The Comics Rack

Panning for Gold

   For many years, both Marvel and DC have been sitting on a gold mine. What gold mine, you ask? Well, it is the legacy of one of the most talented comic creators who ever lived. A man who set a standard for comics storytelling that influenced the entire industry. A man who had a hand in creating many of the super heroes you read today and who also introduced a few non-super hero genres to the newsstands of yesterday. A man whose art style was once one of the most copied by aspiring tyros and professionals alike. The gold mine that the Big Two have in their vaults is the work of Jack Kirby.
   I have long admired and collected the Kirby's work and have meant for quite sometime to write an article or two about the many phases of his work. What has finally gotten me motivated, however, is the slapdash, and downright disrespectful, way in which Marvel and DC have treated Kirby's legacy: a body of work that not only enriched both companies financially, but also gave both companies characters and concepts still in use and, in the case of Marvel, created a universe that has lasted for over 40 years.
   Probably no other artist in this age of reprints has gotten treatment as shabby as what has been done to an artist of Kirby's stature. Eisner has a complete reprinting of The Spirit underway. Jack Cole's Plastic Man is up to Vol. 6 and counting. Adams gets a complete Batman series, including the covers he drew for books where he didn't do the interiors. Steranko's S.H.I.E.L.D. stories can all be had in two volumes. The Adams X-Men and Avengers sequences have been reprinted in their entirety. Byrne's Fantastic Four is in progress. Miller's Daredevil work has all been reprinted in order. But Kirby...no, the closest we come to seeing his work collected in a logical manner is the Fantastic Four Masterworks.
   Sure, there is the Green Arrow tradepaperback (at least it is complete) and Kirby's Fourth World series has been released in a series of B&W trades with the weakest material, the Jimmy Olsen stories, released in color. The "Fourth World" books (New God, Forever People, Mr. Miracle and Jimmy Olsen), however, were all meant to be chapters in a much larger tapestry. These stories should have been reprinted in the order they were released (and yes, in color) to give the readers a feel for the entire saga. And here's a question for DC: where are volumes of the complete Simon & Kirby Sandman, or Manhunter, or Newsboy Legion, or Boy Commandoes; the strips that DC was thrilled to print in the 40s? No, DC doesn't really care about this material and we, the fans, are left to wait to see if an Archives volume might reprint them.
   Marvel is no better. Why haven't Kirby's Captain America stories from the 60s been collected in their entirety in a repectable fashion? Thor? Only partially completed. How about the SF and monster stories: nada. How about the western or war stories? Zilch. No, the only reprint of recent vintage is Kirby's late Captain America stories, which were redrawn and rewritten at the Marvel offices and, at the time of this writing, even this project isn't complete.
   What brought on this tirade is that Marvel has just released a new book called Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby Vol. 1. As a Kirby fan, I should be overjoyed that Marvel is going to give Kirby his due, but what annoys me is that this volume is just more of the same: random reprints, many of which have been reprinted to death already. Like Kirby from the 40s? If you have the Golden Age of Marvel Comics volumes, you already have the first 4 stories printed here and more (and let's face it, how many times can somebody read the origin of Capt. America?). Maybe the Silver Age of Marvel is more your speed? You fare a little better here, although "The Coming of Galactus" has seen quite a few trips through the printing press and the Thor material does not read well out of continuity. In fact, probably the rarest material presented here is the story from Sgt. Fury #6! Kirby may have created most of Marvel's characters, but that doesn't mean he gets cut any slack.
   Where are the books that might have a better chance of selling? Maybe a Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby's Rawhide Kid with all the Kirby stories about the character. A complete Kirby Sgt. Fury volume would definitely make inroads. How about completing the reprinting of the Golden Age Captain America stories, with the errors from the previous edition corrected? Maybe finish reprinting Thor, or a book of the SF stories, or the monster stories, or...the list could go on and on. The bottom line is that printing random stories does nobody any good, especially because the Marvel stories of the Silver Age were based on continuity. What needs to happen here is for both Marvel and DC to take a rational approach to their reprinting of Kirby's work and to treat his talent like the phenomenon it is and was, not like a pack of stories that just happen to be lying around the vaults.
   Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby Vol. 1 is one of those projects that I hope will both succeed and fail. Success with the book means that the Vol. 1 attached to the title will not be in vain and that more volumes might be forthcoming. Failure, and I think it has a right to fail, would mean that Marvel will simply sneer once again at Kirby's work and remain convinced that it won't sell. You see, I believe that both Marvel and DC have a duty. Not only do they need to do well by the characters that make up their respective universes, they also need to honor the creators who gave those characters life.