Happy 100th Birthday, Jack Kirby!

Greetings, Groove-ophiles! Today is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the most revered comicbook creators to ever pick up a pencil--Jack "King" Kirby! Why is Kirby so revered? To say that it's his creativity, energy, mastery, and love for the medium only scratch the surface. Just look at the following covers featuring characters he either co-created, created, wrote, or drew (or all of the above)--in the 1970s alone! If we went all the way back to the 1940s and on into the 1990s, we could spend a week on Kirby and his accomplishments. And he'd deserve it.

(And thanks to the Grand Comics Database for being a comicbook blogger's best friend!)

Groove's Faves: "It's All in the Mine" by Englehart and Rogers

One of the (many) highlights of DC's Summer of 1977 output was the return of Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle. Though The King was no longer at DC, the powers that were placed the Super-Escape Artist's re-vamped mag in the hands of the super-star team that was wowing us in Detective Comics, writer Steve Englehart and artist Marshall Rogers. Thanks to this ad...

...Teen Groove was psyched and ready when he got his hands on Mister Miracle #19 (June 1977), and lemme tell ya, I was not disappointed in the least. Not only did Englehart and Rogers craft an action-packed, explosive tale to knock my socks off (though truth to tell I usually spent my summers barefoot), but editor Denny O'Neil allowed Rogers to enlist the amazing Ilya Hunch to ink this minor masterpiece! Dig it!

What? You wanna know who the heck Ilya Hunch is? So did we, baby! O'Neil laid the truth behind "Ilya Hunch" on us in the letters page of MM #20. Check it out!

Who says Diversions can't be edumicational?

Making a Splash: King Kirby's Jimmy Olsen

What it is, Groove-ophiles! Yesterday was Jack "King" Kirby's birthday, and there's no way we're gonna let that special day pass by without paying tribute to the man who put so much of the groove in the Groovy Age! For this special occasion, Ol' Groove thought it might be cool to combine a hot topic--DC's upcoming reboot (DCnU)--with Kirby's Groovy Age reboot of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen! When the DC ads proclaimed "Kirby Is Coming!" few of us ever dreamed he'd make his DC debut on Jimmy Olsen--but he did. And like everything else he ever did, Jolly Jack hit the ground running with truck-loads of ideas and concepts that leaped from the four-color pages and smacked us upside our collective heads. The following superior splashes will give you naught but a taste of the magnificent madness we were digging when we read Jimmy Olsen's mag from issues 133-139 (June 1970-April 1971) and 141-148 (July 1971-January 1972). NOTE: These are only the single-page splashes--Ol' Groove's savin' the double page splashes for another day. Gotta keep ya hangin' on, baby! WARNING! This post gives a new definition to the term "graphics intensive"! Grab a sandwich while it loads!