Saturday, August 28, 2010

Making a Splash: Jack Kirby's Black Panther

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! To celebrate the memory of Jack "King" Kirby on what would have been his 93rd birthday, how 'bout we take a look at the super-kool splash pages The King produced during his tenure as writer/artist/editor of another king, the king of the Wakanda, T'Challa, The Black Panther. While Kirby's handling of his ko-kreation (with Stan the Man Lee, of course) was kwite kontroversial at the time (due to his replacing--and ignoring--the sophisticated stylings of long-time, fan-fave Black Panther scribe--in the pages of Jungle Action, natch--Don McGregor), y'gotta admit, his art, especially the splashes, were so in-your-face and far-out that you couldn't stay too disappointed for long. For 12 issues (October 1977-August 1978), we were bombarded with Kosmic Kirby Kreations like King Solomon's Frog, Mr. Little, Princess Zanda, the Six-Million Year Man, the Black Musketeers, and Kiber the Kruel. Krazy stuff, filled with action and topped with exquisitely-rendered (artful inks by Mike Royer) single and double splash pages. Here are all of 'em, in one place, at one time, and all for you, Groove-ophiles!
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

5 comments:

  1. Andrew WahlAugust 28, 2010 at 11:39 AM

    Groove:

    When I had my "coming to Kirby" moment in college, Black Panther was one of the books I really enjoyed. In general, I was a huge fan of Kirby's return-to-Marvel period, as his work — both writing and art — had reached this level of abstraction that gave it even more power (if that's possible!) And no other artist has made as good of use as the two-page splash as Kirby did. Great stuff!

    Cheers,
    Andrew
    ComicsBronzeAge.ocm

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mike D.August 28, 2010 at 11:41 AM

    Truly EPIC Kirby material....I love Kirby's work...always did always have and always will.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Marcelo BaezAugust 30, 2010 at 3:29 AM

    Damn I love the KING!!! And your blog!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Groovy AgentSeptember 2, 2010 at 3:49 PM

    And Ol' Groove loves ya right back, Marcelo!

    There's a reason why they called Kirby "King"--he earned it, no matter what the Age!

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownJuly 24, 2017 at 3:15 PM

    Whatever Kirby touches he makes unique...and he proves it again! Great work pal!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
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.


All other commentary and insanity copyright GroovyAge, Ltd.

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!