed issues. I think a very strong case can be made that a major disagreement took place when Kirby delivered the issue 8 pages, and that led to a big change in direction: from outcasts to celebrities, from horror to fun, etc. Issues 9 and 10 were already plotted, so were simply changed, but from 11 we see new plots in the new direction. By the time we get to the 40s, some stagnation is starting to set in, and so Lee and Kirby start looking outside of the team for new ideas. IIRC a big change was that Kirby's pay rate increased around the mid 40s, allowing a noticeable increase in the time he could devote to each title. I stopped at #77 because it is the last issue I own Very wise. Mike Gartland argues that Kirby began holding back his best ideas after #67. kirbymuseum.org/blogs/effect/2012/07/03/the-last-straw/ At this point he was already committed to the new baby, so we still get Franklin (and with him, Annihilus and Agatha Harkness) but apart from that the faucet turned off at that moment. Interestingly, when Kirby went to DC his very first story continued where he left off with FF 67: the DNA Project in Jimmy Olsen 133 is to all intents and purposes part of the Beehive project. For those of you who have read this series as adults and aren't just coming from a place of nostalgia, do our experiences align I definitely come from a position of nostalgia. |
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Post by tolworthy on Feb 15, 2019 19:14:25 GMT -5
"my" characters? Great question! Easy one first. The original Crystal. Of course. Butthat's sort of cheating: I don't know anyone who likes the post 1970 incarnation. And the first five issues of the Hulk: each one a masterpiece. Such a rollercoaster of changes, so much fascination to those characters, and such stories! After that the "Hulk Angry" and "Hulk smash" didn't do anything for me. Don't get me wrong, they were fun, and there's a nostalgia hit: every week on the British "Mighty World of Marvel" the Hulk was beating up some new muscle bound guy. But it wasn't "my" Hulk. And Mary Tourtel's Rupert Bear. I grew up seeing Rupert on TV and in books, but he never grabbed me. Then many years later I read an old Mary Tourtel story, and I loved it! (Tortel invented Rupert, but most people know it from Alfred Bestall's more famous and longer time on the character.) Tourtel's Rupert was a young child, seeing the world for the first time, and everything was amazing. Like the best philosophers he wanted nothing better than to passively observe, and so discover more and more. At least, that is how I saw him. I saw this as a metaphor for the real world: endlessly amazing if only we stop and look. But to me the Bestall Rupert was dull. He was far more active. He pushed on and made things happen: he was a manager, not a philosopher. The philosopher bear was my bear. |
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Post by tolworthy on Feb 10, 2019 18:18:21 GMT -5
[EDIT: the above quote seems to be missing. It was about early Byrne art being better than Perez, but Perez wining the race from 1984.] Fair point. I really only knew early Perez through the Fantastic Four, and he openly acknowledges that Sinnott did a lot of tidying up. And I put a lot of weight on detail: I paid my hard earned pennies for this comic, dammit, and I want to see you fill every square inch! And to me those images were so inspiring. Reed stilt-walking over Manhattan. The corridors of the Baxter Building, making me want to enter the picture and explore. The way that Perez drew The Brute (sorry Buscema, Perez won that round). But objectively, taking everything else into account, I am sure you are right. |
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Post by tolworthy on Feb 4, 2019 6:10:02 GMT -5
X-Men #150 (1981)  Diety?? I suppose it makes sense. Storm appears to be the goddess of amazing curves and narrow waists. I can see her worshippers calling her a "diet-y". She is obviously on a high protein diet, and I suppose that explains the excessive wind. |
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Post by tolworthy on Feb 4, 2019 5:32:03 GMT -5
Actually, the first superhero comic I ever bought was a Perez drawn Fantastic Four. No wonder I got hooked on comics! Perez' Fantastic Four 171 is still my all time favourite regular* comic, the one that made me decide "I have to get EVERY ISSUE EVER PUBLISHED". And Perez has always been my favourite comic artist.** Of course, Perez credits Joe Sinnott for tidying up some of his early work, but oh! it was so beautiful. And not a single millimetre wasted. I also blame Perez for ruining comics for me. He set my expectations far too high. I saw the rawness of Kirby's 1960s work, then the detail and polish of Perez in the 1970s. So when I finally started buying new American Marvels in the 1980s I expected Byrne, JRjr and co. to continue that trajectory. In hindsight they are OK, but at the time they were a crashing disappointment. And then came the 1990s. I gave it one last shot in the 2000s, but mainstream comics were over for me. Kirby was the explosion, Perez was the resulting fireball, Byrne was the falling debris, and the 1990s was the dirty crater. To me, the 2000s and on are the homeless people trying to eke out a living from the wreckage. But it makes me happy to know that Perez has carried the flame for so long, and with such joy and love. *i.e. not including illustrated classic novels, perfect anthologies of nostalgia, etc.) **I think of Kirby more as a creator than an artist - If Kirby is Leonardo da Vinci, Perez is Michelangelo. |
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Post by tolworthy on Feb 4, 2019 4:04:30 GMT -5
Welcome to the over 35 demographic in the American entertainment industry where your buying habits matter little because your shelf life as a customer is far less than those in the 18-35 demographic. True, but is the shelf life concept coming from the seller or the buyer? The seller has to make profits today, but as an older buyer I am thinking of the next ten or twenty years. I have a big investment in (say) the early Fantastic Four. I get greater enjoyment from each issue because of that investment: a single page can give me hours of fun. It would take many years to reach the same level of reward from a different product like Batman, even though Batman might be objectively a better product (it pains me to type that!) Younger people have less invested, and more time to change, so are more likely to respond to new ideas. The problem is compounded because this inertia fragments the market. Each of us can afford to become more picky with age. To appeal to me, the publisher would need to find the one writer in the world who combined excellent writing skill AND deep knowledge of the product AND sympathy for my own values, and then the resulting title would sell in the single digits. Or, they can hire some cheap kids out of college, throw out twenty new titles, and maybe one of them will sell a few thousand and get optioned or a movie and lunch boxes. So I think marketing dollars are always aimed at the young. Not because they expect the young to stick around, but because the old are less likely to respond. |
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Post by tolworthy on Apr 23, 2018 4:05:24 GMT -5
Deadpool 2 and Fantastic Four 177. Not cover art as such, but I don't know where else to post this (other than on the FF board that hardly anybody reads). I just stumbled on the final Deadpool trailer. It's basically the plot of Fantastic Four 177: the whole trailer (and comic) is build around auditions for a super team, and after a bunch of genuine super types we get a comic book fan who has no super powers but really, really wants to be in. The FF 177 guy: marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Oscar_Kincaid,_Jr._(Earth-616) EDIT: to be clear, I think this is a coincidence. I know that Deadpool likes plenty of Easter Eggs, but I doubt anyone would get that reference. And I doubt anyone on the Deadpool writing team is that big of an FF fan to even know. I just thought it was neat. |
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Post by tolworthy on Feb 5, 2018 15:07:49 GMT -5
Thanks for letting me drone on! Sorry if I got a bit incoherent by the end: I live in Scotland, and the interview took place in the wee small hours. I am usually tucked up on bed with my teddy bear and Marvel Monsterbus long before that. Crimebuster was a perfect host, and did all his homework ready for a battle royale, but I'm afraid that, like a coward, I sort of waved the white flag at the start. I'm not much of an arguer! When I get interested in a topic I tend to examine it in obsessive detail (that's why I felt I should write a book-length post), but then I get burnt out. Exhausted. I just have to get it out of my system, then it's almost forgotten because I'm onto something else. So I apologise if I don't reply much to this thread. I am grateful that anybody listens to the podcast or reads the book, but I really don't have much useful to add! did you ever seek input or hear from Kirby/Marvel experts like Mark Evanier or Michael Vassallo? Yes, Michael is a regular on the "Jack Kirby Dialogue" and "Marvel Method" Facebook groups. He was invaluable in correcting some of my bigger errors regarding what happened in the 1950s. I am in awe of the amount of work Vassallo has done! To give just a taste, this is a photo he sent me of just part of one of the charts he made, showing every Goodman book ever published.  The chart focuses on the crash of 1957: count how many titles suddenly stopped, with the rest becoming bimonthly. The chart is so big that it extends up his stairs! Evanier also follows those Facebook forums, and occasionally replies when people need him to answer a specific question. But Evanier didn't start working for Kirby until 1969. I was most interested in what Kirby was doing in early 1961 and before, so I relied more on Vasallo. Evanier and Vasallo also have a difference in focus. Evanier is an expert on what Kirby said later, but of course memories can change, and memories only focus on the parts that seems important in a particular time. In contrast, Vasallo studied the primary documents, published at the time. So for example, the fact that Kirby said "I wrote it" is interesting, but being able to see what Kirby was actually producing before and after was much more interesting to me. But both of these approaches (memories and documents) are still historical in nature. My own interest is different again: I care if the story is interesting to me. Personally, I soon lose interest in who did what. What matters to me is that, for my personal tastes, Kirby's name on a comic, in any capacity, is the best guarantee I know that a story will be enjoyable to me, now, at age 49. At the end of the day I am just a kid looking for the kind of comics I like. And personally I love everything Kirby touched! Your mileage may vary. |
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Post by tolworthy on Dec 21, 2017 5:56:05 GMT -5
Has anyone read this book?  I just saw it on my library's new arrival list and requested it, but I hadn't heard anything about it previously. -M And a related question, about the checked shirt: what is the first example of the "checked pattern ignores reality" meme? I remember the first time i saw it years ago, and thought it was a good joke: no matter how the character moves, the chequered pattern on their clothes is always stays flat. But it's so common that now I wonder, is it s a "thing"? Or does each artist think they are the first one to come up with it? |
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Post by tolworthy on Nov 30, 2017 6:34:35 GMT -5
I was going to make this a new thread, but I'm remarkably shy, so will just hide it here: New blog: Kirby The ProphetThe book (the subject of this thread) was originally intended as just an introduction to the book I REALLY wanted to write, about Kirby as a writer. But that project is so big that, realistically I will never get it done. So I turned the intro into its own book. But I'm never happy with what I create, and in the case of the book it misses the point: that Kirby is just an amazingly great writer. In my view. Possibly the greatest writer who ever lived. I mean, 600 million sales (2000 books averaging 300,000 each), a much greater variety than anyone else in that class; and each one of his books has enough depth and richness to easily expand into a full length novel. I don't think that even Kirby's greatest fans appreciate just how many layers are in his writing. Well anyway, I really struggle in how to get across how much I love his plots, his details, and yes, his dialog. So rather than start another book that would never be finished (and if finished would likely be unreadable) I decided to take the easy way out: a blog. Whenever I read a Kirby book I want to talk about it, so I will do just that. However, I could easily spend a whole day and write fifty pages on each issue, and I don't have unlimited time. So I decided to focus on just one tiny aspect of Kirby's writing: his predictions of the future that came true. This is how the blog works: At the end of each day, if I have time, I read a Kirby book and then write down my thoughts about "the world that's coming". Then I hit post and go to sleep. For time reasons the blog has no pictures, and is unapologetically dense (possibly in more ways than one!) It will only work if it's quick to create, and that means not spending any time explaining or defending ideas. It's the hardest of hardcore, so it's not for everyone. Occasionally I can't help just talking about how I love his stuff (like the latest post) but as far as possible I will try to stay on topic. The blog is new, it only has ten or so entries so far, but as long as long as I keep it simple I'm sure I can keep it up indefinitely. There might be gaps of weeks or even months, but generally whenever I get time to read I will try to blog. I'm starting with OMAC, then on to Eternals, then probably Kamandi, then Captain Victory, and just keep going with whatever grabs my interest. I want to cover his romance and crime comics as well, because prophecy is really about eternal patterns, not just specific future events. Well there it is. kirbytheprophet.blogspot.co.uk/PS version three of the "Case for Kirby" book is under way, but it's mostly a lot of minor fixes in response to feedback. I'll wait until corrections stop coming in before uploading the "final" version, so don't hold your breath. |
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