Friday (Really, Really) Fun Link: Jack Kirby's 92nd Birthday Would Have Been Today

Brian Doherty | August 28, 2009

Over at the wonderful Comics Reporter site, Tom Spurgeon has an amazing array of images proving that comic book artist, creator, and writer Jack Kirby just may have been the most fascinating and fruitful American artist of the 20th century.

Just yesterday, fellow Reason man Jesse Walker pointed out to me privately this similarly massively great collection of Kirby images, this one close-focused on his marvelous millinery--yes, it's the 5,000 Hats of Jack Kirby.

Comments

Art-P.O.G.|8.28.09 @ 1:19PM|#

Now that I think about it, Kirby might have been the greatest science fiction illustrator ever.

Speaking of Old People|8.28.09 @ 1:56PM|#

Romantic comedy. Starring Paul Campbell, Andy Griffith, Marla Sokoloff and Doris Roberts. Directed by Marc Fienberg. (PG-13. 105 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

That's the problem with making a movie where Andy Griffith's character receives oral sex: People aren't going to remember much of anything else about your film.

"Play the Game" could have been the most deftly written, well-produced romantic comedy of the decade, and audiences would still fixate on the scene where the ex-sheriff of Mayberry gets slipped a Viagra and starts looking toward his genital region while yelling, "It's alive! It's alive!"

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/28/MVG319D0VP.DTL

|8.28.09 @ 2:10PM|#

He was a great illustrator but a terrible writer. It was never the same after he broke up with Stan Lee.

Brian Doherty|8.28.09 @ 2:12PM|#

David, I couldn't disagree with you more. He was a highly stylized and often completely ridiculous writer...but his earnest and expansive comedy to me beat Lee's attempts at childish hip and heavy. Not that I don't love them both, but for goodness sake just read some of the out of context dialogue in the clips on those two links. Whimsical and mad but unforgettable and impossible from any other mind.

Brian Doherty|8.28.09 @ 2:13PM|#

...I meant to say "comedy and drama". While there was a lot of wit and humor in Kirby, it was in the service of course of Big, big, BIG!!! drama....

|8.28.09 @ 2:17PM|#

That was fun. Good thing he's not around to draw for Obama's agenda. That's some talent.

Art-P.O.G.|8.28.09 @ 2:23PM|#

I'm still amazed at how prolific Kirby was...

Brian Doherty|8.28.09 @ 2:27PM|#

And also David, except for the dialogue, Kirby pretty much wrote in the sense of plotted and conceptualized, most of the Lee-Kirby work past 65 or so.

|8.28.09 @ 2:30PM|#

Today also marks the birthday of Luigi Bastiano, inventor of the cement overcoat.

Luigi would be 98 today, although he hasn't been seen since he left the firm of Capone & Co in 1930.

|8.28.09 @ 3:01PM|#

Boy, I'm in some good company on birthdays.

Speaking of Old People|8.28.09 @ 3:47PM|#

Hitler Goodwined mine.

Jeff P|8.28.09 @ 5:46PM|#

Hubble recentlt discovered Kirbyspace

http://www.baddaystudio.com/kirbyspace.jpg

Underzog|8.28.09 @ 8:53PM|#

Kirby was real good.

When are they going to show a collection of Ditko's "Mr. A" comics?

|8.30.09 @ 9:02AM|#

Kirby was a great artist, but I thought Reason would be more likely to celebrate Objectivist and Spider-Man artist extraordinaire Steve Ditko.