Monday, November 12, 2007

So Many Comics So Little Time


If only Jack Kirby had produced a lot less great comics, my life would be a lot less complicated! “Complicated” in the sense that because Jack was so prolific there’s so much of his work for me to still discover. It’s not a matter of collecting. I don’t really consider myself a comic book collector as much as I do a comic book “appreciator” -- and especially of Jack Kirby’s work. Like I mentioned a few posts a go, everyone has specific periods of time in which they enjoyed Kirby the most. For awhile there I was hooked on Jack’s DC comics (do I need to mention more than once that Kamandi is a great example of what comics is all about?) but that was only until Jack went back to Marvel in 1975 and I got all jazzed up about Jack’s return to Captain America and his take on Black Panther. And then that was surpassed by Captain Victory and Silver Star.

Now, thanks to the great job John Morrow does with The Jack Kirby Collector, I’m all excited about Kirby’s monster books-- forever reprinted by Marvel back in the early 1970’s but never appreciated by me until recently. And don’t even get me started on his romance books! For anyone who ever questioned Jack’s ability to write a good yarn, they have only to look at any number of the dozens of stories Kirby told within the pages of True Love and My Romance. Say what you will about Joe Simon being the “writer” and Jack Kirby just being the “artist”. There was a whole lot of cross-pollination going on and I think it’s pretty evident that Jack wrote more than his share of stories.

I guess I take Jack’s work at Marvel in the 1960’s for granted. He produced so much for so long that it’s really impossible for me to digest it all! It’s almost numbing: The Fantastic Four, Thor, The X-Men, the Hulk. You know as well as I do that the list goes on and on.

It’s a classic case of too many comics and too little time! But that’s o-k. I’m not going anywhere. And if I have to have a vice – it might as well be one as enjoyable as discovering the work of Jack Kirby…one comic book at a time!