I got my contributor copy of Jack Kirby Collector #90 yesterday -- which means it should be available in comic shops soon -- and there's a letter in it suggesting more coverage of Jack's romance comics. He and Joe Simon literally invented the genre in comics after all, and they were pretty successful at it to boot! I've actually heard variations of this comment before; that there's too great a focus on Jack's superhero work and not enough about his other categories. I don't know that I've seen editor John Morrow address it publicly, but I thought I'd drop my perspective on it here as a freelance contributor to the magazine for the past two decades.

Starting with my column specifically, the format that Jack used in many of his non-superhero comics isn't particularly well-suited to coverage. What I try to do with each column is look at how Jack evolved a character's look over time, theoretically, gets to how Jack saw as the most critical elements of a character's design. This is only really relevant for charcters Jack used beyond a single story, so much of what he did in his anthology type books isn't applicable. Most of his romance stories fall in this category, with an entire story being only six or eight pages. Same with many of his monster comics and crime comics and such. While superheroes were not the only characters he drew in a more serialized format, they're certainly the vast majority of them so I probably go more to the superhero well than I might otherwise because of the form his non-superhero stories often took. That said, I do try to come up with ideas beyond that when I can, and I've looked at some of his newspaper strip characters and animation ones as well.

Somewhat more broadly, Jack really did do a LOT of superhero comics. I mean, a lot a lot! While it's certainly a smaller percentage of his overall ouvre than if you remove the non-serialized stories like I noted above, it's still a huge amount. While he hasn't said so explicitly (at least to me) I think John tries to encourage any of us writing to venture beyond the superhero genre with his choice of issue themes. Recent issues have themes like: "Kirby Conspiracies," "About Collectors," and "Kirby: Animated." Obviously, none of those preclude superhero work -- my piece in the "About Collectors" issue was about DC's Klarion the Witch Boy, who was visually based on a fan -- but it does nudge many of us, I think, to push beyond the usual superhero stuff that I expect attracted most of us to Jack's work in the first place.

One other thing to keep in mind, the Kirby work we have the most records for are, not surprisingly, his most recent. We barely have complete published work of the stuff he did in the '30s and '40s just by virtue of their being older. It's therefore harder to study and comment on when we don't even have a complete run of, for example, Socko the Seadog much less any originals or other paperwork that might provide context for how it came about.

I'd be half-curious to see if someone did an analysis of Kirby Collector against Kirby's actual output to see how much coverage gets put into superheroes relative to Kirby's body of work. I suspect the coverage does skew a bit more towards superheroes, but largely because that was even more of his focus in the latter half of his career, where we have the most ancillary material to study. Again, we barely even know what Jack worked on at Lincoln Features in the 1930s!

Anyway, my point is that I think there is an effort to not do all-superheroes-all-the-time in our collective work for Kirby Collector but it does require more effort with fewer resources to examine that material. Speaking for myself, I do what I can to look at more unusual/obscure parts of Jack's career, but keep in mind that Jack did do a LOT of superhero material!

It was just about exactly one year ago in which I reviewed Ryan North's first year of Fantastic Four stories and I said I was underwhelmed and called the issues "adequate but ultimately forgettable filler." I came back recently to read the year of stories since then, and found much the same. The stories are, for the most part, fine but little more. They continue to feel like fill-in issues because there are no consequences for anything. Even the over-arching story of Mr. Fantastic zapping away a good chunk of Manhattan -- including the residents -- for over a year yielded nothing of consequence. The team is supposedly hated by the public now and they supposedly have most of their assets frozen, but readers only know that because we're told that; there's no real indication that of that from a story perspective. We don't see anyone breaking down and crying in front of Reed because their spouse is gone; we don't see any parents upset that their children have disappeared; we don't see anyone suddenly homeless because their apartment and all their stuff is gone... And while the team moved to a farm while their Baxter Building home is gone, they still seem to have immediate and universal access to whatever technology they need without even so much as a hand-waving "I borrowed this from Tony Stark" bit of explantory dialogue. The only reasons these stories couldn't be dropped virtually anywhere in the Fantasic Four's history are the visuals: the specific design of their costumes, the farmhouse background aesethetic, and Johnny's mustache. Give the exact same script to another artist and they could meld seamlessly into Jack Kirby's run, or John Buscema's, or John Byrne's, or Walt Simonson's, or Paul Ryan's...

Except!

Except we do have two instances of North adding something. Two years in, and he's added something that is consequential. But one of them is wrong.

The first thing we have is in Fantastic Four #12, in which the Invisible Woman notes that she has a doctorate in archeology. This is later then actually used as a story point in #17. The second thing is in #18, in which we learn Fanklin Richards still has his god-like powers, but he's keeping them supressed except for one night a year after which he blocks it from even his own memory for the next twelve months. This was hinted at in earlier issues, but has been outright dismissed by Franklin's parents. And while I disagree with the characterization on that last point, it's actually the archeology thing that is flatly wrong.

I get the idea. In the '60s, Susan's role was basically just "the girlfriend" (and later "the wife") and she spent literally decades without much characterization beyond that. It took decades before creators even started putting her powers to any sort of creative use, much less giving her justification for being on the team aside from her having powers. Johnny at least had some mechanical know-how from the start with his love of cars, and Ben's skill as a test pilot presumes some level of technical aptitude as well, but Susan was exclusively and only there as an emotional anchor for the team. Creatively, she was used very much as an also-ran. So I get why, starting with Ultimate Fantastic Four, there have been attempts to update her backstory to give her a more academic foundation.

Most of the attempts thus far seemed tacked on, though. That Ultimate version -- as well as the non-comics media presentments -- have all given her a background extremely similar to Reed's, likely to justify her presence in the origin sequence to begin with. (The original "I'm your fiancée! Where you go, I go!" explanation hasn't aged well.) But at the same time, it makes her largely redundant for the origin and still very much in Reed's shadow. I actually really like the notion of giving her an archeology degree because it does not overlap with Reed's expertise at all, and ties in with the already-established empathetic nature of her character. She's interested in humanity and human nature, and archeology very much ties into that. Psychology and sociology would also work in that respect, but archeology has a more obviously practical application in the exploratory work the FF does.

But here's my problem: she claims to have gotten her doctorate BEFORE the team got their powers. Chronologically, that's not an issue. She could've gotten her doctorate by her mid-20s, which still puts her easily a little more than ten years younger than Reed, and not-quite ten years older than Johnny as has been long established. The problem is that we've got decades of continuity that, while not outright contradicting this idea, work against it.

The issue I have is that we have had PLENTY of instances where someone with a doctorate of archeology would have been immensely useful and would likely have changed the direction of the story. As suggested in North's Fantastic Four #17 itself, literally any story featuring Rama-Tut as a starter. Virtually any time travel story. While the past decade or so has put Sue in more direct liason type role with the Atlanteans, she spent decades of stories having no cultural interest in them whatsoever, acting as potential trophy for Namor. She's never shown any interest in the cultural history in Wakanda any time they've visited either. How about Fantastic Four #239, the famous "Wendy's Friends" story that introduced Aunt Petunia? The story is very explicit with an archeological component, but instead of talking with the brought-in-specifically-for-this-big-deal archeologist Ruth Efford that Reed is excessively impressed with, Sue instead just plays with Wendy completely ignoring their discussion. Fantastic Four #241 -- also a story with a strong archeological bent with Ben mockingly cosplaying as Indiana Jones; Sue acts in much the same role (a glorified trophy) as she did when the team first met Rama-Tut. Both of those last two were John Byrne stories, too, and North has been pretty explicit in repeatedly referencing Byrne's run on the book, even as recently as last month!

Sue was never referred to as a doctor prior to 2013. And that was a throwaway line of dialogue and didn't even mention what she was a doctor of. Again, it was done to given her more 'validity' within the context of her husband and the team in general. I think that makes sense and works well enough for her character. Additionally, making her a doctor of archeology makes sense given her history. Hell, it even justifies -- even more than was necessary -- some of the jealousy she's harbored against Alyssa Moy, who was originally presented to readers as a Lara Croft type character to Reed's Indiana Jones. But setting aside that she was never referred to as a doctor in any capacity for her first half century as a character, she has never acted like she had any expertise in archeology, nor even commented on the topic, even when she was expressly poised to do so.

Again, there's nothing absolutely contradictory here and the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but I think claiming she had her degree before the events of Fantastic Four #1 brings up more questions than it addresses. North could've left it open by not noting when she got her doctorate or, if he wanted to make a thing out of it, have her say that being around Reed so much after they got married encouraged her to return to school. That would still offer loads of time for her to have accomplished that (the characters got married in Fantastic Four Annual #3 circa 1965) and wouldn't have run counter to any existing continuity. It just seems like a completely unnecessary detail that does nothing but make the continuity more complicated.

It wouldn't bug me so much but, as I said towards the top, the vast majority of what North has written for the FF contains no consequences and makes each issue feel like a fill-in. Coupled with his blatant references to prior -- and sometimes obscure -- continuity, it strikes me as egregiously problematic for one of only two instances over the past two years where he tried adding to the body of canon to be wrong in a way that can only have happened by going out of his way to make it wrong. It literally would've taken less effort to make the "doctor of archeology" addition fit into continuity.

Ultimately, it's a minor point and one which has undoubtedly faded as a current point of discussion since it was introduced a year ago. I just keep being reminded of an assignment I worked on in college; I spent much of the term working on it and the professor's comment in our class critique was that I had a million dollar idea but didn't do anything with it. I feel like North's Fantastic Four is the same in that regard -- he does indeed have some good, potentilly even great, ideas in the book but every one of them is handled in a very pedestrian manner. He's invoking continuity when he doesn't need to and ignoring it when he should be leaning on it.

But what do I know? The letters pages I scanned through all had praise for North's take on the book and, more significantly, the title seems to have been floating in the Top 25-30 best selling comics every month based on LCS point-of-sale data. So North is evidently doing something a good number of people like. Speaking as a Fantastic Four fan going back four decades, it's not what I'm looking for in an FF book but it'd be the height of egotism and narcassim to expect Marvel to cater the book specfically to my tastes indefinitely.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Back After These Messages
https://ift.tt/C36ewub

Things are looking pretty busy at Kleefeld on Comics headquarters this week, so I'm taking a little time off from blogging to play catch-up. I'll be back on May 6 with something clever and witty and insightful then. (Well, maybe not all of that, but it will be something!)

Stay tuned!

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Earth Day Comics
https://ift.tt/wfiCTUv

Kleefeld on Comics: Tuthill and the Bungles
https://ift.tt/L2AkZya

Kleefeld on Comics: How War Begins Review
https://ift.tt/VPK39AH

Kleefeld on Comics: Kirby's Thundarr Villains
https://ift.tt/hkQVJ6w

Kleefeld on Comics: Finishing Old Projects
https://ift.tt/iaekK1f

There has always been, for me, a crossover interest between comics and action figures. No doubt going back as far as the 1970s when I was playing with Mego figures, making up adventures that generally couldn't happen in the comics. (Because of intellectual property reasons, not any lack of creativity on the creators' parts!) Naturally, my eye on action figures fell towards characters I already enjoyed in the comics, so I was a little more prone to Marvel figures than DC. One that I always kind of liked -- though, admittedly, not at the top of my list -- was Nick Fury. Kind of a cross between G.I. Joe and James Bond, he was able to drop into all kinds of stories pretty easily whether that was an intergalactic dust-up involving alien Skrulls or a secret stealth mission in Latveria. So when Toy Biz finally made a Nick Fury figure in 1995, I picked it up to accompany my other five-inch figures at the time.

Of course, the problem is that Nick Fury is (or was, depending on what's going on with Marvel continuity whenever you happen to read this) the head of a large organization called SHIELD. Again, kind of a G.I. Joe thing but within the Marvel Universe. Which means that Fury by himself is only part of the story. He's got a literal army at his command and Toy Biz didn't make any other SHIELD figures. I was able to repaint the G.W. Bridge figure to give him a SHIELD uniform and I believe I also repainted a "spare" Punisher figure to stand in as a generic SHIELD agent, but that didn't amount to much. Also, I'm not a good customizer, so they didn't look very good.

I ran into the problem several years later when the Marvel Legends series began. They made a Nick Fury early on -- which I picked up -- but no SHIELD agents. So when I first built my action figure metropolis, I wanted to use my Enterprise playset as a SHIELD Helicarrier, but the only character to populate it would've been Fury himself. (I did have four Skrulls, though, so the Enterprise became a Skrull spaceship.)

I mostly stepped away from action figures for several years but have circled back to it again starting in 2022, as I began to realize I could use my 3D printer to tackle projects I was never able to satisfactorily complete previously. In that time I had been away from action figure collecting, Hasbro had released several additional SHIELD agents (in no small part thanks to the organization's prominent portrayals in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). So with a few ebay purchases and a week or so of 3D printing (plus some very limited figure customizations) I was able to pull together the SHIELD display seen here: a SHIELD facility populated by not only Nick Fury but another dozen SHIELD agents.

Over the past few months, I've actually knocked out several projects along these lines. Projects that I was only partially able to try years earlier and, because of limited skills and/or budget and/or resources, never completed. Since these were never things I actually had, it's not really a dip into nostalgia, but rather finally being able to scratch a creative itch that I first got decades ago. I find it a little surprising that I've been able to whip these out so quickly relative to the time I spent on them years ago without making any appreciable headway, but that's almost certainly a result of having acquired more skills since then, having a 3D printer to produce precision parts quickly/easily, and having more disposable income to throw at any given project.

I'm not sure what I'll be working on next; I think I've finished now all of these types of projects that I was unable to complete years ago, but it's certainly possible there's some other stuff I just haven't remembered yet. I've talked elsewhere how my -- and many Gen Xers' -- life goals were set against a 30-35 year life-span since we grew up being regularly told by the world at large that we wouldn't live longer than that anyway. Nuclear war or AIDs or climate change ("global warming" as it was called back then) would make life literally impossible in the 21st century. We're obviously a couple decades past that now and I've accomplished FAR more than I ever anticpiated, so I'm finishing projects now that I hadn't even given a passing thought to for years. Who knows what's next?

Today we’re taking a look at the villains from the Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon. The show was conceived by Joe Ruby in anticipation of the still-a-year-out Conan movie. Once the show was approved, Alex Toth was asked to design the main characters of Thundarr, Ariel and Ookla while David High designed the world and their environment. Steve Gerber was hired as one of the lead writers. When Toth was unable to continue work on the series, Jack Kirby was brought in to design most of the villains.

Designing characters for animation is a little different than designing them for comics. Jack only needed to draw these characters a few times before passing them off to animators who would create the actual drawings used for the show. But he needed to keep in mind some level of simplicity so that animators could draw them quickly enough to be used in a Saturday morning cartoon. Interestingly, Jack’s ability to create this incidental iconography for his comic characters which I’ve based this column around proved to be equally useful in animation.

The closing credits of the show cite Alex Toth, Jack Kirby and Jerry Eisenberg as the character designers. Eisenberg was the show’s producer, and had also worked as a layout artist and character designer in animation since the early 1960s. We know Toth did the three protagonists, so we’re forced to guess who the remaining characters were designed by. In watching the show, however, it becomes quite clear where Jack’s fingerprints are.

The first season’s episodes generally followed a similar story progression. The three heroes would stumble across a group of humans being tormented by a band of mutants/savages. Thundarr and his companions would save the humans, who would thank him and tell of the evil wizard who commanded their attackers. Thundarr would take the fight to the wizard, battle through some more mutants/savages and finally defeat the wizard himself. He’d then return to the humans and be given a warm welcome.

What’s striking here is how often there’s a huge difference between the design styles of the wizards and those of their henchmen. The wizards generally have a very Kirbyesque look about them -- they’re dynamic and powerful looking and, not infrequently, have some unusual design elements embedded in their wardrobe. The front of Gemini’s tunic, for example, has a wavy line that is almost unmistakeably Kirby. The henchmen, by contrast, are comparatively bland designs and could’ve been dropped into almost any episode of Scooby-Doo or Jonny Quest without upset.

The curious exception to the forgettable henchmen in the first season are the monks from “Raiders of the Abyss”. While at first glance, they also appear relatively banal-looking background characters wearing a simple hooded robe, they reveal a decidedly Kirby influence once they remove their hoods. Each character sports a pair of odd black tattoos each in the shape of a squiggle that runs along the sides of their temple. It looks like a fairly standard Kirby flourish, but the episode’s artists seem to have read it as a specific design element and included it on every one of the monk characters, regardless of what angle they were being shown from.

Most of the background human characters, too, seem to wear non-descript outfits. Pants are simply drawn as slacks without folds or seams, and shirts are not decorated in any way. Hairstyles are flat and accouterments are non-existent. Again, they could be folded into nearly any other Saturday morning cartoon without notice.

The wizard characters, by contrast, stand out remarkably from the backgrounds. They all feature unusual adornments: irregular piping along their boots, complex belt buckles, elaborate headgear, etc. The contrast against the rest of the characters from the series is striking and the design elements strongly suggest Kirby’s influence on all of the villains of the series. Again, Gemini is a prime example with his stylized boot and glove cuffs, tunic design and, unforgettably, his rotating headpiece.

It seems as if Kirby’s influence over the show increased as it progressed. Towards the end of the first season, notably in the “Battle of the Barbarians” and “Den of the Sleeping Demon” episodes, additional characters show up with typical Kirby hallmarks. The heroes-in-training Shara and Merlic look like they would fit in quite comfortably on Akropolis, as do all the extras in the tavern where Zolgar is found. That almost indefinable Kirby aesthetic is decidedly more pronounced than in earlier episodes with each character, no matter how insignificant, looking as if he had a wealth of stories behind him already.

The show on the whole takes on a new tone with the second series. While the basic premise remains intact, the show largely retires the repetitive plots from the first season, the expository dialogue is integrated into action scenes and the new characters are far more distinctive.

The first new episode, “Wizard War”, drops Thundarr into the middle of a territorial battle between two sorcerers, both trying to expand their respective power bases. More significantly for this column, the design of the wizard Skullus is essentially a giant disembodied head in a jar on wheels, marking him as the first significant character that wasn’t presented as a humanoid. It’s hard not to look at Skullus and see Kirby’s hand in creating him. The unusual goggles and neck-base are almost uniquely Kirby; Skullus also has a multi-cleft chin not unlike the ones Kirby had given the Skrulls back in Fantastic Four #2.

Furthermore, more interesting and dramatic camera angles are used throughout the story. No longer is everything seen strictly horizontally from eye level, but there are camera tilts and up-shots and generally more dramatic posing of the characters overall. As Kirby isn’t credited with storyboarding, it’s unclear if he had a direct hand in that aspect of the show, but the stories become much more akin to what a reader might find in a Kirby comic.

The credits for the show at this point change as well. Gerber is promoted as the only “Story Editor” and Kirby is given the sole “Character Design” credit. Toth’s name is absent, and Eisenberg is no longer even listed as the producer. It’s worth noting, too, that Kirby, along with other folks who worked on Thundarr such as series writers Mark Evanier and Buzz Dixon, found themselves contributing to Gerber’s Destroyer Duck comic not long after the cartoon ended.

Back to the character designs, though, the second season has some decidedly interesting visuals compared, not only to the first season, but to all Saturday morning cartoons for years on either side of Thundarr’s original airing. In “City of Evil” the ruler of the miniature pyramid city presents himself as a floating face (not a head, mind you, just a face) with heavy shadows that almost seem reversed from what one would expect. Gemini, the only villain to appear in more than one episode, shows up in “Last Train to Doomsday” trying to disrupt a supply shipment. While Gemini’s design had already been established, the people seen on the train all wear complex Kirby-fied outfits, highlighting crowd scenes as groups of individuals instead of a generic mass of people.

Perhaps the most elaborate episode of all, with regards to character design, is the series finale, “Prophecy of Peril.” The story opens in the midst of a battle between the protagonists and an army of green robots -- simple designs, but vaguely reminiscent of Doombots. The wizard Vashtar bursts onto the scene with an outfit that must have frustrated the animators on the show. His arms and legs are both encircled by large bands between which are an irregular series of square and rectangle patterns. Then there are the three women of the titular prophecy. Maya sports an ensemble loosely modeled off an ancient Egyptian priestess and is considerably more intricate than what JoAnna Cameron wore as Isis a few years earlier; Cinda the Barbarian does wear an outfit similar to Shara’s but with much more elaborate gloves, boots, tiara and belt; and Valerie Storm switches from a fashion runway evening dress to a brightly colored tunic that evokes the ancient Greeks.

I feel I should point out, too, that Jack did work on about two weeks worth of newspaper strips for a Thundarr comic that was never ultimately published. There’s very little by way of character design -- really just a tank gunner -- but it’s curious to see his interpretations of the protagonists. Ookla, in particular, looks like almost a different character. But despite the stylistic differences between Toth’s original characters and Kirby’s antagonists, they blended together well, thus only making some of the ancillary characters from season one come across as out of place. (I wrote about that all in more detail here.)

The main villains in Thundarr, while not actually drawn by Jack on the animation cells, still evoke much of his style. Sitting through and watching the episodes, it’s fairly easy to pick out which characters were his and it’s especially entertaining in the second season when he did so many background characters. Characters that most people wouldn’t even bother designing. But I like to envision Jack happily sketching away while Joe Ruby was explaining the basic idea, and then handing over a dozen or so characters before Ruby was even finished.