JACK's BACK...!

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

When JACK KIRBY returned to MARVEL in the mid-'70s, the only existing mag he resumed drawing was CAPTAIN AMERICA.  Apart from lending his artistic prowess to some covers (usually designed by MARIE SEVERIN), he steered clear of the heroes he'd helped make famous back in the '60s.  So - no FANTASTIC FOUR, THOR, HULK, AVENGERS, X-MEN, etc.  He did draw the Hulk in a couple of issues of The ETERNALS, but it was a 'cosmic powered' mechanical figure - not the genuine green-skinned goliath himself.

I have to confess to not being overwhelmed by many of the covers Kirby drew during his '70s period.  His art style by this time had become a little too 'cartoony' and not quite as realistically rendered as in former years.  JOE SINNOTT inked quite a few of them, but even he couldn't entirely disguise Kirby's looser, blockier, more abstract way of doing things compared to his triumphs in the '60s.

However, there was one cover in particular I remember being impressed by when I first laid eyes on it back in 1975 - MARVEL PREMIERE #26.  Inked by VINCE COLLETTA, the cover looked like it could've been a '60s piece discovered in the Marvel Vaults.  GEORGE TUSKA did the interior pencils, and Colletta's inks on them may not have been quite as successful as on the cover, but they didn't have to be.  I purchased that issue for the cover alone, and wished Marvel would assign more of Jack's art to Vinnie's magic brush and pen.  (Although the placement of the figure with the axe is somewhat suspect and his right leg needs a little work - but that's down to Jack, not Vinnie.)

Examine the cover at the top of this post and then compare it to the Fantastic Four one inked by Sinnott, above.  The perspective is all wrong and the background figures' sizes aren't consistent to one another.  And is that car parked up on the pavement?  Also, look at where the windscreen is positioned and the sparse detail on the chassis.  One hesitates to use the word 'lazy' in relation to Jack Kirby; after all, every line that Joe inked was there in the pencil stage, Jack certainly didn't stint in that department.  I often wonder though, if, later in his career, he'd simply passed the point of caring whether his art reflected reality or not, and it was only the overall effect he was concerned with.

Maybe it was just a case of Jack getting older and less interested in sustaining the near-perfection of earlier days.  After all, at this stage he'd been drawing comicbooks for close to 40 years, so could perhaps be forgiven for being somewhat worn down by the 'conveyor-belt' production process of the medium.  And who could blame him?  Life has a way of sucking the soul out of even the best of men. 

However, I come to praise Kirby, not to 'bury' him.  So, take another look at that HERCULES cover and enjoy what Jack was still capable of when combined with an inker who knew how to dilute his later weaknesses and enhance his strengths.