I love these tales for their goofiness and robustness. (Haven't even mentioned the two-parter that ends this volume, co-starring Don Rickles and a costumed doppleganger named Goody Rickels. It's packed with more non-sequitars than a Dadaist Manifesto - the real-life Rickles was reportedly not amused - and a thoroughly nonsensical plot originally designed to put Rickles in the same room as the Man of Steel so he could insult him . . . but it never happens.) Like I say, this is definitely not the stuff you want to pull out if you're trying to convince a would-be girl or boyfriend you're not a hopeless case for reading comic books. These pages are pure (to use cartoonist Scott Shaw!'s exceedingly valuable label) Oddball. And boyishly entertaining for it.
Can't wait for Volume Two.
Article comments
1 - Steve Rhodes
Mark Evanier has a section of his website on Jack Kirby
2 - Bill Sherman
Thanks, Steve, you're always helpful about adding links that'll enhance a story (should've thought of this myself since I regularly stop at Evanier's place). Mark's also added some more insight into Kirby's work on Jimmy Olsen in a reply to my review.
3 - mike
Omigod, I'd forgotten all about this Jack Kirby DC stuff. (I was but a wee lad.) I remember coming across the Jimmy Olsen/New Gods stuff before I even knew who Kirby (or Marvel Comics) was. I thought, I want what this dude's smoking.
4 - Jim Carruthers
Last week Moviepoopshoot.com had a Comics 101 on Jack Kirby's Fourth World.
I remember buying these comics with pop bottles (comics went off the rails when they went off the 6 pop bottles return = 1 comic book standard).
I'm pissed that the reprint books are in black and grey instead of the full colour they warrant.
Plus over at emusic.com, there's Gregg Bendian's Interzone with his Jack Kirby fusion tribute.
5 - Bill Sherman
The Olsen book, thankfully, is in color.