Kirby As A Genre

A regular feature examining Kirby-inspired work

by Adam McGovern

From Jack Kirby Collector #30

Monster Hits?

Welcome to another installment in our excavation of Jack Kirby's lingering imprint on pop culture. This is the column where we survey the current state of stylistic homage, character continuation, and conferrings of credit where "the King" is concerned—though this issue's references have a disturbing tendency toward really big reptiles and insects.

Earthly Delights

In our previous column's Vault of Euphemisms, it was waggishly noted that, in lieu of a formal credit agreement between Marvel and the Kirby estate, Earth X Issue Zero was "Dedicated to the works of" Kirby and several others. In more seriousness, that recently concluded novel-for-comics is very dedicated to Kirby and kindred creators, weaving one of the most imaginative worlds since da king himself and accomplishing probably the most philosophical treatment of super-heroes since Watchmen. An end-times anti-adventure that offers an elegiac alternative to standard-issue dystopianism, Earth X—conceived, as was its DC counterpart Kingdom Come, by Alex Ross—subtly sends up the Byzantine continuity of late-'90s comics in much the way that Kingdom Come's overkill-sized cast of characters sent up the mid-'90s comics industry's boom and doom.

John Paul Leon's art form the Alex Ross-guided Earth X series. © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Establishing an intricate but followable unified-field theory of the Marvel Universe, the series goes above and beyond the call of duty in its reverence for Kirby, making many of his most unsung characters central to the narrative. Not only are the Celestials from the underrated Eternals series integrated into everything that's ever happened in a Marvel book (in a way too intriguing for me to give away if you haven't already heard it), but Earth X's point-of-view character is X-51, a radical reconstruction of the once silly and derivative Mr. Machine/Machine Man. Texas Jack Muldoon arises from the murk of Kirby's much-debated final run on Captain America as an important if briefly-viewed character, and even those wacky mid-century monsters of Kirby's Marvel/Atlas years are given a reason for being. I know what you're saying: "What, no Devil Dinosaur?" Well, there's always hope in the promising sequel series Universe X, in its early stages as you read this.

Vive la Ressemblance

A page from Jean-Marie Arnn's funky French Kirby riff, sort of like Kirby's Devil Dinosaur with a little sex thrown in. © Jean-Marie Arnon.

However, if you can't wait for your Devil Dinosaur, there's always French creator Jean-Marie Arnon's import graphic album La Caverne des Coeurs Brisés (which would roughly translate as "Heartbreak Cave"), a kind of prehistoric Elvis movie resembling a somewhat less politically correct version of Kirby's maligned opus, in which the grim struggle for daily survival seems heavily linked with the inability to keep one's bearskin on for any length of time. Visually, the Kirby influence is impressively recreated without being dismissably derivative; narratively, I admit you'll have to have retained more of your high-school French than I did to comprehend much beyond the softcore shenanigans, though the pictorial storytelling is concise and spectacular at well-paced intervals, with characters whose expressive range exceeds that of Kirby himself in his DD period.

Jose LaDronn's Kirby-inspred art from Legends of the DC Universe #22, featuring Superman's return to a storyline set-up by Kirby during his Jimmy Olsen run. © DC Comics.

The book represents a notable embracing of the pulpy Kirby aesthetic in the sophisticated realm of French comics, even as the best of French style sparks a leap in the talents of a certain American-based Kirby admirer. Namely, José Ladronn's celebrated Kirby homages in books like Marvel's Cable had been faithful but a bit mechanical for my tastes, but have now taken on much more depth and grandeur—and, however paradoxically, more distinctiveness—through an unlikely merging of the Kirby look with that of France's Moebius. The new hybrid was first on view in a backup story for the otherwise lackluster 2000 Thor Annual, and can now be seen in the latest Inhumans limited series, probably still very much on the racks as we hit them ourselves. [Editor's Note: Look for upcoming interviews with both Arnon and Ladronn in TJKC!]

Bounty of the Mutants

The tastiest influence-stew of all flows forth each month in Madman creator Mike Allred's mutant-slacker saga The Atomics, a pop-art archetype-fest in which bits of the original Fantastic Four, X-Men, Avengers, and Doom Patrol—for starters—mix 'n' match in Allred's trademark dream-like overlap. The early Lee & Kirby affection is clear on every page, but it's actually earlier than you think—Allred has cited as his major influence (yep, we've officially got a pattern here) those pre-super-hero giant-monster shorts Stan & Jack turned out in Godzillian proportions before the 1960s, and though only Atomics' giant insect-man Shrek has directly nodded to these classics thus far, fans of Tim-Boo-Bah and Fin Fang Foom may yet have their day!

Full-page splash from Mike Allred's ultra-hip The Atomics, bringing back the fun of Jack's early X-Men and FF, but updated for today. © Mike Allred.

Return to the Vault of Euphemisms

And while we're on the subject of mutated youth, the X-Men movie—or, by the time you get this issue, perhaps the X-Men home video—is not only, as those of you who weathered the snobbishly lukewarm reviews and made it to the multiplex know, the height of the super-hero-film art to date (with nuanced performances, dignified gender dynamics, dazzling but ungratuitous pyrotechnics, and unforced social allegories); as a bonus, if you wait out the end-credits long enough, you'll get to see "Special Thanks" given to both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Not the heady "Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby" credit of the Silver Surfer cartoon series, but in the perennially improved-upon X-Men concept's special case of other handlers—Thomas & Adams, Wein & Cockrum, Claremont & Byrne—who are still more conspicuous by their absence even from the "thanks," we should be, er, thankful.

And while we're on the subject of movies, credit, and Devil Dinosaur, ya think any Disney dollars have found their way to the Kirby heirs for Dinosaur's anachronistic lemur 'n' saurian combo, outer-space menaces, and epic quest? If you answered correctly and need something to stop your fuming over the fact that even Jack's loopiest concept is mined to make someone else's dinosaur-sized bank, consider this item from our equal-time files: Marvel's limited series The Sentry (about midway through its run as you read this) is not only a captivating Alan Moore-esque odyssey through pop-culture history, it's also based on an abandoned character developed by Stan Lee and Artie Rosen to be Marvel's flagship super-hero before the Fantastic Four—so, while it remains true that Jack Kirby's collaboration is indispensable to Marvel as we know it, recollections of his flying in the window with the fully-formed Marvel Universe in his hand as the furniture flew out the door in the hands of repo men seem to have been a bit exaggerated. Okay, that's about as much equal time as I can take for one month!

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