Saturday, February 14, 2009

Valentine's Day Special: Jack Kirby's In the Days of the Mob

Happy hearts and flowers, Groove-ophiles! Today is indeed Valentine's Day, and you know what that's all about! Love! Yep, l-o-v-e! Well, Ol' Groove knows how much you love Jack Kirby. How much Kirby loved to write and draw stories about gangsters rubbing each other out. How much gangsters love to rub each other out (especially on Valentine's Day). So, thought I, why not squeeze all that love into one post? How to do that? Why, by presenting some classic Kirby comics depicting rascals rubbing one another out from the legendary In The Days of the Mob #1 (Fall, 1971).

In the Days of the Mob had one of Kirby's wildest premises by having the stories narrated by Hell's Warden, Warden Fry! Check this out...

Makes Apokolips look kind'a tame, don't it?

Now, here's Ol' Groove's valentine to ya: Kirby's take on a legendary dinner with Al Capone called "Bullets for Big Al!" Enjoy, Groove-ophiles!

7 comments:

  1. I know it's the much-maligned Colletta but I always loved the art in this. Look at the detail in some of these scenes! Thanks!

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  2. i have both of these mags.
    sure wish they woulda' kept going.

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  3. Colletta really did do a bang up job on this book. Kirby's best inker, I still say.

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  4. Colletta murdered Kirbys pencils, while In The Days Of The Mob is very good, it would of been even better if Mike Royer had inked both volumnes.

    Volumne 2 looks absolutely awesome! They need to publish it in it's entirety. Anyone know where it can be found?

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  5. This is nuts. Today I have found (so far) no less than 3 different blogs who have posted scans of IN THE DAYS OF THE MOB #1 more-or-less in its entirety, with varying quality of sizes of scans. For me, the BEST and BEST-SIZE for online reading can be found at The Comic Reading Library blog. Go here...

    http://comicreadinglibrary.blogspot.com/2010/08/in-days-of-mob-1.html

    ...and enjoy yourself!

    Oh yes, and a FEW pages not featured there can be found at Rip Dagger's Dojo...

    http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2011/03/in-days-of-mob.html

    ReplyDelete
  6. These articles have got complete sense without confusing the readers.
    valentine ring

    ReplyDelete

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


Note to "The Man": All images are presumed copyright by the respective copyright holders and are presented here as fair use under applicable laws, man! If you hold the copyright to a work I've posted and would like me to remove it, just drop me an e-mail and it's gone, baby, gone.


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As for the rest of ya, the purpose of this blog is to (re)introduce you to the great comics of the 1970s. If you like what you see, do what I do--go to a comics shop, bookstore, e-Bay or whatever and BUY YOUR OWN!