He'll always be Agent Rosenfield to me. Very, very cool. Indeed, even.
Phill | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 1:25 am | #

Albert!

Simon Pegg taking over the Trek movie would be hilarious, I think. Especially if it was done in the same demented spirit as Shaun and Hot Fuzz. With Nick Frost as Kirk -- which would then be Frost playing a variant on his Hyperspace character, who is, in turn, a twist on Kirk.

Harlan Ellison's getting all stompy with the Trek movie, too. I have to wonder whether any case he presents against it will stand.

Plus...where is Greg Grunberg going to turn up in Trek? Abrams will put him somewhere for at least a cameo....
Steven E. McDonald | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 2:38 am | #

when i started reading uk fanzines ( fantasy advertiser, bem, cerebro ) in the early 1980s the writing of steve gerber, steve englehart & in particular don mcgregor were especially revered

- and ALL of kirby's 70s output was mercilessly mocked

this especially puzzled me since i came to these zines via british marvel reprints of the lee & kirby 60s glassics - & kirby was by far my favourite artist - & i felt v.out of place "in" these zines

by the mid-late 80s the situation was reversed: kirby was treated as a god - & mcgregor = a figure of fun

ps. i like 'em both ( - tho of course it is unfair to gompare ANYONE w/kirby )
agwu obuka | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 2:54 am | #

The difference between Liefeld and Kirby is that only of them is a good artist.

And while I'd say neither is a particularly good writer (Captain Victory is my particular flogging horse), Kirby is at least an artist, i.e. he knows how to pace a story, design a page, put original ideas to paper. Devil Dinosaur is many things to many people, but you can't say it's unoriginal.
Siskoid | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 4:05 am | #

At the risk of getting berated, I will say the Lifield comparison works...but only as a rough situational analogy, not as a statement of equivalent quality.

I cam on board the comics scene during Kirby's 2nd Marvel run--Devil Dinosaur et. al. And the perception of my friends and fellow readers was that while Kirby's stuff looked great, the writing--the plots, the dialogue--was as stiff as hell, particular as compared with some of the more "modern" writers working then.

And looking back at the Fourth World and his DC work, you see the same thing--insanely imaginative visuals, dynamic worlds...and then you read the captions and balloons.

From the one-dimensional archetypes presented as characters, to the junior high naming scheme (Darkseid=Dark Side, get it! DeSaad=Desade, get it!) to the over-reliance on grandiosity disconnected with anything else in the "real" universe, to me Kirby's 70's output screamed out for a writer to join him. And there's not anything wrong with that--not everyone can write, just as not everyone can draw.

So I think that's where the analogy roughly holds--Kirby and Lifield were popular artists who made a big splash by leaving Marvel and going "solo" as writer/artist, and their writing efforts "failed." (none of Kirby's 70's work was "popular" in terms of sales, to the extent that matters) Kirby was better on every level and at every stage--his worst thing was better than Lifield's best--but I can understand comparison.
Brian Disco Snell | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 4:17 am | #

The difference between Kirby and Liefeld is that Kirby used exaggeration and distortion for a purpose while telling a story, but Liefeld (and MANY other modern artists) distort because distortion is, y'know, cool and the more distorted something is, the cooler it gets... doesn't it? And if some dude says "Hey man, that's fugly and retarded," that just makes it TRANSGRESSIVE!

Re Kirby's later work, even his clunkiest stuff has the virtue of being Kirbyesque. Whatever else might be said about Dingbats Of Danger Street, it couldn't be mistaken for any other artist on earth.
Joe S. Walker | 11.15.07 - 4:21 am | #

First, the only difference between Jack Kirby and Rob Liefeld...is that Jack Kirby never thought he was Rob Liefeld.

Kirby's writing could be a little clunky, but at least his figures had a power and logic to them. Kirby broke the rules...but in doing so, rewrote the rule book.

Liefeld's drawings look...let's face it, awkward. In his pursuit of "cool", Liefeld doesn't break the rules - he ignores them and blusters on in his own ignorance.
Gordon | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 5:05 am | #

Actually, the difference between Leifeld and Kirby is one finishes projects and the other doesn't.
Daniel Mata | Email | 11.15.07 - 5:06 am | #

And I agree re: Simon Pegg - just let him have the whole Trek movie. It would make it watchable.

(I'm still waiting for the Pegg/Frost DOCTOR WHO/sci-fi riff, the way they riffed action movies in HOT FUZZ or horror in SHAUN OF THE DEAD)
Gordon | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 5:06 am | #

As a writer in the 70s, Kirby had quite a few "what the ---?" moments, but his art never failed.
Larry E | Email | 11.15.07 - 5:47 am | #

I came into my comic phase in the mid-80's and never even appreciated Kirby till the bust after '93 or so...but looking back, I heart Kirby with a passion whilst I wouldnt wipe my ass with 90's Image style art (cant single Liefeld out, but just ask him to draw you an ankle and you'll understand)
Anonymous | 11.15.07 - 5:52 am | #

Re: Kirby vs. Liefeld

The 70's comparison just doesn't work. Kirby was an acknowledged master of the form who was on the downswing in the 70's. His artwork and his story-telling abilities were still top notch, but his dialoging skills were just as bad as everyone else who started in the biz in the 30s and 40s and were still working in the 70s. He needed a collaborator with a better ear for modern sensibilities, but there was nothing wrong with his ability to put pictures on the page and tell a story.

Kirby got blasted a lot at the time because his creative drives were pushing him to do non-superhero stuff but he was stuck in a market where no one wanted him to do anything but superheroes. So his stuff like "Devil Dinosaur" or "The Enternals" or "Kamandi" or "The Demon" or his entire "Fourth World" work ended up either being re-tooled into superhero stuff or being compared unfavorably to superhero stuff.

Compare to Rob Liefeld. Let's get past the whole comparison of drafting skills and into other areas. His ability to put images together to tell a story is incredibly poor (which, to be fair, is true of most artists from the time period he was working). He's never really stretched himself creatively into working on non-superhero stuff - even when he had his own company and could do whatever he wanted, he did superheroes. His work constantly retreads the same ground, and, as you say Mike, in 30 years we aren't going to look back and see "Rob Liefeld, maligned genius". We might be able to look back and say "well, maybe folks were a little hard on him - he wasn't THAT much worse than the other guys around him at the time."

So the comparison just doesn't work. Because while Kirby disappointed his fans in the 70s it was mostly because of his dialoging abilities and the fact that he was doing non-superhero work to satisfy his own creative urges (which is why we can look back at Devil Dinosaur now and recognize it for what it is), while Liefeld disappoints because he's just not that good at his craft.
Jer | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 5:54 am | #

Ah ha! I knew I had seen the quote, in reverse form, from Kirkman. I found a reference:

http://yeoldecomicblogge.blogspo...feld- kirby.html
Derek B. Haas | 11.15.07 - 6:00 am | #

One big difference between Kirby and Liefeld was that he still had the respect of his peers and comics fans for what he had done before. Does anybody respect Liefeld for anything he's done in comics, ever?

As someone with more than a few "annular rings", as I recall most fandom seemed to really like the New Gods stuff, as well as the Demon, but the disillusionment began with Kamandi and its recycling of movie plots. Plus, let's face it, the King just wasn't as facile artwise. And, while worlds better than Colletta, D. Bruce Berry's inks really made Kirby's pencils look crude, and that carried on to the work he inked in his second Marvel period. I think it was a number of things that were disparaged- fans were more infatuated with the more hightoned Adams/Smith/Wrightson/Kaluta etc. styles, and Kirby was definitely not that- his style, like Ditko and so many others, just looked quaint and odd. Many were disappointed that he was doing oddball stuff like the Eternals and 2001 rather than FF and Thor. Sure, he did Captain America and the Black Panther, but the stories were juvenile-seeming and strange, plus there was the "not like Adams", or "unlike popular styles" factor with his art.

It's really only been with the advent of publications like Jack Kirby Collector and the wake of the big fight with Marvel over his original art that Kirby has regained his reputation among comics fans in general...
Johnny Bacardi | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 6:25 am | #

I get the impression that Kirby's scripting (which, IMO, is very idiosyncratic, to be sure, but works quite well *for Kirby*, as part of the whole package) was particularly mockable in the '70s due to what was then fashionable in comics scripting.

It seems like darn-near all the "young turk" creators of the '70s favored, to varying degrees and at varying times, an extremely wordy, pretentious, pseudo-"literary" style that irritates me more today than anything Kirby ever scripted. (Typical is something like Marv Wolfman spending paragraphs of second-person narrative captions to give you the entire life story of some random Dracula victim who appears on two pages, dies, and is never seen again.)

But if that particular variety of purple prose was fashionable in the '70s (and it must have been, as it was all over the frickin' place), Kirby's would've been the opposite.
suedenim | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 6:25 am | #

For some reason, the idea of you grabbing a screencap from your DVD of Star Trek III to approximate the Miguel Ferrer trading card strikes me as incredibly funny.
John | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 6:29 am | #

Speaking as a READER in the 70s, I can say that while Kirby didn't command the same respect he had in the 60s, he was still Jack &@^*ING Kirby...the KING. While he didn't kill in sales, he was widely recognized and appreciated in some circles.

I LOVED the Eternals, for example, and any Fourth World stuff or the Demon that I stumbled across. Kirby's art rarely failed to deliver, even if his plots seemed somewhat 'old-school'.

And even in his downswing of the 70s, when the comics industry was fairly disparaging of him, a major difference between Kirby and Liefield (other than the fact that Kirby can draw HANDS, that is) is that Marvel and DC would mine Kirby's font of ideas from that work for DECADES. No one can say that of Cable, Youngblood or X-force.

It's undeniable that Kirby's prolific ideas have proved fertile ground for dozens of writers in the decades that followed. Liefield makes funny books...Kirby made MYTHOLOGY.
WizarDru | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 6:57 am | #

It seems like darn-near all the "young turk" creators of the '70s favored, to varying degrees and at varying times, an extremely wordy, pretentious, pseudo-"literary" style...

You can blame Roy Thomas for that- he was scripting most Marvel titles by the late 60's - early 70's and Wolfman, Wein, Englehart, Conway, Gerber, and McGregor (to name a few) all tried to adopt (for better or for worse) Thomas' informal, slangy, hyper style. While I loved McGregor (he did it with panache) and liked certain books by the others (well, not really Conway, although the recent reprint of his Daredevil stuff made me realize that I liked it more than I remembered), I'm like you- a lot of it was overwrought and cringe-inducing.

Did I bust out some parenthesis in that or what?
Johnny Bacardi | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 7:19 am | #

I had been reading comics for more than a decade by the time Devil Dinosaur and 2001 came out. My feeling at the time was, "Why oh why do they let Kirby write his own comics?!?!?"

But I bought them and enjoyed them.

By the time Liefeld came around, I had sense enough not to buy wretched comics.

Odor-Bag!
The Mutt | Email | 11.15.07 - 7:51 am | #

I would indeed watch a 90 minute movie of Simon Pegg as Scotty. Especially if the entire movie was told from his perspective with absolutely no indication of what the hell was going on the bridge. I'd buy the DVD, and start caring about Star Trek for the first time in a decade or two.

Such is the power of Simon Pegg.
g23 | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 7:53 am | #

Kirby and McGregor were indeed the poles of Marvel back in yonder days. Big Action and Big Wordy.

You young'uns should someday sit down with a stack of Don McGregor's "Jungle Action" Black Panther series of the mid-seventies and then immediately read the Jack Kirby "Black Panther" series that started up just after McGregor.

Your head will a'splode from the whiplash.

You never done seen such radically different interpretations and stories around the same character.

McGregor's overwritten political stories, rife with martyrdom and compromise, are an entirely different art form than Kirby's Hyperactive Big Action at its most hyperactive. To jump from "political intrigue and coups d'etat in an African nation" to "time-travelling golden frogs with laser-beam eyes" in such short order...man.

Both series totally f'in' rule, by the way.

When's the damn "Essential Black Panther" coming out? I'd pay good solid money for a reprinting of the "Jungle Action" series.
Harvey Jerkwater | Email | 11.15.07 - 8:13 am | #

Well, Kid Chris at least presented a very interesting essay questions, huh? "Jack Kirby was the Rob Liefeld of the '70s. Discuss."

One notable difference was that the '70s discussion of Kirby was, like, "Hey, is this guy who used to be revered and awesome maybe starting to lose it?" as opposed to, "Hey, is this crappy artist crappy in a cool way or a crappy way?"

Anyway, a few years back a collection of essays by name prose writers came out entitled "Give Our Regards to the Atom-Smashers!" (enough good stuff to borrow from the library, if not own--like Brad Meltzer talking about his crush on Terra from "Judas Contract," for example).

Jonathan Lethem's essay was on the perception of Kirby in the '70s specifically, as he and his friends met the "Return of the King" with mixed emotions; as I recall they all felt something changed, and some were really down on Kirby and others tried to defend that work. (His piece is especially interesting now, as he talks a bit about how Omega The Unknown effected him).
caleb | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 8:33 am | #

Zombies?

That's SO two years ago. We need more timeless banners, like the Schmoo.
MarkAndrew | 11.15.07 - 10:07 am | #

I'd be interested in reading Lethem's essay, since it strikes me that OMEGA is conceptually very akin to what Kirby was doing during his time at DC in the early 70s. Some of the tropes—the robot parents, the ghetto setting, the teenage protagonist—seem lifted from OMAC or THE FOREVER PEOPLE; but the Gerber approach to that material could hardly have been more different.

Thanks for the heads-up, Caleb!
Jack Fear | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 10:12 am | #

John - It's not my proudest moment, no.
Mikester | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 10:13 am | #

Kirby wiped better comics page from his ass than Liefeld draws, so I can't really answer the original question except to shake and have cartoon steam come out of my ears before my head explodes.

As to the secondary question, I think if you were plugged into Marvel fandom anywhere from just attentively reading letters page on up, you had a negative view of '70s Kirby. If you weren't, you probably didn't. I've talked to a lot of comics fans who remember both hating Kirby and having tons of those comics until at a certain point they were convinced they should hate him.

The biggest fandom dismay seems to have been on Kirby bringing on the Madbomb stuff after those serious, soap opera-level meaningful Captain America stories where Nixon offs himself in the White House and Falcon fights Bojangles Robinson or whatever. I loved the crazy Madbomb stuff, but my early teenaged brother never tired of telling me they were stupid and that I should hate them because everybody else did.

As for the Star Trek film, it's not so much Mr. Scott as I want to see what horrible circumstance befalls Dr. McCoy that he changes from Karl Urban to Deforest Kelley. Plus I think there's about a ten percent chance Kirk has sex with Spock's Mom.
Tom Spurgeon | Email | 11.15.07 - 10:19 am | #

There's an interview with Grant Morrison in the latest Kirby Collector in which he works up an interesting defence of Kirby's prose style in the '70s. I don't have it to hand but I think his position is (from memory) that it's striving for an old-fashioned poetic grandeur (like the King James Bible) and isn't aiming for the mix of naturalistic dialogue and purple captions which Johnny B rightly called as School of Roy Thomas. It's certainly a debatable view, but if you look at the Fourth World stuff from that perspective it does add to its power. Back to the original question, like many another teenage fuckwit in the '70s I thought Kirby's return to Marvel was terrible, as it had none of the Art Like Neal Adams/Words Like Roy Thomas/Continuity Like Steve Englehart triad that was considered Cooler than Cool at the time - but now I think it's frickin' great. What's particularly interesting is how well structured the whole Madbomb arc is, if you read it as a whole. In building a story that would climax with the Bicentennial issue 200, Kirby was in effect writing for the trade 20 or more years before the phrase was even current. Someone once said that Kane and Finger created Batman, Siegel and Shuster created Superman and Kirby created everything else. Years after his death, we're still seeing new evidence of that. The man beggars belief.
Mark S | Email | 11.15.07 - 11:09 am | #

If you're going to compare Kirby in the later years with a modern comic book creator, Liefeld probably isn't the best bet. I'd say Frank Miller is closer, since he at least did have an earlier body of work that is still considered innovative and even great by some (though obviously less important than Kirby's early work), and then comes out with stuff like DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN and GOD-DAMN BATMAN which people have trouble figuring out. But really, even that's an inexact comparison. I'm not sure about the fan reaction, since I didn't read the 1970s Kirby until over a decade later. I did have some preconceived notions about that stuff based on their reputation, especially DEVIL DINOSAUR, but once I actually read the stuff I liked it just fine, not the best work of his career by far, but good stuff.
BobH | 11.15.07 - 11:16 am | #

Gordon: I'm still waiting for Pegg and Wright to do DON'T.

But I think they should definitely cast Nick Frost as one of the engineering personnel.

Kirby in the 70s- well, I think his dialogue was weak at times, certainly in the way he had to shoehorn in characters ("But I'm Claudia Shane- young but worried secretary- what do I have to do with this?"), but occasionally he still comes up with something awesome ("I am the revelation!"), and other times the awesome art and storytelling makes up for the weaker prose.
Evan Waters | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 12:16 pm | #

I grew up seeing Kirby's later 70's work before I could read. Even with that handicap, I could basically come away knowing what was going on on the story. I don't think I would be able to do that with Liefeld's work. So, speaking for myself at the time, I didn't think Kirby was a talentless, overblown hack.

Maybe it would be more appropriate to say that "Liefeld is the Vince Coletta of the 70's."
Mathew | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 12:27 pm | #

I thought little of Kirby as a young person, until I picked up an issue of 'OMAC' on a whim a few years ago. It was great fun; at the same time I'd pick up old 'Werewolf By Night' and 'Tomb of Dracula" issues and cringe at the attempts at literature. Alan Moore was the only guy who ever wrote literature-quality narration, and he dropped that like a hot rock six issues into 'Saga of the Swamp Thing.'

Whether Kirby's dialog was clunky or not, you could 'get' the story mostly from the art.
rockie bee | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 1:15 pm | #

By the time Rob Liefeld's work was a joke in fandom, he'd been in the business all of what...ten years at the outside? Kirby's career before the seventies was in the thirty-year range. Even making the comparison is silly.

But then I love Kirby's work up to about 1977, unashamedly so. There's a point where I lose the thread, but at that point you're talking forty years. It takes a lot more than some bum issues of CAPTAIN AMERICA to outweigh even the greatness of KAMANDI alone.

However, I'm old, so I'm likely touched in the head.
Matt M. | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 2:09 pm | #

The Rob Liefeld of the 90s is what the Rob Liefeld of the 70s would have been had Rob Liefeld been doing comics in the 70s. And chances are, it's exactly what the Rob Liefeld of the 2020s will be as well.

Which is to say...crap.
Rich Handley | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 3:01 pm | #

Kirby (albiet not in the 70's) gave us Kirby Dots.

Liefeld's major contribution? Under, or poorly, rendered hands and feet.

The comparison is unfair though. It's Kirby near the end of his career vs. Liefeld at the beginning. How about Kirby's work from the 40's versus Liefeld's New Mutants run? Or how about Kirby's work from his run on the FF versus what, if anything, Liefeld will be putting out in 2013?
Michael | Email | Homepage | 11.15.07 - 3:56 pm | #

Well, I really didn't expect this much out of so little. Regards to you mike, for making the most insubstancial into a heated debate.
Kid Chris | 11.15.07 - 9:40 pm | #

There his is! LET'S GET HIM, BOYS!!!

One Achewood Comic Sans-style beatdown, comin' up!


Johnny Bacardi | Email | Homepage | 11.16.07 - 5:23 am | #

Bacardi - I got your back, man!
Gordon | Email | Homepage | 11.16.07 - 6:04 am | #

See, Kirby's whole 70's output is why I'm not entirely sold on the 'It was all Kirby' theory of early marvel, since it does show how important Stan Lee's writing style was to their collaborations. It's not so much that it's bad, it's just that it's not that good either and occasionally veers into self-parody.
Simon Jones | Email | 11.16.07 - 11:12 pm | #

I'm still always upset that Kirby didn't live long enough to collaborate with Grant Morrison on a project screwy and wild enough to break all of our minds. But that just might be me...
Brian | Email | 11.17.07 - 10:43 am | #

Brian,

When I pick up a newspaper or watch the teevee, I feel fairly certain that Kirby and Morrison are collaborating on the consensus reality narrative.

Who else could come up with the concept of retarded, cowboy, man-child president?

Pure genius!

-- SCAM
so-called "Austin Mayor" | Email | Homepage | 11.18.07 - 6:58 am | #