Friday, September 25, 2015

Making a Splash: Kirby's FF, 1967 Style!

Yeah, this summer was brutal on Marvel's premiere super-team, the Fantastic Four. Their mag was cancelled. The team was disbanded. And the movie was a big ol' flop! There was a time, though, when the FF was Marvel's marquee title. As the Groovy Age was just starting, Jack The King Kirby and Stan The Man Lee (along with main inker Joltin' Joe Sinnot) was busy setting fandom on fire with the hottest, most cutting edge comics of the day. Already having introduced the Skrulls, Galactus, Silver Surfer, The Inhumans, The Black Panther, and many others, they weren't satisfied! In 1967 we got the Kree, Ronan the Accuser, Him (who would become Adam Warlock)...well, you get the idea. Jack's powerful and inventive pencils and layouts were killing it month in and month out! Whaddya say we go back to the dawn of the Groovy Age and check out the sizzling splashes (and a few more in-freakin'-credible pages) from Fantastic Four issues 61-72? Yeah, Ol Groove knew you could dig that...

















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7 comments:

  1. keythd23September 25, 2015 at 7:45 AM

    This is what the Groovy Age is all about. Jack Kirby was at his absolute peak. Joe Sinnott was bringing out even more perfection from the King's pencils. And Stan Lee's plots and prose were flowing like fine wine. It's FF issues like these that cause aging fanboys like me to longingly look back on the comics of our youth and wish they were still as good today.

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  2. RussSeptember 25, 2015 at 10:39 AM

    It's a beautiful run, up to a point. I don't know how much the change in original art size has to do with it, but around 68-69 you can see the creative lights beginning to blink out. Kirby had so much left to give, but he soon left to give it elsewhere.

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  3. WilliamSeptember 25, 2015 at 11:50 AM

    I got one word -- GROOVY!!

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  4. DaleSeptember 25, 2015 at 7:16 PM

    Don't know but wonder how much Lee's "tendencies" damaged classic partnerships with Kirby and Ditko. He is apparently living forever and smelling like a rose,something of a contrast to the fates of the artists. Hard to believe FF has been cancelled-would they kill Spidey too if the films flopped? Is this the mercenary level to which we have sunk? All the more reason to look back with longing on The Groovy Age!

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  5. Rip JaggerSeptember 26, 2015 at 4:18 AM

    Oh boy! These are the issues which ignited my interest. My cousin, a few years older, picked up some of these and I was amazed. Soon enough I'd get my own, but this year is a doozy and much underrated. The Kree in particular proved to be a rich concept which as given the MU an absolute bushel of stories and characters, not the least of which was Captain Mar-Vell. I'm gearing up right now to read those HIM stories again. Soon! Soon!

    Rip Off

    Rip Off

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  6. GLGSeptember 26, 2015 at 10:09 AM

    Kirby was, without doubt, the most talented (and influential) visual artist to work in comics. Period.
    You can think of other visual Giants from his era, Toth, Kurtzman, Ditko, Eisner, Wood, etc. But even these masters didn't have the sheer scope and originality of the King. His work just got more and more individual as the years rolled on. That massive, oak-carved drawing of the seventies is as impressive as Picasso's monumental period.
    I think he's the comics equivalent to Louis Armstrong. Pure, original, self taught, self directed--a force of nature....but with a deeper understanding of what he was doing than most fans give him credit for.
    You don't draw and design like that without a powerful intellect and visual instinct behind it.
    And so American. Almost the essence of the progress-oriented mid-century American ethos. I never tire of looking at any of his drawings.

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  7. AnonymousSeptember 27, 2015 at 1:12 PM

    Please show more Kirby Fantastic Four or more Kirby anything :)

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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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