To A Wider Universe...

Years ago, I spent a lot more of my time thinking about the artist Jack Kirby and his works. He is still in my thoughts, but even though I am not as manic about figuring out what the big It of his work means, anymore, I still take time in-between reading new stuff to dip back into his work. There are still plenty of unexpected new ideas found in the old stuff.

Anyhow, in celebration of Kirby’s 91st birthday today, you should either order Mark Evanier’s wonderful Kirby biography or, better yet, read some Kirby-created stories.

Guaranteed entertainment and amazing brain food on every page, and maybe, you'll come up with some meanderings in your mind from the experience, something like I did below in some old pondering of his 2001 series for Marvel Comics back in the mid-70s. As said before: I am not sure what Kirby really means, and I am still not quite sure what I mean with the words below. Do not hold that against, Kirby though. Just read some of his stuff for yourself and see where your own mind goes.

***

NEW SEEDS: Kirby's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

“Perhaps here, a way of being may find the why of being...until then, the New Seed decides to seek the answer himself. What if it turned out to be merely -- simple!!” That’s what Kirby wrote in the final page of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, #7, June 1977, the penultimate chapter of his exploration into the ideas he found in Stanley Kubrick’s famous film. To me this is Kirby telling the reader: “You’re the New Seed. I’ve given you something to grow with, so...grow!” But it also warns me, I think, of digging too deep into his plot of ground, earth-bound and above -- that sometimes the most satisfying, most truthful answers are the simple ones. However, what truths, simple or otherwise, did Kirby see in the film? What kindred thoughts stirred him enough to adapt it to comics, but to carry on past the final scene? Here’s my theory...

“The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not the think of it,” Kubrick was quoted in David Anthony Kraft’s essay on the movie, which appeared in the edition of Kirby’s 2001 film adaptation. This thought puts the filmmaker in the same school of art as Kirby who has been deemed an intuitive artist -- a story-teller who makes his artistic decisions by gut instinct.

Or, like the comic book fan in 2001 #6: “There is, in many men, a sense of the dramatic which governs their lives. In Harvey Norton this instinct is vital and strong! He acts upon what he feels is the truth, and lets the devil take the hindmost...” Harvey Norton’s life, like the other characters in this series, formed itself dramatically to the “truths” his decisions shaped -- just as Kirby’s instinctual drive toward his own truths forged the shape of how he told their stories and why their stories fit into his ultimate picture.

The ultimate picture, the overwhelming theme, would seem to me to be: imagination is what sets us apart from the beasts and is our first step to “what’s out there”. Our creative urges have been with us from the beginning and it’ll be there to guide us at the end. What we do with it, if anything, is what determines how big our next progressive step into the unknown will be. Any step into the unknown is progress, according to Kirby here, because, “pass” or “fail”, it’s the test of life that must be taken. In addition, it’s the answers to the test for which we quest on this odyssey.

The monolith itself, mysteriously appearing to various people throughout time, signifies to me simply a symbol of the inspiration that spurs us to create -- the act of creation itself being a necessary function to humanity, what’s needed to fill our hungers: from the gnawing physical hunger felt by early man to the ”something more” craved by those with bellies-filled. “Where are we going?” Kirby asks in page 1 of the first issue, and he answers: “Somewhere in the dawn of time, we began --somehow, in these perilous times we keep moving on -- and some time in the future, something will happen to change us! . . .The monolith may be the cause! It does not belong to this world -- yet it does belong to us all!”

The Beast-Killer in issue #1 finds inspiration in the monolith, he comes away with the extra-spark jumpstarting his way to improve his tools and better fill his plate. He runs his own life apart from the pack, the others who “shun the stone-spirit and cannot hear its voice!” His ancestor, Woodrow Decker, stuck on a planetoid and whining about his fate, seems at first to be a strange recipient for inspiration -- “he has the drive for discovery -- but lacks the will to fight...” Then, a strange Kirby-creature appears and attacks, and Kirby writes: “Yet, in the cracks and crevasses of the ruin, there are things which have fought for life -- and survived uncountable eons -- where life should be negated...” Moreover, when it attacks, Decker fights to save his friend. It appears to me that the ruin is not only on the planetoid, but also within Decker himself, and the things that fight for life could include his strength of character. This fight is why he’s able to go on through the monolith for the ‘final’ inspiration.

Like any true artist and others we see go through the monolith, Decker sees things there beyond his comprehension and to survive the experience he must change. “Decker must become something else!!” Kirby writes, if he’s to go forward in his journey of growth and discovery. Then the old self dies and the new self, in the form of the New Seed, is born. “It is not the first of its kind. There have been others. There will always be others, as long as earth breeds human life...”

The next three issues continue this thread and contain their own separate, more complicated story: Vira the She-Demon and her ancestor Vera’s story are connected to the story of Marak and his descendant Marik (and Jalessa) in that the matriarchy established by Vira’s inspiration passes down in time to Jalessa’s authority. And it’s Jalessa’s land and power which Marak seeks to conquer. Vira, Marak and Jalessa all use their inspiration for growth, but while Vera, Vira’s far-future descendant, passes through the monolith like Decker and becomes something more, Marik remains curiously the same. Why he doesn’t become a New Seed is the curiosity: in his final phase he finds again his true love and his mind and soul seem satisfied. Is it because he finds his soul is satisfied, needs nothing more, that he doesn’t go on -- that for the ‘artist’ to continue growing he must remain ‘hungry?’

Next, we meet in issue #7, Harvey Norton, a comic book fan, who, though he finds fantasies easily catered to, remains hungry for something more. His fellow-fans have become almost repugnant to him, a dark reflection of himself, perhaps, that he sees for the first time. The whole world is a fantasyland and Harvey, with inspiration drawn from within by the monolith, realizes “I-It’s not real! It’s film and solar lamps! It’s wave machines and plastic sand! I-I’m a captive -- in a man made cage of illusions -- a world-wide Comicsville -- which has less substance than my own dreams...” In a scene like the famous favorite from NEW GODS #7, Harvey meets the monolith for the second time. His dream of something ‘bigger’ takes him away from Comicsville, out into space where he meets his ‘more’.

His love of comic books serves him well in space. While his fellow fans seemed to be satisfied with seeking only more of the same, repeatedly, Harvey took something else from his fantasies: a heroic ideal.

His final encounter with the monolith spurs on the ‘final’ change, his mutation into a New Seed taking on the trappings of a superhero, Captain Cosmic. Harvey “looks back upon a life of great adventure and a never-ending future of jousting against injustice.” Moreover, “what is the new seed, but man’s admission to a wider universe...”

What is the New Seed? We come full circle to my opening paragraph because it’s in issue #7 that Kirby offers some of the answers. Unlike the other parts, it begins with the creation of a New Seed and we follow its journey. It still learns. It still sees. “Find the reason for being and unlock the secret of the universe! To do this there must be life -- there must be a living will to seek...” The continual quest, the odyssey, the journey is what makes life worth living. To do less, to stop the search, to stop questioning, is when we die as humans because this failure to use our potential, I think Kirby says here, runs contrary to a promise we need to keep.

What more potential could come from this series? Kirby took a turn in issue #8, beginning the saga of Mister Machine and leading into the Machine Man series. It would seem to counter Jon Cooke’s feeling in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #11 that Kirby did not understand H.A.L. from the original movie. This last three-parter explores the soul of a machine and explains, to me, one possibility of why H.A.L. went mad: he wasn’t raised as human.

I don’t know the real reason why Kirby chose (or Marvel wanted him to choose) the 2001 book and I don’t think it’s been explained why the book stopped when it did. Sales? Licensing problems? Whatever the case, I don’t think Kirby needed to go on here. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY remains to me one of the few late Kirby series that gave just enough.

As with most of Kirby’s work, “just enough” is everyone else's cornucopia. Or, in this case, everyone's Monolith.

Happy Birthday Captain America, Newsboy Legion, The Boy Commandos, Fighting American, Boys Ranch, Fantastic Four, The Hulk, The X-Men, Etc. Etc.

It must have been early 1966 when I first encountered the work of comic book creator Jack Kirby, who would have turned 90 today. I did not then get to read a story he drew – I merely glimpsed the work in question, in passing, from a few respectful feet away, held by boys a year or two older than I was. The gang huddled together, backed up against the lockers waiting to enter the classroom, and they turned each page slowly only when each member was ready to find out what happened next. They chuckled in pleasure, in anticipation, to themselves, one of them exclaiming “Oh, yeah!” as another page turned.

It was several years before I actually read the story myself. I had no desire at first sight to find out what was hidden beneath that horrifying ugly cover of a devil-horned giant, with a bald, naked silver guy (on what might have been a surfboard) chasing three normal looking blue-suited humans and one orange rock man.

It was probably disturbing to me as well that the rock man had no shoes. Batman was on TV that night though, and I had questions about the show to ask of classmates my own age. The cover left my sight, but I did not realize then it was still in my mind.

Later months and years went by: my hipper younger-brother occasionally purchased some other comics by that “Marvel” company. I immediately recognized the characters as the ones I had glimpsed before. Kirby’s artwork was not to my taste but like all comics then we read them indiscriminately out of some sort of unspoken childhood obligation.

The artwork on the insides was as disturbing as the covers, but without looking them up again, I can still remember my first sight of the character called the Black Panther – like a living black shadow, ready to pounce upon the creations of another guy called Psycho-Man.

Then there were the Inhumans: Gorgon with the hoofed feet, Karnak with the sensitive hands and big head, Medusa with the living red hair, and their giant dog Lockjaw with the perpetually pouting lower lip.

There was also a story of the bald, naked silver guy on the surfboard fighting a really ugly robot. I remember the end of the story where the robot -- called, of course, Quasimodo – defeated by the Surfer’s “Power Cosmic” showed his loss with a face in anguish greater than I had ever seen before.

These were not the homey, safe DC Comics of Batman, Superman and the Flash. These were the powerful forms of the Marvel Comics Group, and their stories seemed to me always drawn by Kirby. His story telling between the covers thumped my head the hardest. Perhaps my disturbance came from a combination of the power of Kirby’s story telling, along with how gritty and urban they appeared alongside the seemingly more sedate and conservative DC Comics.

Artists of the time tell how Kirby created a style of story telling barely constrained by the limits of the page. What Scott McCloud called "The Invisible Art" of Comics, was how the best comics drew the reader's eye from panel to panel, from page to page. Kirby drew instinctively this way and reading his work, following the frames of what his mind said was the best way to tell this story, can become addicting. My mind became educated to the unfamiliar style and I began to keep my eyes out for more.

I later found that Kirby had been creating comics since the beginning of the industry, most notably his first hit: co-creating Captain America with partner Joe Simon. The two moved from company to company in those days, coming up with more ideas and characters, creating the first romance comic, as well as turning out significant work in westerns, science fiction, combat and supernatural stories; and of course, more super heroes. After twenty years experience under his pencil, Kirby teamed with Stan Lee to birth “The Marvel Age of Comics” where the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the X-Men, Thor and Spider-man all began. Though Lee was the glib front man, putting words to the pictures, a whole lot of the more-significant ideas, according to subsequent research and interviews, most attribute now to Kirby.

Eventually Kirby wanted more money, more credit from the company he’d led to greener pastures, so his children would not have to worry about insurance or college. Unable to come to an agreeable contract with Marvel he moved to DC Comics and came up with the so-called Fourth World series of books: “New Gods,” “The Forever People,” and “Mister Miracle - Super Escape Artist.”

Words and pictures both by Kirby, they were his most-personal effort to-date. The “New Gods” stories somberly carried a serious weight of the past, with super-beings of two opposite worlds caught in an eternal planet-shattering battle, while “The Forever People” showed the cost of that war on the young but, dressed-up in the fashion of the late 60s youth movement, it also told the tale of hope for the future. “Mr. Miracle” was about another cost of war – individuality – and to me it represented Kirby himself the most. He had escaped the slums of New York by natural talent and tenacity, fought in Europe against the Axis tyranny, slipped through the knots of mediocrity tied tight by corporate interests. As long as he kept his ideas flowing by the power of the mind he could always survive.

Of course, the Fourth World did not last long. Kirby never gave us the big finish he’d had in mind, and no one can tell where the characters could have gone because no one is Kirby.

The later years of his life, while not as productive – his work no longer seen as hip or cool he did not get the jobs from the major publishers – found him in a controversial bid for creator’s rights, as he used the legal system in an attempt to get his original artwork back from Marvel.

While younger artists without half his creativity got big deals and solid contracts, Kirby went without. He never saw his creations become multi-million dollar motion pictures, or his works become hard-bound collector’s editions.

For those of you not impressed by the comic book, you can also view Kirby’s influence outside the four-color printed page:

You could crawl out from under a rock and check Star Wars (Lucas has admitted being “influenced” by Kirby’s “New Gods” series as much as by Kurosawa’s “Hidden Fortress”). Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” based in large part on his research into the life of Kirby.

Kirby worked harder than most. When I was first getting into comics, it seemed at least two or three books a month on the stands carried his stories. Right now, it seems that DC, Marvel, and newer publishers like Image Comics have more Kirby in reprint form the first few months of this year than any time while he was alive. You can find these in your local comic book shop. If you ask for a Kirby comic in a shop and they do not know who Kirby is, then you should find another shop.

In order of importance, I would recommend “The Fourth World Omnibus” and “Fantastic Four” – after that, you could try others like Kamandi, The Eternals, and Captain America. If you become extremely fanatical after that, you might even enjoy the more-quirky Devil Dinosaur.

The New York Times ran a great piece on Kirby over the weekend, and Kirby’s friend and historian Mark Evanier (his great blog you’ll also find linked to the right) will finally get his long-awaited Kirby biography on the bookshelves this October.

There is also a virtual visit and more information in store at the Kirby Museum and a very good Kirby documentary included on the ‘deluxe’ edition of the first Fantastic Four movie.

Happy Birthday, Jack Kirby! As a schoolmate of mine said a long time ago: “Oh, yeah!”