159 thoughts on “Bursting With Boredom”

1. Just between you, me, and the Internets, I think Kirby is probably the single most overrated cartoonist in human history. Fans who try to convince me otherwise may as well be trying to convince me that Ed Wood was actually a cinematic genius. I can enjoy moments of Kirby (and moments of Wood), but, come on. “Devil Dinosaur”? Giving Kirby nearly complete creative freedom was probably the worst thing D.C. or Marvel ever did. Although fans insist that Stan Lee stole the credit for what was really all Kirby’s work, I suspect that Lee exercised a more beneficial control over Kirby than even Lee himself seems to remember. I can’t think of any other reason why Lee/Kirby or Simon/Kirby stuff is at least readable, while Kirby’s solo work is just…dumb.

   I suppose most fans of the Technicolor long-johns genre appreciate Kirby more than they do Gil Kane, Alex Toth, Gene Colan, or John Buscema because he was never subtle. While they sweated over shadow and light and composition and anatomy and showing the human form in motion, Kirby was all “Aaruk! Aaruk!”

2. Hey, look, everybody! The Emperor’s got no clothes on!

   Congrats, Noah, you’ve just twigged on to something that almost everybody else (that’s bothered to read it, that is) has already figured out- Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen wasn’t exactly the high point of his career. For what it’s worth, Kirby wasn’t all that excited about it either, by most accounts- he was asked to take the title on when he came over to DC.

3. Hey Johnny. Well, the thing for me is I keep kind of trying to find something by Kirby that I’ll like. My favorite thing of his I think I’ve seen is some of those old monster comics with Stan Lee, which are fun, but not exactly great.

   As Matt indicates, Jimmy Olsen doesn’t seem out of step with other Kirby work to me. When I’ve tried to read Kirby’s fantastic four work with Lee, for example, I’ve been almost entirely indifferent. But mileage varies, of course.

4. Johnny, if Jimmy Olsen isn’t Kirby’s best work, perhaps you could point me to what you think is his best work. Like Noah, I’ve been searching for about 15 years for a reason to really like Kirby, but, apart from some isolated pages or panels, I got nothin’.

   When I introduce Kirby to my Japanese students (most of whom know zip about American comics, beyond what they see in the theater), I find it hard to explain why Kirby is important and “great.” They can appreciate the work of the other artists I mentioned above, but with Kirby, I get mostly puzzled (or indifferent) faces. I can explain the historical context of his work, and what people say about him, but usually I end up returning to the “dynamic” argument. “See how dynamic his work is? It’s just really, really…dynamic.”

5. Sure, fair enough.

   Me, I think the mid-60’s Marvel stuff is his peak, when he was co-plotting and letting Lee handle the dialogue. As far as the DC stuff went, I enjoyed the New Gods and Mister Miracle, as well as The Demon, even with that clunky dialogue, and could take or leave the rest.

   But perhaps it’s because I experienced that stuff at the right time, as a grade schooler and a teen, and the rosy glow of nostalgia colors my impressions. I read 3 of the 4 omnibuses (omnibi?) a year or so and had to stagger my reading, because as you say, it got a bit wearisome after a while.

6. Part of the reason I had hopes for the Olsen books I think was that I saw a latter-day version of the DNA project/Olsen/newsboy storyline which I found intriguing/entertaining when I was 9 or something. There were miniature justice league clones who attacked superman I remember — and I think Olsen had relatively long hair? Does anybody remember the series I’m talking about?

   Probably I’d hate it now, but I have sort of fond memories….

7. I think Kirby is an amazing graphic artist. I can look at his stuff from the mid-60s through the late ’70s for hours. A little of it goes a long way in terms of reading, though. It’s all at a climactic pitch, and I find it exhausting. He’s a bit like Crumb (and Giraud in his “Moebius” mode) in that the literary element of his work generally doesn’t amount to a whole lot, but it’s hard to think of anyone who can surpass him as a visual stylist.

   If you like up-the-nose shots, you should check out just about any comic drawn by Gil Kane after 1970 or so. It’s his trademark.

8. Johnny, I think that’s a perfectly legitimate reason. All this stuff was made for kids–which is fine–and the kids loved it. That is probably all the reason needed. My own favorite Silver Age artists were probably doing work that would have seemed boring to most boys in comparison to Kirby.

   I suppose I was born a bit too late to enjoy Kirby, but I can’t say that the stuff I was into as a kid in the mid-70s (Sal Buscema-era Incredible Hulk, mostly) was “better” than than the stuff Kirby was doing ten years earlier.

   At least people still talk about Kirby. The so-called Bronze Age was so mind-numbingly bland, people seem to prefer to forget it ever happened.

9. I’ll still swear by Haney/Aparo. And I actually find the Claremont/Miller Wolverine series a lot more enjoyable than anything I’ve seen by Kirby (that’s a bit later, though…) But certainly, compared to the run of superhero comics on the stands at the moment, he looks awfully good….

10. Noah, you read that in one of those “comics shoved into a paperback” paperback novel sized collection, that is…. I think we got it in England (1979-1980), but I could be wrong. I didn’t know it was Kirby (are you sure it was?)… The Golden Guardian and Lois were also in the story, right? I should still have that damn thing…but I don’t seem to. I remember Superman being unconscious in that one.

    I think the best of Kirby’s stuff is the stories surrounding Galactus’ first appearance in Fantastic Four (issues 48-50?) and the one immediately following (“This Man, This Monster”–the best of the “Thing almost gets to be Ben Grimm again” stories…It’s also one of the innumerable mind/body switch stories that Lee/Kirby seemed to be so keen on).

    I also think his art was great during the Golden Age, when layouts were wilder and woolier. He seems to go with 6 panels or a splash (or a double splash) in anything from the 60’s or 70’s. He also starts going kooky with collage in that run of FF comics, which is kind of fun.

    I think that his solo work is marred by the writing. Kirby is all bombast…which is why Stan Lee’s self-referential, self-deflating writing (although it too is full of bombast) works well with it, imo.

11. I can still picture Gil Kane up-the-nose shots from my childhood. I think they were in Green Lantern. It’s a strange specialty to have.

12. Noah…you might also try the Lee/Kirby Thor (I think it takes awhile to get going)… Kirby’s style and bombast is fitted for the whole Norse Gods thing…

13. Eric, it definitely *was not* Kirby, the stories I’m thinking of (and that you remember too); it was somebody else semi-retelling the Kirby stories.

    I should try the Thor, maybe….

14. Noah Berlatsky sez:

    I’ll still swear by Haney/Aparo.

    Sorry, but I’ll take Haney/Cardy any day. The Black Canary team-up was the high point of Haney’s entire Brave and the Bold run. There was one page in particular…

15. Cardy’s great too!

16. Whew…this follows hard upon James’ ‘Captain Victory’ article, in the comments section of which many (inclusing I) affirmed their affection and admiration for Kirby’s ‘Jimmy Olson’:

    https://hoodedutilitarian.com/2011/06/kirby-approaching-the-threshold/#commentspost

    So, is it to be a flamewar? Of course not, this sort of dialogue is great on HU.

    Noah Berlatsky’s reaction is both legitimate and problematic. Clearly, he finds himself numbed and deafened by Kirby’s unrelenting, “turn it up to eleven” invention:

    “And yet. All those ideas, all that frantic creativity — you read one page and it’s charming; you read two pages and it’s impressive — you read a whole comics worth, though, and it starts to get wearisome. Kirby’s stereo has one volume, and that volume is everything plus the kitchen sink plus a four-armed monster and an atomic explosion.”

    The key to this satiation isn’t far to be discovered:

    ” Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It goes on and on, remorselessly, through more than 300 pages.”

    But as conceived in 1970, these stories were NOT meant to be read in 300-page gulps! They were monthly periodicals, and narrated with that in mind, and aimed at a young teenager audience– one far from Mr Berlatsky.

    At that time, opportunities for visual awesomeness were few compared to today. You had the very rare Hollywood movie– 2001, Silent Running– some psychedelic posters and album covers…and comics. ‘Jimmy Olson’ was a wonderful monthly dose of freaky imagination: “What the HELL is coming up next?” Just what a 13-year-old needed!

    In other words, Kirby comics were as “readerly” as they were “writerly” in the context of their times and of their markets. And I have a special affection for his Jimmy Olsons, as opposed to his more respected ‘Fourth World’, because here Kirby was more relaxed and wild; it was a great laboratory for his imagination.

    Now, it’s true that Kirby had a serious flaw that stemmed from his very creativity. He tended not to follow up on and develop his inventions; his eye was always on the next thing. Even Mark Evanier, Kirby’s helper, biographer, and chief booster, recognises this; and this tendency is at its worst in Jimmy Olson, particularly because of its ‘ideas lab’ aspect, but also because Kirby wasn’t really invested in it.

    But for me the unpredictable charm of the series persists. And many of the stories still work well: ‘A Superman in Supertown’, or the monsters-in-a-basement-planet tale…where Supes and Jimmy save the day by bombarding said planet with the musical movie ‘Oklahoma’.

    Kirby’s Olsons rule…but they aren’t for the gaze of someone of the age of Noah Berlatsky, in the format offered to the public.

17. Oh, and if you’re going to sample Thor, the place to start is the recent ‘Tales of Asgard’ collection.

    Matt Thorn’s comments sadden me. He is obviously too young to understand Kirby’s historic importance…which is far greater than that of artists who are arguably his superior in craft, such as Kane or Toth.

18. “Matt Thorn’s comments sadden me. He is obviously too young to understand Kirby’s historic importance”

    Matt’s older than I am, and is a widely respected comics scholar. He understands Kirby’s historical importance; he’s just not that into him.

    I think you’re right that reading them all at once is not ideal. But surely it’s reasonable to think that that’s maybe a problem aesthetically?

    “So, is it to be a flamewar? Of course not, this sort of dialogue is great on HU.”

    Maybe a little too fulsome there. We have plenty of flamewars.

19. Right, not Kirby. Didn’t read your initial comment that closely. Olsen did have long hair…except later in the story he gets a buzzcut…and a wig of his longer hair…and removes the wig to use the buzzcut to pass as an Olsen clone (remember? It’s all coming back to me now). Someone out there must know…I’m going to google it and find it if it’s the last thing I ever do (or, conversely, if I can find it within 5-10 mins.)

20. Why pick about the weeniest, most boring Kirby panels ever to lead — with that “Superman and Jimmy Olsen…unconscious?!” scene so heavily reworked as to barely qualify as his work — as well as a comic that’s hardly top Kirby, for a piece razzing the King?

    For the same reason someone could use this photo — http://cdn03.cdn.socialitelife.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/19921_house_of_taylor_111207_10.jpg — to accompany a “I Don’t Get Why Elizabeth Taylor is Supposed to Be Such a Great Movie Star” article.

    On an old TCJ message board thread, I wrote:
    —————–
    …What made [Kirby] great was his unprecedented inventiveness, historic importance and influence, his being a driving force in creating whole genres of comics, the unsurpassed power, strength, and clarity of his storytelling; that he virtually wrote the hyperdynamic “visual language” of superhero comics; his extraordinary visual imagination, only flagging in his final years.

    With all those virtues, there’s much to enjoy. In the same way a luscious culinary concoction may not necessarily be nutritionally sound, yet still deserving to be devoured with relish…
    ——————

    ——————
    Matt Thorn says:

    Johnny, if Jimmy Olsen isn’t Kirby’s best work, perhaps you could point me to what you think is his best work. Like Noah, I’ve been searching for about 15 years for a reason to really like Kirby, but, apart from some isolated pages or panels, I got nothin’.
    ———————

    ‘Cause something doesn’t grab you, that means it’s therefore lacking? How about, it just doesn’t appeal to your tastes?

    ———————-
    When I introduce Kirby to my Japanese students (most of whom know zip about American comics, beyond what they see in the theater), I find it hard to explain why Kirby is important and “great.” They can appreciate the work of the other artists I mentioned above, but with Kirby, I get mostly puzzled (or indifferent) faces…
    ———————–

    It could be that Kirby’s a cultural “poor fit” aesthetically; it might be that, for those not into comics — as your students were — an introduction likely composed of a brief taste of his work, is not sufficient to create such a striking impression. Wouldn’t a few snippets of Shakespeare scenes, before similarly ignorant students, also fail to impress?

    ‘Cause Kirby does not cause artistic “love at first sight,” does that mean he’s lacking as a talent? One could just as well say he remains too powerfully original, too raw in his power, to easily appeal to the lowest common denominator. Which is more liable to go for the slick and polished, however empty it might be.

    Am also reminded of how the supposedly universal Shakespeare, when films of his plays were shown to an audience of African tribals, left them utterly bewildered. Juliet’s behavior made no sense! Surely she must have been bewitched, to fall in love with a member of an enemy tribe like Romeo.

    Which therefore shows, the Bard is overrated!

    On a lighter vein, “Great Comics That Never Happened #21: Jack Kirby’s ‘My Little Pony'”:
    http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/03/16/jack-kirby-my-little-pony/

21. Here’s one reason Kirby is great:
    http://i381.photobucket.com/albums/oo253/A280/RADDFC6B2008318_16134a.jpg
    Also, it’s not a matter only of art (within a panel) versus writing. It’s a matter of the art as sequential flow, as graphic melody, which granted is easier to enjoy if you skip most of the writing. I learned to enjoy kirby’s FF by basically reading them as (what I would now call) abstract comics.

22. Mike, it’s a piece ragging this comic cause this is what I happened to read.

    Andrei, I do like that panel. I think not reading Kirby is probably a sound strategy.

23. Noah,

    For what it’s worth, the Jimmy Olsen stories are the weakest of four different ongoing somewhat-interweaving series Kirby was working on at the time, which make up his Fourth World saga. I like the Olsen stuff, but New Gods, Forever People, and Mister Miracle were all better, with richer emotional and thematic content. The Olsen stories were essentially designed to soft launch Kirby’s original material into the DCU, and collecting the interstitial chapters together out of context, to my mind, doesn’t serve the material particularly well.

    In terms of Kirby in general, I think you know I’m a big fan. What draws me to Kirby is not just his endless vault of ideas, a lot of which are awfully good, but also the alternating rage and enthusiasm which swell out of the artwork and overwhelm (in a positive sense) plot and character. Which is not to say plot and character play no role in his work, but they’re most successful at their most operatic, and always at the whim of his easily-distracted and overflowing visual mind.

    Also, as much as I love Kirby, and as much as I could just stare at his art for days on end, in terms of reading his stories, even I find it best to take them in smaller doses. Whether that’s an aesthetic flaw of the work or not is I suppose up to one’s expectations. I don’t read most collections of old comic strips or comic books in one sitting either.

24. Complaining about Kirby’s total lack of modulation is like complaining that Bela Tarr’s films are slow and boring. Well, duh. It’s a feature, not a bug — but the result is art that’s not to everyone’s taste.

    I’m not going to defend Devil Dinosaur (although I like it well enough), but it does have this splash:

    http://kirbydynamics.blogspot.com/2010/05/blog-post_7585.html

    Anyone who can stick that in a late-70s Marvel comic about a mutant dinosaur can’t be all that bad…

    I’ll also echo the recommendation of Thor, which is my favourite of his work. Volumes 2 & 3 of the Essential Thor has most of the good stuff.

    Noah, you might also enjoy OMAC. It stretches so far into inhumanity and the pure representation of force that it reads as pretty avant-garde.

25. Lack of modulation isn’t in itself precisely the issue…I mean, I love Slayer. They don’t do ballads.

    In the Olsen comics, it’s the lack of modulation plus the lack of content (emotional, intellectual, etc.) It ends up being like listening to advertising on full volume for a couple of hours. There are some nice images and some funny ideas, but at the end you’re still sitting in front of 300 pages of strident hype.

26. Okay, if the problem is lack of interesting content beyond the purely visual…well, you’re not going to find much of that in Jimmy Olsen. *Unless* you’ve read a lot of Kirby’s other work, and so can tease out the implicit threads in Jimmy Olsen.

    That said, it’s not as though the rest of Kirby’s work is lacking in theme and content. I’d say that from the mid-60s onwards, most of Kirby’s work revolves around two themes:

    (1) a Manichaean struggle between good and evil, often represented as two opposing races (Eternals/Deviants, New Genesis/Apokolips).

    (2) the tension between humanism and, well, anti-humanism. On the one hand, he wants to believe, and tries to express, the notion that human striving is noble and meaningful. On the other hand, he has this deep and pessimistic recognition that the universe is vast and impersonal, and humans are small and insignificant and at the mercy of volcanic forces beyond our control. Time and again, you see Kirby struggling with this tension, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes the other.

    You may think these themes are dull or simple-minded, but they are there. And if you know where to look, you can find them even in Jimmy Olsen…but it’s very much like looking for a director-auteur’s signature themes in a minor, mostly studio-driven, film.

27. I find theme 1, especially as Kirby expresses it, really quite, quite stupid, and of almost no interest. Evil/good can be done well (LOTR, Narnia, lots of other things) but I’ve never seen Kirby manage it. (Though there’s lots of Kirby I haven’t read, so maybe it’s out there.)

    Theme 2 sounds more appealing. I really don’t think it shows up in Olsen at all though, or at least not in any way that I find remotely insightful. But again, I don’t rule out the possibility that he’s done something interesting with it somewhere.

28. I would pretty unhesitatingly call Kirby my favorite comic artist of all time, but I freely admit his limited-to-nil appeal to anybody who hasn’t been completely marinated in his approach.

    A lot of the writing on Kirby has a “drunk the Kool Aid” quality about it, and, to some degree, I think that’s kind of unavoidable. If you haven’t already internalized all of the style and eccentricities of Kirby, if you haven’t attuned yourself to his rhythms early and often, if you haven’t adjusted to the fact that his ADD is a feature, not a bug… well, you probably just aren’t going to. If I sat down and really tried hard to articulate what it is I love about Kirby’s work, I could probably come up with something that sounded reasonably convincing on paper to a neophyte, but I strongly doubt it could convince one to actually like Kirby upon reading it.

    I don’t disagree with anything you say about the Jimmy Olsen comics; I’m just more forgiving than you, but I’m inclined to be.

    You’re absolutely right about the flaws. I was actually just thinking about this the other day, having read the Team Cul-de-Sac “Favorites” zine (hey, I love that Brave and the Bold, too!) and Matt Brady’s review of Mister Miracle #9, which is my favorite Kirby comic,(and one of my favorite comics period) starring my favorite Kirby character… yet paradoxically, Mister Miracle is probably my least favorite Kirby series overall. (Which is to say, it’s pretty good…) It’s mostly because the same syndrome you describe in the Olsens is also present in the MM series, and while I find it charming in Olsen, I think it hurts MM. The premise of the series – “Super Escape Artist” – really needs to have some perfunctory tethering to reality to work, and the flights into Cloudcuckooland undermine it. As a result, I always found myself wanting to like Mr. Miracle’s comic as much as I liked him.

    But, that’s the price of admission for Kirby. Pretty much all of his comics really are unsatisfying on a fundamental level – unfinished, poorly sketched out, compromised… I know, I’m making a great case, right? But that’s the appeal for me, seeing Kirby strain against the constraints of the industry, the medium, his own talents — and fail as often as not. His work’s a little capsule of comics at the time when he was working: the personality of the artist pushing back against the formulaic patterns of the artform, win or lose. That’s a big part of why Mr. Miracle is such a resonant character to me. But I get that it’s a lot to buy into for someone wanting to, you know, get a story and shit. But for me, there just aren’t a lot of experiences like this in comics, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

29. (Gah. Hadn’t read all the comments when I started putting mine together. Jones not only makes my overall point, but had already used the “feature, not a bug” line. Well, you kind of have to with Kirby…)

30. That’s a lovely appreciation, Chris. Thanks.

31. I would avoid the “Essential” volumes of Thor—or anything else of Kirby. I do think his pencils have some interest without color…but color (loud, in-your-face, primary colors) are so much a part of the experience, I don’t see how reading those b & w collections does Kirby any favors.

    Have you read any of the Romance comics. If you believe the hype, he was one of the inventors of those too. I haven’t read many myself, but they do have an odd kind of appeal. I would recommend getting one of the Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby volumes (preferably from the library). They’ve got color…and there isn’t too much of any one thing to turn you off. If something turns you on, you can always pursue it. Vol. 1 has the Galactus debut and a series of Thor issues that make one fairly coherent story (and some monster one-offs, and a romance one-off or two, and a couple of golden age Captain Americas, etc.). Of course…it’s out of print. The second volume, still in print…is also good…if a bit off the standards of the first one. I’d say, find one at your local library or interlibrary loan it….

    Couldn’t find the Olsen story…all the refs I found were to the Kirby originals.

32. Matt Thorn’s comments sadden me. He is obviously too young to understand Kirby’s historic importance…

    norb, will you marry me? I’m going to print your comment out on A3-size paper (with a Japanese translation) and tape it to my office door for all my students and colleagues to see.

    But your sorrow is misplaced. I recognize Kirby’s historical significance, “which is far greater than that of artists who are arguably his superior in craft, such as Kane or Toth.” But that historical significance is limited to American comic books of the 1940s-1960s. And American comics books ceased to have much historical significance at all after 1955, although fanboys may feel otherwise. The closest Kirby came to making a significant impact on the broader American culture was probably with his 1940s’ Captain America and Young Romance/Young Love, which were hits back in the days when a comic book hit was actually read by huge numbers of people.
    …
    While I was writing this, several new comments have already been posted. Some read like religious zealots pitying (or venting frustration at) the unbelievers, but Chris’ comment was excellent, and probably the most convincing pro-Kirby argument (if you can call it an argument) I’ve ever encountered. Chris, next time I read Kirby, I will try to do so through those goggles.

33. Yeah, I kind of thought you wouldn’t take to (1), and would compare it unfavourably to some piece or other of Christianity. Now, the Manichaean stuff hardly registers in Jimmy Olsen, except *very* tangentially insofar as it’s thinly connected to the broader “Fourth World”. Out of curiosity, then, what other Kirby stuff are you thinking of, where you don’t think he does good/evil well?

    (I hope this comes off as friendly questioning, not a call to burn the heretics!)

34. I”m trying to think of decent Manichean stuff that isn’t Christian…Ursula K. Le Guin, actually, in the Earthsea books; I love those. I actually think Grant Morrison’s Darkseid is more interesting than Kirby’s….

    I’ve read bits of Kirby here and there, (some Fantastic Four, X-Men, the Hulk) and just never been taken with it. But like I said, maybe I’ll try something else and report back…

35. ————————
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    I find theme 1 [a Manichaean struggle between good and evil], especially as Kirby expresses it, really quite, quite stupid, and of almost no interest…
    ————————

    Kirby, having been involved in a little kerfuffle called World War II, might be less inclined to agree. Yet his characters are not always so cleanly-cut.

    Summing up Kirby’s Fourth World saga, we read…

    ————————-
    What’s the story? Well, there’s a bunch of magic-wielding warriors who fight for peace and justice, and who draw their powers, and guidance, from a mystical energy field called “the Source.” Their chief opponent, Darkseid (pronounced “dark side”), is a towering, dark-clad, dome-helmeted figure who rules a planet that is one huge city; he too draws his powers from the Source, though he seeks to control a twisted “anti-life” version of it. Orion, one of the most powerful leaders of the good guys, turns out to be Darkseid’s son, leading to speculation as to whether he is destined to defeat Darkseid – or instead to succumb to his heritage and turn evil. Yes, all this was pre-Star Wars…
    ————————-
    http://aaeblog.com/2007/11/11/back-to-the-source/

    (Indeed, during combat Orion frequently “reverts” to a brutal, animalistic state.)

    A further dismissal of Kirby as simplistically Manichean at http://lerbd.blogspot.com/2008/05/kirby-king-of-comics-mark-evanier.html .

    ———————–
    eric b says:

    I would avoid the “Essential” volumes of Thor—or anything else of Kirby. I do think his pencils have some interest without color…but color (loud, in-your-face, primary colors) are so much a part of the experience, I don’t see how reading those b & w collections does Kirby any favors.
    ————————-

    Elsewhere:
    ————————-
    …the old color process and its cheap paper created visual art that is categorically different from the artists’ original illustrations and the high-quality colored reproductions of that art in today’s reprints. For Kirby in particular, the dotty surface of the page was an ideal artistic co-conspirator. His signature traits in the Seventies were all about the collision of the flat surface of the page with the infinite, ambiguous depths of his cosmos and his crackle. The dots of 4CP vibrate in the back of his universe in concert with the black blobs on the surface of his art. It is dots from top to bottom; 4CP provides the mortar that completes Kirby’s vision. Likewise, grainy paper proves to be a more effective way to depict negative space than truly white paper. In today’s reprints, the white comes across as an absence at the back of Kirby’s late-period art – dead, inert space – whereas the subtle and randomly varied texture of off-white pulp is a presence in his art – whether it is representing explosive energy or the depths of the universe.
    ————————-
    Check out three awesome pages of ultra-closeup views of assorted Kirby panels: http://4cp.posterous.com/tag/cosmicdebriskirbyinthe70s .

36. ————————-
    Jones, one of the Jones boys says:

    Noah, you might also enjoy OMAC. It stretches so far into inhumanity and the pure representation of force that it reads as pretty avant-garde.
    ————————

    Not to mention, in the first page of the first ish, the most grotesque image I’ve ever seen in comics: http://www.poormojo.org/pmjadaily/archives/omac1.jpg

    ————————
    …I’ll also echo the recommendation of Thor, which is my favourite of his work. Volumes 2 & 3 of the Essential Thor has most of the good stuff.
    ————————

    “Thor” is excellent! Going in the other “non-cosmic” direction, I’m quite fond of the 30’s gangster stories he did for “In the Days of the Mob”: oversized, duotoned; gritty and brash as all get-out:

    http://tinyurl.com/6ew5fx9

    (Can’t help but be reminded of the dispirited cons in Van Gogh’s “The Prison Exercise Yard”: http://www.blog.vydavy.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Vincent_van_Gogh.jpg )

    http://tinyurl.com/6fxnhyj

    http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/simonandkirby/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ITDotM_MasBoys.jpg

    http://www.whatifkirby.com/sites/default/files/comicpages/itdotm1_pg7_a.jpg?1293550969

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KypEs8uC3b4/TTIU_Xt5-VI/AAAAAAAABeM/L26c8NJXya0/s1600/inthedaysofthemob1_Page_16.jpg

    ————————
    …just as Kirby’s entire “Fourth World” epic was cancelled before he could bring the saga to a satisfying conclusion, Mob was D.O.A. – shelved after two issues were prepared, but after only the first was released.

    …Indeed, even if they were aware of Mob, Kirby fans couldn’t have been prepared for it. Filled with gangsters, guns and Depression-era settings, Mob was a dramatic departure from the cosmic-powered super-heroes and space-spanning demigods that ignited Kirby’s popularity in the 1960s. Yet, because Kirby was a child of the Depression, growing up quite literally In the Days of the Mob, these vignettes of Ma Barker and Murder Inc. remain some of Kirby’s most authentic work.

    “Jack had a certain amount of enthusiasm for everything he did,” Evanier says, but Mob had a special place in Jack’s heart. “He was a fan of that stuff. He had met a lot of people who knew the gangsters.”…

    …Two features stand out in Mob #1, somewhat in contrast to some of Kirby’s other DC work: The script and the inked artwork. Because these stories are of Kirby’s era, the dialogue is much more believable – less awkward – than that found in many of his Fourth World strips. As scripted with Kirby’s ear for Depression-era dialect, Al Capone is a much more credible character than, say, Flippa Dippa, who was supposed to be Kirby’s take on a modern young Black man in Jimmy Olsen.

    Likewise, where Colletta was criticized and ultimately removed from Kirby’s DC work because of his somewhat scratchy inking style and “simplified” backgrounds…the collaboration very much works in Mob. In black-&-white, Colletta’s sometimes-crude embellishment gives Kirby’s pencils an edge that amplifies the raw work. Colletta’s contribution especially shines in comparison to Mike Royer’s more “slick” inks in the unpublished Mob #2…
    ————————
    http://twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/16mob.html

    Some unpublished art from “In The Days Of The Mob” #2:

    http://twomorrows.com/kirby/media/32mob2page.gif

    http://www.whatifkirby.com/gallery/comic-art-listings/days-mob-issue-2-page-40 (Could there be any more double-meanings on that last bit of talk?)

    ————————-
    Matt Thorn says:

    …I recognize Kirby’s historical significance, “which is far greater than that of artists who are arguably his superior in craft, such as Kane or Toth.” But that historical significance is limited to American comic books of the 1940s-1960s…
    ————————–

    To put Kirby as simply “historically significant” is to damn this truly remarkable talent with faint praise. That some would prefer, say, the modestly-talented Aparo (and I liked his stuff!) to a raw, powerful visionary like Kirby is incomprehensible to me; it’s like finding Bouguereau superior to Munch.

    But then, many would prefer the second, “slickified” rendering here:

    http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/kirby-superman-before-and-after-being-ruined.jpg

    (From http://aaeblog.com/2007/11/11/back-to-the-source/ )

37. Sure…LOTR is about WW II as well. It’s just better, is all.

38. I don’t know that I always prefer Aparo visually to Kirby…it sort of depends. I think the Haney/Aparo collaboration is a lot better than any Kirby I’ve seen though.

39. As I said in my CV piece, I think the Olson issues show clearly that DC had no idea of what to do with Kirby. It was a waste of his abilities, never mind that I still have affection for some of what Kirby did there. I made some comments on the more interesting aspects of JO in this piece I did for the British Jack Kirby Quarterly:
    http://www.thearteriesgroup.com/JackKirbyRomberger.html
    It should not be forgotten that most of Kirby’s work was directed to children, not literary critics. And, I’m not surprised that one of the comments had an irrelevant attack on Kirby’s lovely kid’s comic Devil Dinosaur—those are usually made by those who never bothered to read the series in question. Am I wrong?

40. “It should not be forgotten that most of Kirby’s work was directed to children, not literary critics”

    But there are plenty of kids books and comics that I think are great. Narnia, Earthsea, Alice in Wonderland, Asterix, Elephant and Piggie, Sesame Street, Winnie the Pooh, the How to Train Your Dragon books…hell, I love Tiny Titans. Darkseid as lunch lady is a lot more entertaining than anything I’ve seen Kirby do with the character.

    I don’t hate Kirby or anything; some things he’s done I even like, and his art can be great. But I think the claim that they’re for kids and therefore can’t be criticized by other folks is really problematic. Kirby is often cited as one of the greatest comics creators of all time. You can’t make a claim like that and then shift the ground and say, well, you can only appreciate it if you’re 10 or if you first read them when you were 10. There’s lots of art for children that has wide resonance; that’s beautiful and meaningful to many audiences. If all that has been said of Kirby is true, I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be held to that standard.

    I’ve never read Devil Dinosaur. I always thought it sounded like a fun concept, though.

41. To put Kirby as simply “historically significant” is to damn this truly remarkable talent with faint praise.

    Yeah, that was sort of my intention. ;)

    Seriously, though, while I agree that Kirby is far more interesting to look at than someone like Aparo (whose work I would damn with such faint praise as, “solid and not distracting”), I think that the declaration that Kirby is a “raw, powerful visionary” needs some backing up. Just repeating it again and again don’t make it necessarily so, you know?

    And for what it’s worth, I hate Munch and pretty much all the impressionists, post-impressionists, and abstract impressionists. I find them self-indulgent, and I suppose that’s what rubs me the wrong way about Kirby: his self-indulgence. Mind you, Bouguereau’s sterile polish leaves me cold, but I’ll take a John Singer Sargent over a Munch any day, and I’ll take Alex Toth over Jack Kirby any day.

    But that’s just me.

    Hmm. I’m coming off as a Kirby hater, but I don’t actually hate him, and I often enjoy him in small doses. Thinking back now, I suppose I really do like his Fantastic Four run, peaking with Galactus. Maybe it’s just the uncritical “Kirby is King!! Aaruk!! Aaruk!!” thing that bothers me the most.

42. Thanks for the link; with more info arguing against Kirby as simplistically Manichean:

    ———————-
    Kirby’s original series deliberately left many of the boundaries between his heroes and villains ambiguous. The Pact that secured the truce between Apokolips and New Genesis that would be broken by Scott Free and precipitate the events in Kirby’s storyline is itself a cold business: Highfather traded sons with Darkseid. Family values are strangely inversed in the 4th World. All along, Darkseid seems very concerned with the fate of his son, Orion, but strangely, Highfather seems disinterested in the concerns of his progeny, Scott Free aka Mister Miracle, who is raised in the hellish orphanage on Apokolips…
    ———————
    http://www.thearteriesgroup.com/JackKirbyRomberger.html

43. By the way, I bought “Devil Dinosaur” #1 (I don’t think there was a #2) when it first came out, when I was a kid. I was just starting to get the idea that first issues of any kind would some day be valuable, and I knew that Jack “King” Kirby was a big deal. But even as a kid (I was maybe 11 or so?), I remember thinking, “This is so screwed up in so many ways.” Unfortunately, I gave that, along with all but three of my old comic books, to a nephew who probably sold them for drug money before finally dying of an overdose at the age of 18.

    (Sorry for the jarringly heavy ending to my “Devil Dinosaur” story.)

44. “solid and not distracting”

    Solid and not distracting? Solid and not distracting?!? I…ooooh!

    I guess that’s what I get for expressing skepticism about “Bianca”….

45. “Giving Kirby nearly complete creative freedom was probably the worst thing D.C. or Marvel ever did.”

    Wow, worse than secret wars, infinity wars, rob liefield (or whichever of the image generation you prefer to rag on), variant foil cover issues, dark phoenix, or whatever they’ve been publishing in the twenty years since i stopped reading their comics (civil war? crisis on infinite earths? i’m the motherf**king batman?)

    unless you’re trying to say that giving kirby creative freedom put them on this path in the first place and therefor kirby is indirectly responsible? either way, that’s even more hyperbolic than any of the kirby gushing i’ve read so far. care to back it up?

46. that last post was directed at matt thorn.

47. “It should not be forgotten that most of Kirby’s work was directed to children, not literary critics”

    No. After all the attention Stan, Jack & Marvel got from college-age students and older readers in the mid-late 60’s and beyond, I think Jack had a good idea what his audience was. That well-worn “comics are read only by children” saw was on its way out even back then. But I’ll agree that I don’t think he gave two shits about literary critics.

48. Solid and not distracting? Solid and not distracting?!? I…ooooh!

    I guess that’s what I get for expressing skepticism about “Bianca”….

    Sorry, Noah. Had to spread the hate around a bit in the name of fairness.

    “Giving Kirby nearly complete creative freedom was probably the worst thing D.C. or Marvel ever did.”

    Wow, worse than secret wars, infinity wars, rob liefield (or whichever of the image generation you prefer to rag on), variant foil cover issues, dark phoenix, or whatever they’ve been publishing in the twenty years since i stopped reading their comics (civil war? crisis on infinite earths? i’m the motherf**king batman?)

    unless you’re trying to say that giving kirby creative freedom put them on this path in the first place and therefor kirby is indirectly responsible? either way, that’s even more hyperbolic than any of the kirby gushing i’ve read so far. care to back it up?

    Touché! Touché squared and cubed! My brain must have been on vacation when I wrote that. One must never underestimate Marvel and D.C.’s capacity for mind-boggling stupidity. Everything you mentioned is indeed far worse than any of Kirby’s solo projects. My apologies.

    Johnny Bacardi, I sure hope Kirby didn’t create “Devil Dinosaur” for grown-ups.

49. “Giving Kirby nearly complete creative freedom was probably the worst thing D.C. or Marvel ever did.”

    Can’t really agree with this either, especially because by most accounts, Stan was pretty much suggesting something and letting Kirby run with it by the mid-60’s, when the really good stuff was coming out, and by the late 60s up until the time he left, Kirby was doing most of the plotting, with Stan adding dialogue after the fact. By the time he got to perpetually “hipness”-starved DC, they were so happy to have someone of his stature on board that they let him do what he wanted, for the most part…at least at first. When the Fourth World books didn’t sell as much as they hoped, then the bloom came off the rose a little.

    One curious thing- a while back, I happened to read some old late 60’s Inhumans stories (in Amazing Adventures, perhaps, or maybe in later issues of FF, I forget) that Kirby drew, and the dialogue didn’t scan like Lee’s at all, nor did it read in that hamfisted “Weird-oh dum-dum” Kirby DC style either. In fact, it was pretty straightforward all around. When I checked the credits, however, sure enough, Kirby was credited with the scripting. I really wonder what happened there; perhaps someone ghosted it after the fact, Larry Lieber or someone.

    Just wanted to throw that out there; I meant to write a blog post about it once upon a time but never did.

50. “…I sure hope Kirby didn’t create “Devil Dinosaur” for grown-ups.”

    Matt, I don’t think he wrote it for kids, either…older adolescents, maybe, but I honestly don’t think he sat down and said “I’ll write this or that for this or that age group”. I think he was just creating whatever the hell he wanted to, and Devil Dinosaur (which I pretty much ignored back in 1976, didn’t read until many years later, found it kinda silly but it wasn’t dull) seemed to be tied in with all that 2001/Machine Man/Eternals stuff he had come back to do somehow. Maybe it was his attempt to cast a wider net for this stuff, who knows.

51. Reading #1 of a nine issue series doesn’t qualify one to dismiss a work, any more than reading the first chapter of Naked Lunch justifies its criminalization.
    I am of the opinion that a large amount of Kirby’s work reflects him blasting away on punishing deadlines, not doing hackwork, but just fun kid’s stories, work done to feed his family and satisfy his urge for storytelling. However, Kirby’s BEST solo work is far beyond the capabilities of nearly any cartoonist I can think of, even Toth, since his work is almost exclusively at the service of weak text and there is only so far even the most brilliant interpretive talent can take the text that Toth had to work with. In other words I will take Kirby’s five greatest solo comics over Stan Lee’s entire career, any day.
    In Kirby’s solo work at both DC and Marvel, one can see him building his grander concepts like the New Gods and the Eternals which, even as he hit his stride and did his finest efforts such as The Glory Boat and City of Toads he did not have the needed support to bring his ideas to fruition—the rug was pulled from under him at key creative peaks at both companies. Devil Dinosaur is an often touching tale of friendship between a human and his pet—it has some weak issues but also some passages I love. It does not deserve the rote dismissal it always faces and in fact is not a bad idea in any way. For what it is worth, Steven Spielberg also realized that kids are fascinated by dinosaurs and made a pretty penny.

52. ———————
    James says:
    …It should not be forgotten that most of Kirby’s work was directed to children, not literary critics…
    ———————

    (Dang! I take a half-hour off to handle a bit of proofreading, and come back to find some of the arguments I’d written against that comment have been done by others…)

    “Child” is defined as “a person between birth and full growth,” but surely most of Jack’s readers were teenagers, with a healthy percentage just before or just after that span.

    Not necessarily particularly sophisticated; but then, it’s not as if the vast majority of adults are eager consumers of literature, either:

    ——————–
    One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.
    ——————–
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR2007082101045.html

    Also, when Domingos dismisses Kirby’s work as “for children,” somehow one doesn’t get the impression it’s the YA crowd he’s referring to, but simpletons barely out of their diapers. (At least Noah thinks it’s ten-year-olds…)

    ———————
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …There’s lots of art for children that has wide resonance; that’s beautiful and meaningful to many audiences. If all that has been said of Kirby is true, I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be held to that standard.
    ———————–

    But, there’s lots of art for adults that has wide resonance; that’s beautiful and meaningful to many audiences.

    …And then there’s art ranging from Balthus to Ernst, Rosenquist, Mondrian, Pollock, Giacometti, Gary Panter and so forth, which is more the province of the cognoscenti; which the vast majority of people don’t appreciate or are actively turned off by.

    So, does the fact that their work does not have a wide appeal, aside from the Fine Arts world, therefore mean those artists weren’t really all that great?

    ———————–
    [Thorn re Aparo]
    “solid and not distracting”

    Solid and not distracting? Solid and not distracting?!? I…ooooh!
    ————————

    “Slowly, I turn…!”

    Aparo (though indeed endowed with those boring virtues, which could as well apply to any journeyman hack) was plenty darn good. No mere Adams clone (‘way better than others in that group like Dick Giordano or — yech! — Mike Grell), his work was dramatically powerful and expressive, beautifully lit. I’m particularly fond of the Michael Fleisher-scripted “Spectre” stories he rendered:
    https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-PHnVOYb4MlE/TX66RSrQsLI/AAAAAAAAEs8/vj5qSiJp0bc/JIM-APARO-SPECTRE-2.jpg ,
    http://www.comicbookbrain.com/_imagery/_2009_07_08/jim-aparo-the-spectre-page-adventure-comics.jpg (Heh, heh! Nobody can draw a horror-stricken face better than Aparo),
    http://www.comicbookbrain.com/large-jim-aparo-the-spectre-431-valley-death.php .
    (Gathered neatly here, I see: http://www.amazon.com/Wrath-Spectre-Michael-Fleisher/dp/1401204740 )

    ————————-
    Matt Thorn says:

    Seriously, though… I think that the declaration that Kirby is a “raw, powerful visionary” needs some backing up. Just repeating it again and again don’t make it necessarily so, you know?
    ————————-

    What, just looking doesn’t prove it?

    https://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/CV9spread.jpg

    https://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/CV10spread.jpg

    https://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/CV12.jpg

    https://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/CV13spread.jpg

    …And these are from past his prime Kirby; “Captain Victory” pages picked from James’ “Kirby: Approaching the Threshold” article.

    ————————–
    And for what it’s worth, I hate Munch and pretty much all the impressionists, post-impressionists, and abstract impressionists. I find them self-indulgent, and I suppose that’s what rubs me the wrong way about Kirby: his self-indulgence. Mind you, Bouguereau’s sterile polish leaves me cold, but I’ll take a John Singer Sargent over a Munch any day, and I’ll take Alex Toth over Jack Kirby any day…
    ————————–

    When an artist is “self-indulgent,” to me that doesn’t mean that he follows his/her creative inner compass, which any artist worthy of the name does. But, rather, that they create work so wholly self-centered that it fails utterly to communicate or be appreciated by any others. (Though, as in the sad case of Van Gogh, it can take time for them to find their audience.)

    That there are millions who appreciate “Munch and pretty much all the impressionists, post-impressionists, and abstract impressionists” shows that, while they did what was personally meaningful to them rather than commercial or easily accessible, they were successful in communicating what they were expressing in their art.

    I’ve no trouble appreciating many approaches: my art-crammed bookshelves has books on Balthus beside those on Frazetta; Goya is cheek-by-jowl with Rockwell, there’s Bosch, Crumb, Vermeer, Kahlo, Woodring, bunches on Rembrandt; Dali, Ingres, Magritte, Bernini, Rodin, the Pre-Raphaelites, plus tomes on the ancient art of the Aztecs, Maya, in Egypt and India; Outsider Artists, Mexican pulp cover paintings…

    Speaking of the last, consider this: http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/Santo2n6vjhx.jpg
    (From http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2010/08/mexican-pulp-covers.html ) Hardly as refined as Ernst’s “The Robing of the Bride” ( http://www.famous-painters.org/Max-Ernst/ernst-gallery/47.jpg ), but doesn’t it have bizarrely surreal charm a-plenty?

    While Kirby’s work may be lacking in subtlety, classical restraint and elegance, particularly complex characterizations and other traditional virtues of the Fine Arts, it far more than makes up for it in other qualities.

    And no, this is not “the uncritical ‘Kirby is King!! Aaruk!! Aaruk!!’ thing.” He may be the King, and I’ll firmly argue overall the greatest comics artist ever, even if there are some who may surpass him in certain areas or individual works.

    But it would be absurd to rank him with someone who is a god of the arts, like Goya or Rembrandt…

    BTW, I think the greatest factor working against much critical appreciation of Kirby is that his talents were too wide-ranging, spread thin; that — because he wasn’t “self-indulgent” enough, and kept his nose to the grindstone, endlessly crankin’ out stuff to support his family — or through editorial interference, he never was able to produce a self-contained, substantial work like “Maus” or even “Blankets.” Or, was wholly identified with a single character or title, which would make evaluative work easier for reductionistic-minded critics. With Milt Caniff, there’s “Steve Canyon” and “Terry and the Pirates”; Alex Raymond and Hal Foster’s careers are likewise easily summed up and comprehended.

    But, how do you begin to summarize or “take in” a career as Protean and widespread as Kirby’s? Among the great painters, only Picasso was more adventurous in his approaches, with Max Ernst at his heels.

53. Come to think of it, among the great comic artists, Crumb is exceptionally wide-ranging as well, in styles and subjects…

54. True!

55. Well, my comment can certainly be argued against from various critical perspectives. But I do not hold all of Kirby’s work to the same standard—there is so much that functions well for what it is, then there are occasional shining moments that reach far beyond…it is those few jewels that I care about, the same with Toth and the other people who worked in the morass of commercial kid’s comics. Toth also has a few excellent works and a lot of compromised ones. The best of four-color commercial comics is, at best, flawed, the mitigating factors bad stories or too-tight deadlines, unsympathetic editing etc. I suppose we need to set canons of the most worthy of each four-color artist’ work to base our judgement upon, as it becomes hard for one to wade through reams of drivel to find the treasure.

56. Mike, it’s true that breadth of audience isn’t necessarily the best way to judge art. But I think there is a problem saying, “you can’t criticize this because it’s just for kids” and saying “this is great art.” Presumably the people saying it’s great art are old enough to be typing; they have to be reacting to something that moves them as adults, not as children.

    I think it’s entirely valid to criticize books for kids on the same sorts of grounds that you’d criticize anything. Kids are human beings. Some books or comics made for them are thoughtful and funny and well written; some aren’t. If I can like lots of art for kids, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t expect Kirby to have something to offer me as well.

    I mean, in the piece I compared Kirby to Marston/Peter and Haney/Aparo. Surely those are reasonable analogues? I’m pretty sure Marston/Peter’s audience was younger than Kirby’s, if anything.

57. James, it’s interesting that you and others seem to enjoy Kirby in part because of the imperfection…because of the sense of struggling, sometimes unsuccessfully, against the limitations of the milieu. I get the feeling that in some cases people might actually enjoy the work less if it were more fully realized.

    I sort of get where that’s coming from to some degree…it’s certainly moving to see folks like Kirby struggling to do something meaningful to him within a pretty narrow regime. But for me…I really feel like pretty much any great art is surprising. Fine art has its pitfalls too, certainly. And I feel like there are a lot of artists who do work I love and can wholeheartedly endorse in popular mediums…everything from those amazing old Sesame Street animations to Philip K. Dick to Marston/Peter to Jack Hill to Destiny’s Child and on and on.

    There are definitely things in Kirby that I can respond to. But I don’t love him the way I love many artists who I feel were working with similar strictures and problems.

58. ————————–
    James says:

    …I suppose we need to set canons of the most worthy of each four-color artist’ work to base our judgement upon, as it becomes hard for one to wade through reams of drivel to find the treasure.
    ————————–

    Yes; alas, when I was compiling my “10 best comics” list for HU, which ended up being all short stories (with a couple of graphic novels), because the brevity and concentration makes for a more fully realized aesthetic experience, I was shocked to realize I’d left Kirby out. Had to do a lot of head-scratching to try to come up with something he’d done to stand out as much — “The Glory Boat” was what came to mind — and I’m afraid it wasn’t memorable enough in comparison with the others to “make the cut.”

    In Kirby’s case, it’s more like it’s his overall body of work that makes him great, more than there being a series of clear-cut masterpieces.

    ————————–
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …I think there is a problem saying, “you can’t criticize this because it’s just for kids” and saying “this is great art.” Presumably the people saying it’s great art are old enough to be typing; they have to be reacting to something that moves them as adults, not as children.
    —————————

    Maybe James indeed meant ““you can’t criticize this because it’s just for kids”; but when I read his comment, I interpreted it to mean that when criticizing Kirby’s work, one should keep in mind it was aimed at a younger, less-sophisticated audience. Therefore there should be some modification in what one should expect.

    —————————-
    I think it’s entirely valid to criticize books for kids on the same sorts of grounds that you’d criticize anything. Kids are human beings. Some books or comics made for them are thoughtful and funny and well written; some aren’t.
    —————————-

    Am reminded again of that friend of critic John Simon, who upon leaving a performance of “Macbeth,” would loudly announce, “It’s good, but it’s not ‘Oklahoma!'” Then, exiting a performance of the famed musical, would call out, “It’s good, but it’s not ‘Macbeth’!”

    Yes, both are “thoughtful” and “well-written”; but does it make sense to criticize a gloomy drama by the exact same standards one would a rousing musical? To expect “Where the Wild Things Are” — about as perfect a work as one could ask for — to have the character complexity, sweeping portrait of a society, the range of humanity, of a “War and Peace”?

    ——————————-
    If I can like lots of art for kids, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t expect Kirby to have something to offer me as well.
    ——————————-

    What kind of “art for kids”? Dr. Seuss, Spongebob Squarepants?

    ——————————-
    I mean, in the piece I compared Kirby to Marston/Peter and Haney/Aparo. Surely those are reasonable analogues? I’m pretty sure Marston/Peter’s audience was younger than Kirby’s, if anything.
    ——————————–

    Analogues in what way? Artistic quality? The age of the audiences their work was aimed at?

    ——————————–
    James, it’s interesting that you and others seem to enjoy Kirby in part because of the imperfection…because of the sense of struggling, sometimes unsuccessfully, against the limitations of the milieu. I get the feeling that in some cases people might actually enjoy the work less if it were more fully realized.
    ——————————–

    Re that last sentence: no, I don’t think so.

    But sometimes limitations can be good. Getting creative free rein to produce “mature, adult” work, did Will Eisner come up with anything as fine as “The Spirit”?

    And artists working under dictatorships often end up creating work that is creatively symbolic, more universal — say, Polanski’s “Two Men and a Wardrobe” — than the anti-government screeds they might produce if free…

    ——————————–
    There are definitely things in Kirby that I can respond to. But I don’t love him the way I love many artists who I feel were working with similar strictures and problems.
    ———————————

    That’s fine… vive la différence!

59. Mike: “he virtually wrote the hyperdynamic “visual language” of superhero comics;”

    Is that good?

    “But it would be absurd to rank him with someone who is a god of the arts, like Goya or Rembrandt…”

    Meaning: comics are a minor art form.

    By the way: aren’t there any women interested in commenting Kirby’s oeuvre?…

    Chirp chirp chirp…

60. Haney/Aparo and Marston/Peter are both working in the superhero genre; Haney and Aparo at a time pretty close to when Kirby was around. I also mentioned lots of other pulp and children’s creators who I think do first rank work that seems more fully realized than Kirby’s in a bunch of ways — more coherent, more thoughtful, deeper, funnier and in many ways more outrageous. I just don’t see how it’s being unfair to Kirby to compare him to other superhero comics, and or to somebody like Jack HIll.

61. Mike: “Kirby, having been involved in a little kerfuffle called World War II, might be less inclined to agree [that Manichaeism is stupid and has no interest whatsoever].”

    Well… he fought to free the world, but, at the same time, he helped to impose the most vicious empire that ever existed. I see why he viewed the world in black and white, but he was wrong. No great artist is Manichaean, ever… THat’s childish and simplistic…

62. I have little patience for charges of “self-indulgence” in the arts generally, but I find the idea that a super-productive commercial artist like Kirby was “self-indulgent” absolutely hilarious.

    I have little patience for most impressionism/post-impressionism and a good deal of expressionism, but I would *much* rather feast my eyes on a Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Pat Steir or even a Barnett Newman than a Sargent or (shudder!) Bouguereau. The Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolists I enjoy quite a bit, though, and I’m more or less obsessed with International Gothic and early Renaissance painting – miniature especially – so never let it be said that I “don’t value technical ability” or anything like that. :> I just prefer melancholy, contorted grotesqueries and cross-eyed saints over simpering Cupids and puffy, pastel-colored patrician children.

63. …I have little patience for the fact that I just used “I have little patience” to start two paragraphs in a row. D’oh.

64. ————————–
    Domingos Isabelinho says:

    Mike: “he virtually wrote the hyperdynamic “visual language” of superhero comics;”

    Is that good?
    ————————–

    Is it better that they should be staid n’ stodgy? With classically-proportioned characters standing around and declaiming?

    —————————
    “But it would be absurd to rank him with someone who is a god of the arts, like Goya or Rembrandt…”

    Meaning: comics are a minor art form.
    —————————-

    Beatin’ that old drum again? Using images for aesthetic effects, writing for the same, or combining them — as done in cinema — have produced masterworks by even the most demanding standards. So why should the prose-and-imagery teamup of comics necessarily make for a “minor” art?

    And is an art form “minor” because of its inherent limitations, or because through a host of external factors, it’s not attracted a fraction of the creative talent which others have?

    On the “inherent limitations” front, compared to the aesthetic effects that writing can accomplish, painting, music and sculpture are all lesser art forms; their greatest talents not rising to the heights of understanding and expressiveness of the Human Condition that a Shakespeare could attain.

    The external factors keeping comics starved of talent:

    – The extremely poor money to be made by most creators

    – On the drawing side, its sheer labor-intensiveness

    – The lack of prestige, on the intellectual or (at most times) the “hipness” sides

    – The American comics industry’s focus on one genre limiting its audience

    – Perception of the art form as “for children” throughout most of its history both keeping it from being taken seriously, and fueling hysteria from parental groups

    – The latter driving away talent, helping to drive EC out of the comics business, a company which could have led — as its “fan-addicts” matured — to a huge audience of adult comics readers

    – The dishonest business practices and ripping-off of creators that prevailed up until recently

    …and so forth…

    ——————————–
    By the way: aren’t there any women interested in commenting Kirby’s oeuvre?…

    Chirp chirp chirp…
    ——————————–

    Gee, crime, science fiction, war, Westerns and superheroes. Could those genres Kirby labored in be less interesting to the womenfolk? (Except for romance comics, which Kirby created…)

    As befits their overall intellectual and aesthetic superiority above us male vermin, women are instead too busy pursuing weightier literary fare, like “boy love” Manga or romance novels:

    ———————————
    …women make up 90.5 percent of the romance readership, with the heart of the U.S. romance novel readership being women aged 31–49 who are currently in a romantic relationship. PubTrack’s Consumer Book Trends 2009 report shows 22 percent of fiction purchases for women aged 30–44 years is romance fiction (the top percentage of fiction purchased by this age group)….
    ———————————
    http://www.rwa.org/cs/the_romance_genre/romance_literature_statistics/industry_statistics

    (Don’t tell me, I know; the Patriarchy made ’em do it!)

    ———————————
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    Haney/Aparo and Marston/Peter are both working in the superhero genre; Haney and Aparo at a time pretty close to when Kirby was around. I also mentioned lots of other pulp and children’s creators who I think do first rank work that seems more fully realized than Kirby’s in a bunch of ways — more coherent, more thoughtful, deeper, funnier and in many ways more outrageous. I just don’t see how it’s being unfair to Kirby to compare him to other superhero comics, and or to somebody like Jack HIll.
    ———————————–

    (????) Who said “it’s being unfair to Kirby to compare him to other superhero comics”?? (And thought, “Who the fuck is Jack Hill?” Hadda Google to find out…)

    As for comparing Kirby to other superhero comics; well, there’s no comparison, is there? Might as well compare some skilled, craftsmanlike film director to a combination of D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, Spielberg, John Ford, Sam Fuller…

    ———————————-
    Domingos Isabelinho says:

    Mike: “Kirby, having been involved in a little kerfuffle called World War II, might be less inclined to agree [that Manichaeism is stupid and has no interest whatsoever].”

    Well… he fought to free the world, but, at the same time, he helped to impose the most vicious empire that ever existed.
    ———————————

    I certainly detest that betrayal of everything this country is supposed to stand for, Imperial Amerikana, but…”the most vicious empire that ever existed”? And beating he Nazis helped to impose American hegemony?

    ———————————-
    I see why he viewed the world in black and white, but he was wrong. No great artist is Manichaean, ever… THat’s childish and simplistic…
    ———————————-

    Of course, seeing America as “the most vicious empire that ever existed” does not constitute viewing the world in black and white; neither is it simplistic…

    And, I followed that comment with several others showing how Kirby was actually not simplistically Manichean. Didn’t you get the memo?

65. I was hoping that Domingos was jokingly referring to the cruel rein of Darkseid.

    Mike Hunter, someone wondering out loud if there are any women Kirby fans hardly seems like a reason to go on a tear against women, particularly by attacking the “dumb stuff” they read (romances, boys’ love manga) while arguing that a guy who wrote action stories about guys in tights was a genius. Glass houses and stones are never a good mix.

    Besides, Kirby more than earned his cred with women readers (at least at the time) when he invented romance comics, including two of the most commercially successfully romance titles ever published.

    Also, I’m pretty sure Noah had his tongue in his cheek when he said, “Meaning: comics are a minor art form.” Otherwise, why on earth would he be running this site about comics?

66. Having introduced to this thread the claim that Kirby’s later work is often Manichaean, I should qualify it. I didn’t mean to say that Kirby believes, like Ditko, that there’s an unambiguous and sharp difference between good and evil — that the moral world is “black and white”, without shades of grey. All I meant was that Kirby expressed (sometimes!) something much like “a radical dualism of good and evil that is metaphysically grounded in coeternal and independent cosmic powers of Light and Darkness” (from the Oxford Companion to Philosophy entry for “Manichaeism”).

    And that’s exactly what you find with the Eternals/Deviants, New Genesis/Apokolips, Asgardians/Frost Giants-and-Trolls…these are all expressions of the idea that good and evil are at war, and the war is bigger than the merely human.

    Now, this idea is 100% compatible with the idea that some cases are ambiguous, borderline, “grey”, etc. Sure, Kirby created plenty of unambiguous, cackling villains: Dr Doom, Magneto, Loki, the Red Skull, Darkseid… But he also created plenty of characters who live in a hazy border-realm between good and evil: Metron, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, Orion, Kro, the Silver Surfer, Medusa, arguably the protagonists of OMAC…

    [NB to forestall argument: I read “radical” in the above definition as meaning that the good/evil dualism is ontologically basic, not that it is non-vague; in any case, none of the other discussions of Manichaeism that I’ve consulted commit the view to non-vagueness. The important thing appears to be the cosmic struggle between good and evil]

    Where things get really interesting is that Kirby is *also* drawn to the second theme I outlined above — the idea that human concerns are purely parochial in an indifferent universe. And so, against the struggle between good and evil, he pits vast cosmic forces that are beyond good and evil — notably Galactus and the Celestials — thus hinting at a form of perhaps moral relativism or even moral nihilism.

    None of this seems particularly feeble-minded to me, especially not when compared with Philip K. Dick (whose books are filled with Manichaean struggles!) or such luminaries as Bob Haney. But, as the kids say, YMMV.

67. “So why should the prose-and-imagery teamup of comics necessarily make for a “minor” art?”

    It was Domingos who said “meaning comics are a minor art form.” What he meant was not that comics are in fact a minor art form, but that, if you’re not willing to compare comics to the best other art has to offer, then you’re conceding that comics are a minor art form.

    And what Matt said about your issues with women’s genre literature, Mike. Sheesh.

    Jones…PKD’s books are filled with Manichean struggles? Really? Which ones?

    Palmer Eldritch? Where people take a drug and everyone turns into the evil demiurge? Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, where the robots are largely ineffectual and the good in the world is some sort of actor playing a empathizer? A Scanner Darkly, where the “good guy” can’t even figure out who he is?

    There is good and evil in PKD, sure, but it’s not about bad guys fighting good guys, or even ambiguous grey guys (or gals) fighting now on one side, now on the other. He sometimes uses pulp tropes that reference those things, but they’re always tropes; they’re deliberately a facade, or else they disintegrate on close inspection. He’s interested in morality and the human heart, but to describe that interest as Manichean seems to be really, really missing the point.

    Haney’s not subtle, and the quality varies obviously. But he’s way more attuned to a world outside his skull than Kirby is. There’s politics and dialects and other people’s stories floating around in Haney’s work; as a result I find him surprising and funny and weird. Haney stutters and mumbles and giggles; Kirby shouts. Sure, sometimes he shouts about morality being grey, which I guess is a kind of subtlety. I just don’t find it very engaging.

    He draws awesome monsters, though. Which is no small thing, and which I really appreciate about him.

68. He draws awesome monsters, though. Which is no small thing, and which I really appreciate about him.

    What you said. Kirby was much, much better (IMHO) at drawing the ugly and grotesque than at drawing the beautiful, which is probably why D.C. took the embarrassing step of having someone re-draw Kirby’s Superman. I prefer Kirby’s take, but the whole thing about Superman is that he’s all shiny and handsome and sparkly, right? Kirby’s Superman looks like a college wrestler with a chip on his shoulder. Which is very cool, but, yeah, not the image of Superman D.C. wants to convey (then or now). The Thing is probably the character that is most iconically Kirby in my mind. Grotesque, and yet sympathetic, and somehow just very cool, in a very anti-Superman kind of way.

    Haney’s not subtle, and the quality varies obviously. But he’s way more attuned to a world outside his skull than Kirby is.

    Noah, I think you nailed it there. Kirby seems unable to successfully step outside of the world inside his own skull. His half-hearted attempt to write “groovy slang” illustrates that he didn’t know much about or really care much about the world outside his skull, at least not after WWII. And that is of course fine. As others have noted above, many great artists are enormously successful at being what I controversially characterized as “self-indulgent,” and what Mike more generously characterized as doing work that is “personally meaningful to them.” Whether you see it as a feature or a bug, I think it’s fair to say that Kirby’s worlds are more or less self-contained, and while they may speak to “the human condition” at large, he was never one whose work really reflected the world outside his door.

    Which, AGAIN, is PERFECTLY OKAY.

69. As you know, Dick wrote a LOT of books. The ones you listed aren’t Manichaean (and they’re among my favourites, the nightmarish Palmer Eldritch in particular). BUT he also wrote The Cosmic Puppets, Clans of the Alphane Moon, Galactic Pot Healer, and Our Friends from Frolix 8, all of which are solidly Manichaean. As are, to some extent, The Game-Players of Titan, Ubik and Vulcan’s Hammer.

    But, above all, the VALIS “trilogy”, his final books and the most explicitly theological: VALIS, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer and (kind of) Radio Free Albemuth. These came after his (in)famous divine visitation.

    All of the books above involve, to some extent, the intervention of vast supernatural powers into human affairs to help them in a struggle against evil; and/or said supernatural powers drafting humans into a greater war against the forces of evil.

    Like, I wouldn’t say Dick’s work was Manichaean tout court — he contains multitudes! And, personally, I prefer the cynical/pessimistic ones. But, if not all, then at least *much* of his work *is* Manichaean– just like Kirby.

70. Kirby wasn’t Manichean in the paradoxically dogmatic Domingean sense. He was aware that there is evil in the world and struggled with it through his mature work. Far from “cackling villains”, Darkseid and Dr. Doom are amongst his most interesting characters.

    As for the ‘Kirby attuned only to what was inside his own skull-line? Please.

71. yeah…the early stuff just seems like him using sci-fi tropes because they’re there. Valis…again, the protagonist doesn’t even know who he is, much less whether there’s a war between good and evil going on.

    With Dick, if there’s a battle between good and evil about, the protagonists are usually only on the periphery, and can barely follow it, or even figure out if it’s occurring or how. It’s certainly not great and powerful beings butting against each other like cosmic bull moose.

    Clans of the Alphane Moon…isn’t that the one where the people with different psychological disorders all make their own colonies on the moon? I remember that being about his tortured relationship with his wife and also the strangely wise Slime Mold…and that’s what the wikipedia plot summary says. That doesn’t seem especially manichean. Those themes may well be there, but it seems fairly secondary, especially compared to a Kirby story.

72. Hmm. It seems that nothing short of unconditional acknowledgment that Kirby was the greatest cartoonist of all time, anywhere in the world (regardless of whether or not one has actually seen most of the comics ever produced throughout the world), will satisfy his faithful defenders. Anything one might perceive to be a flaw in Kirby’s brilliant and unparalleled oeuvre is either 1) not in fact a flaw at all, but actually a strength, or 2) to be blamed on the industry, Stan Lee, or both. (Note that categories 1 and 2 are not mutually exclusive.) It’s like the Bible: Not to be questioned, but to be worshiped and accepted as perfection incarnate. Noah, you may as well have picked a fight with Scientology.

73. I thought this has been pretty mild overall, really. We’re nowhere near as vitriolic as we’ve gotten on some Crumb threads. Or on the Hernandez bros threads…or…

    I hadn’t realized you were that fond of Kirby, Matthias. What parts of the world outside his own skull do you feel like he was engaged with?

74. DID SOMEONE SAY SOMETHING CRITICAL ABOUT SCIENTOLOGY???? Don’t make me open a can of Xenu on your ass.

    [Noah, this is your cue to declare ex cathedra that L. Ron Hubbard is a far more honest thinker than Buddha and Mohammed combined…I kid, I kid]

    Anyway, Noah, I’ve read so many of Dick’s books that they kind of blur together. But I stand by my claim that the books I listed “involve, to some extent, the intervention of vast [I should have added “benevolent”] supernatural powers into human affairs to help them in a struggle against evil; and/or said supernatural powers drafting humans into a greater war against the forces of evil”. Maybe one or two of those books are marginal cases…

    The VALIS trilogy is about the direct intervention of benevolent alien forces with incredible power into human affairs to defeat the evil empire which rules secular society. How much more Manichaeanism do you want??

75. Noah: “It was Domingos who said “meaning comics are a minor art form.” What he meant was not that comics are in fact a minor art form, but that, if you’re not willing to compare comics to the best other art has to offer, then you’re conceding that comics are a minor art form.”

    Yup… If Kirby, being the epitome of the art form, still can’t be compared with Rembrandt or Goya the limitations can’t be in Kirby (he’s a god, he’s perfection incarnated…) it must be in the art form that this god of the arts had the misfortune of choosing. Amen!…

    I agree that there are not many comics artists who can compare with Goya (maybe Goya himself can be compared to Goya?), but I acknowledge flaws in the artists that I champion (the exception being Tsuge… ahem…)…

    Mike: “Is it better that they [superheros] should be staid n’ stodgy? With classically-proportioned characters standing around and declaiming?”

    That’s an interesting thought. Someone should do it.

    As for “the most vicious empire that ever existed” don’t worry, the Chinese are learning fast. They own half of Africa already. Africa, as always, is there just to be plundered. I should know: the Portuguese started it all 500 years ago.

    Finally: yeah, this has been a pretty civilized exchange of ideas. If I remember my discussions at the ol’ CJ mess board my hair rises and I begin to shiver… · · · — — — · · · · · · — — — · · ·

76. “That’s an interesting thought. Someone should do it.”

    Behold Alex Ross in all his majesty (link is for google image gallery):

    http://tinyurl.com/42o6xve

    Classy!

77. Mike, you said “What kind of “art for kids”? Dr. Seuss, Spongebob Squarepants?” I don’t know if you were criticizing Dr. Seuss, but I take it you were. If an adult was reading, they would get some liberal message and if a kid was reading they would get a great story. And his WWII cartoons were pretty good, I might add(If not a bit racist). Someone was criticizing Stan Lee at TCJ and said something that stuck. I can’t find it but it was something like “people need to remember that the great children’s writers are not just great children’s writers, they’re great writers in general.”

    I like Kirby to an extent. My first thoughts while looking at his stuff was “This is The King?”, I started to like his drawings more and more. I didn’t read much of Jimmy Olsen and am not an avid reader of his work, but I do like some of his works. I never liked his Lee collaborations because Stan Lee loved to see the his words in print. Lee doesn’t know what pacing or silent panels if they hit him on the head. Just look up a FF page and see the characters talking while fighting(never did like the pacing of that). But most of my problems are with Lee when it comes to those comics. I read OMAC and didn’t like the drawing(his draftsmanship was terrible), but it had some good ideas, much like Jimmy Olsen. I did like the Demon, for all it amounted to. My favorite thing by him is probably his most personal thing he’s done. It was never inked(I read somewhere that even though Spiegelman doesn’t like Kirby’s work, he liked this one), and can be read in its entirety through the following link.

    http://www.tomhart.net/teaching/ComicArt/kirby/streetCode/index.htm

    Everyone that read this comment should read it. What I like about it is even though it’s a realistic story, it has Kirby’s dynamic power. Also, it doesn’t have Lee’s ramble ramble, and also demonstrates that Kirby is trying to show realism but his style isn’t realistic. The tension and clutter is great. Oh, by the way, this is where Spiegelman talks about Kirby and the story. Groth calls it the eight page story, but it is in fact ten pages.

    http://archives.tcj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=196&Itemid=48

    I also agree with Noah. When I was about halfway through the comments, I was thinking that nobody was throwing corn(Just read Street Code again) at each other. I did read the recent Crumb threads and those were heated.

78. Jones: “Behold Alex Ross in all his majesty”

    Ross yes, he always seemed the Capitalist equivalent of Socialist Realism to me. And then he goes and does this: http://tinyurl.com/662u32x Is he mixed up or what?

79. Matt, if anyone’s been arguing forcefully here, it’s you. I don’t really see how any of the people who have defended Kirby’s work in this thread has been dogmatic.

    Noah, I think Kirby engages life in a pretty direct way. It’s about rage, power, and loss of control, and – as Jones said – about asserting moral values in an incomprehensible universe. It’s about life as struggle. In other words, plenty of stuff to relate to for people outside Kirby’s skull.

    Also, he’s had hundreds of thousands of readers, so *someone must have found it interesting.

80. ———————
    Matt Thorn says:

    Mike Hunter, someone wondering out loud if there are any women Kirby fans hardly seems like a reason to go on a tear against women, particularly by attacking the “dumb stuff” they read (romances, boys’ love manga) while arguing that a guy who wrote action stories about guys in tights was a genius. Glass houses and stones are never a good mix…
    ———————-

    Domingos seemed to be arguing that Kirby’s inconsequentiality was further proved by the fact women weren’t interested in his work.

    My point was that women as a group aren’t necessarily any more sophisticated in their artistic tastes than men are — which apparently equals “go[ing] on a tear against women,” who should be spared any criticism whatsoever, lest one be considered a slavering misogynist — and they just have different tastes. (For some reason, SF sends women readers fleeing in droves, despite the presence of some top authorial talent of their gender in the field.)

    Personally, I’m a sucker for a well-made period romantic movie — Jane Austen rules! — and was moved to tears by that climactic kiss at the end of “Persuasion.” The yearning in Amanda Root’s lips! ( http://www.amazon.com/Persuasion-Amanda-Root/dp/B00003JRCQ/ref=cm_lmf_tit_4 )

    And in what way does razzing romances and boys’ love manga — 99% of which, following Sturgeon’s Law, are crap — thereby invalidate the praise, not of superhero comics in general (which have a similar crap-to-gold ratio) but of one specific, brilliant creator?

    ————————-
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …Haney’s not subtle, and the quality varies obviously. But he’s way more attuned to a world outside his skull than Kirby is. There’s politics and dialects and other people’s stories floating around in Haney’s work…
    —————————

    I’ve probably read some of his work, if attached to some artists I liked, but aside from recognizing the name, the stories utterly failed to make an impression. I couldn’t even tell you which part of the DC fields he toiled in…

    —————————
    Matt Thorn says:

    …Noah, I think you nailed it there. Kirby seems unable to successfully step outside of the world inside his own skull.
    —————————-

    What, places outside his skull like Apokolips, Asgard?

    As noted earlier re his “In the Days of the Mob” stories…

    —————————-
    …Two features stand out in Mob #1, somewhat in contrast to some of Kirby’s other DC work: The script and the inked artwork. Because these stories are of Kirby’s era, the dialogue is much more believable – less awkward – than that found in many of his Fourth World strips. As scripted with Kirby’s ear for Depression-era dialect, Al Capone is a much more credible character than, say, Flippa Dippa, who was supposed to be Kirby’s take on a modern young Black man in Jimmy Olsen.
    —————————–
    http://twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/16mob.html

    ——————————
    His half-hearted attempt to write “groovy slang” illustrates that he didn’t know much about or really care much about the world outside his skull, at least not after WWII…
    ——————————

    So does that mean the countless other older comics creators who likewise failed to write “groovy slang” — or who are similarly tone-deaf when doing “BlackSpeak” (“Sweet Christmas!”) are all some isolate weirdos, mental hermits who don’t “know much about or really care much about the world outside [their] skull[s]?”

    Gee, if we’re not “up” on the latest way kids are talking these days (so vitally important!), therefore we are ignorant and uncaring about the world beyond our petty selves.

    ——————————
    Matthias Wivel says:

    …Far from “cackling villains”, Darkseid and Dr. Doom are amongst his most interesting characters.
    ——————————

    Yes; as was also mentioned earlier…

    ———————-
    Kirby’s original series deliberately left many of the boundaries between his heroes and villains ambiguous. The Pact that secured the truce between Apokolips and New Genesis that would be broken by Scott Free and precipitate the events in Kirby’s storyline is itself a cold business: Highfather traded sons with Darkseid. Family values are strangely inversed in the 4th World. All along, Darkseid seems very concerned with the fate of his son, Orion, but strangely, Highfather seems disinterested in the concerns of his progeny, Scott Free aka Mister Miracle, who is raised in the hellish orphanage on Apokolips…
    ———————
    http://www.thearteriesgroup.com/JackKirbyRomberger.html

    And Dr. Doom had other “soft spots”; for great art (he neutralizes an attempt to kill the FF which would have destroyed his collection), his subjects in Latveria (he’s horrified to realize his rampaging robots in one story would harm them as well as the FF).

    ————————
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    I”m trying to think of decent Manichean stuff that isn’t Christian…Ursula K. Le Guin, actually, in the Earthsea books; I love those. I actually think Grant Morrison’s Darkseid is more interesting than Kirby’s….
    ————————-

    I’m currently reading a lot of Tony Hillerman books, and in his accurate detailing of Navajo spirituality, there’s much contrasting of the choices of living the “right” way — in harmony — with the wrong way: greed, destructiveness.

    That good vs. evil thing is all over the place in human religions, including ancient ones. For instance…

    ————————–
    Zoroastrianism…was probably founded some time before the 6th century BCE in Persia (Iran)…

    In Zoroastrianism, the Creator Ahura Mazda is all good, and no evil originates from Him. Thus, in Zoroastrianism good and evil have distinct sources, with evil (druj) trying to destroy the creation of Mazda (asha), and good trying to sustain it…
    ————————–
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism

    —————————
    Matt Thorn says:

    Hmm. It seems that nothing short of unconditional acknowledgment that Kirby was the greatest cartoonist of all time, anywhere in the world (regardless of whether or not one has actually seen most of the comics ever produced throughout the world), will satisfy his faithful defenders….It’s like the Bible: Not to be questioned, but to be worshiped and accepted as perfection incarnate. Noah, you may as well have picked a fight with Scientology.
    —————————–

    What a predictable tactic: say that the defenders of “X” position have made a fanatical, hysterical, all-or-nothing case (despite the fact it’s been nuanced, complex, and qualified), then attack them for being hysterical, fanatic cultists.

    Along that varicose vein…

    —————————–
    Domingos Isabelinho says:

    … If Kirby, being the epitome of the art form, still can’t be compared with Rembrandt or Goya the limitations can’t be in Kirby (he’s a god, he’s perfection incarnated…) it must be in the art form that this god of the arts had the misfortune of choosing. Amen!…
    ——————————

    Never mind that I wrote, “…But it would be absurd to rank {Kirby] with someone who is a god of the arts, like Goya or Rembrandt…”

    Why let mere reality get in the way of a good attack?

    ——————————
    Jones, one of the Jones boys says:

    Mike: “Is it better that they [superheros] should be staid n’ stodgy? With classically-proportioned characters standing around and declaiming?”

    Domingos: “That’s an interesting thought. Someone should do it.”

    Behold Alex Ross in all his majesty…
    ——————————

    Ah, but though elegantly rendered, Ross’ characters are seldom just “standing around”; there are wildly dramatic compositions which are a bewildering swirl of Spandex in motion; some (not in that group) bizarrely inventive…

    ——————————
    Domingos Isabelinho says:

    Ross yes, he always seemed the Capitalist equivalent of Socialist Realism to me. And then he goes and does this: http://tinyurl.com/662u32x Is he mixed up or what?
    ——————————

    Nope; more like Manichean! For Good, Ross gives us: http://geekadelphia.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/alexross_obama.gif (Alas, reality’s a lot muddier than that; Obama hardly a hero…)

    On that “Your Favorite Uncle – Uncle Sam in Posters, Cartoons, and Comics” thread, I wrote…

    ——————————
    That Steve Darnall/Alex Ross “U.S.” mini-series is worth checking out; about the strongest political critique of America’s failing to live up to its promises and image that ever came out of the Big Two…
    ——————————

    More about the series:

    ——————————-
    The story centers around Sam, an obviously distressed homeless man, who wanders the streets of an unnamed city speaking mostly in odd quotes and sound bites. As he wanders, he has disturbing visions of events in American history (dealing with Indian Wars, slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and others). Throughout his wanderings, he occasionally encounters a woman named Bea, and has conversations with Britannia.

    Eventually, he comes to the remains of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where he sees Bea once more, now recognizing her as Columbia. He has further encounters with Britannia, Marianne and the Russian Bear, before he confronts a dark, corrupt, overtly capitalist shadow version of himself. He eventually defeats this figure by accepting all its blows, recognizing and accepting his mistakes, and learning from them.
    ——————————-
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Sam_%28Vertigo%29

    Not exactly wildly radical; though these days, admitting that there’s ever been any action by America — past or present — that was wrong, gets attacked as fanatical, hysterical, all-or-nothing “America-hating.”

    ——————————
    Ali Almezal says:

    Mike, you said “What kind of “art for kids”? Dr. Seuss, Spongebob Squarepants?” I don’t know if you were criticizing Dr. Seuss, but I take it you were…
    ——————————-

    No, Dr. Seuss is wonderful! I love his work. With plenty of depth to it, too: “Horton Hatches the Egg” jabs at conformity and McCarthy-ism, “The Lorax” with its ecological message..

    My examples were to show there’s a wide range existing in art for kids. (Spongebob is probably not all that bad, though, as modern kid fare goes. Fortunately, being childfree, we don’t have to be exposed every waking hour to the shrieking, hyperactive cacophony of modern “children’s entertainment” blaring from the idiot box.)

81. —————————
    Matt Thorn says:

    …Noah, I think you nailed it there. Kirby seems unable to successfully step outside of the world inside his own skull.
    —————————-

    Other artists who dismally failed to do so: the Surrealists ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism ), Fantastic Realists ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_School_of_Fantastic_Realism ), Visionary Artists ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visionary_art ), Symbolists ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism_%28arts%29 )

    Losers, all! Why can’t they take after the Photorealists ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorealism ), Ashcan Realists ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcan_School )?

82. Have I mentioned how much I hate Alex Ross? I really hate Alex Ross. (Not personally. Just his art.)

    Matthias, I wasn’t’ suggesting that Kirby didn’t have fans. (Though he’s certainly a specialist interest at this point…but anyway…) My point was that he’s an internally focused artist rather than an externally focused one. People call him a “visionary” for a reason. Mike’s reference of Apokolips and Asgard rather makes the point; those places don’t exist. They’re in his head. Which is why, for me, his work doesn’t really seem expansive or cosmic; it seems cramped and hermetic.

    Cramped and hermetic isn’t really a bad thing necessarily. Moto Hagio is pretty focused on her own skull too, for example, and I love some of her work. But the contrast between Kirby’s cosmic ambitions and what seems to me the circumscribed scale of his interests leaves me often fairly indifferent. He seems to be insisting that world-shaking is going on, an despite the volume, I don’t see any world-shaking.

    “The VALIS trilogy is about the direct intervention of benevolent alien forces with incredible power into human affairs to defeat the evil empire which rules secular society.”

    Unless you read it (especially Valis) as about Horselover Fats’ psychotic breakdown. Valis really questions whether what it’s describing is happening, and in what register. Manicheanism is a possibility — a trope — but PKD’s too canny to make it the only possibility. He’s certainly talking about manicheanism, and occasionally adopting it, but to call the books themselves Manichean I think seriously simplifies what he’s doing.

83. Noah, I’m not sure I understand. How does that make Kirby different or less successful than other writers of fantasy?

84. Well, it depends on the writer. Different fantasy writers or creators interact with reality in different ways. My son is obsessed with Harry Potter on the moment, and Rowling’s problem isn’t that she ignores the outside world; it’s that she has serious problems with integrating fantasy and reality; her tone veers wildly, and she never really manages to make the two balance.

    I think Tolkien is quite successful; he builds his world out of real-world materials (his WW II experience, his love of a fantasized Englishness, his language knowledge, his knowledge of epics) in a way that makes it rhyme constantly with the world outside his own head while the world itself remains coherent. Ursula K. Le Guin is like that too; Earthsea is very grounded in her anthropological studies…and her people have a psychological depth that certainly makes it feel like she’s talking about people outside herself. C. S. Lewis’ Narnia has constant traffic with the real world, and he connects the two through his faith and his morality. This is done quite explicitly. J.M. Barrie similarly situates NeverNeverLand fairly clearly as a fantasy; it’s a dream, which is arguably cloistered, but which is consantly aware of itself as cloistered, and so doesn’t feel claustrophobic. L. Frank Baum is most like Kirby of these, maybe — which is why his plots also tend to feel like just one damn thing after the other and whatever pops into his head at the moment. He’s less strident than Kirby by a good bit, though, which makes it for me less grating.

    Kirby doesn’t have psychological depth; he doesn’t have the care in world building or the interest in connecting his world through history or anthropology or faith to the real world. It just feels very insular.

85. Now I can’t stop thinking of examples…I think Lovecraft is comparable to Kibry in a lot of ways, in terms of the hermeticism of the world and the cosmic panorama that actually feels claustrophobic. But Lovecraft pretty clearly wants that feeling of claustrophobia, since he’s doing horror…and the racism and homophobia and sexism that power his vision create a queasy, distasteful link to the outside world.

    I think the world in the basement in the Olsen series is a pretty nice metaphor for what Kirby is doing.

86. Mike: “Never mind that I wrote, “…But it would be absurd to rank {Kirby] with someone who is a god of the arts, like Goya or Rembrandt…”

    Sorry about that. I’m sure that my tin hear betrayed me.
    So, Kirby isn’t that good, then? I’m relieved…

87. Good points, Noah. Being a huge fantasy hater I was greatly surprised to find myself enjoying _Game of Thrones_. Only HBO could make like the genre, I guess…

88. I read George R. R. Martin’s shared world wildcard books way back when…. Enjoyed the first one, though I don’t know that it would still hold up really… His own stories were not especially memorable….

89. I think Kirby relates his work palpable to the immigrant experience, growing up poor, and to the horrors he experienced in the war. And while his world-building isn’t as meticulous as Tolkien’s or Le Guin’s, it’s so imaginative that it enables your own imagination to a rare extent – for what it’s worth it has fuelled the better part of the mainstream comics industry for half a century.

    Domingos, I’m surprised (almost disappointed!) that you like Game of Thrones. Granted, I only saw the first and last episodes of the season, but I found it to be crass, sexist, muddled in its storytelling, and almost entirely reliant on the most trite clichés of the genre. What gives?

90. Does anyone else want to join me in imploring Mike Hunter to format his comments differently? I can never make anything out of them…I’ve been mum about this for a long time. I often disagree with MH…but I find the formatting of his comments far more annoying than anything he says. (Yes, I know I have my own commenting tics…..including….ellipses…(and parentheticals…))

91. Noah:
    “I read George R. R. Martin’s shared world wildcard books way back when…. Enjoyed the first one, though I don’t know that it would still hold up really… His own stories were not especially memorable….”

    Look up his Southern Gothic vampire novel ‘Fevre dream’. Probably the most intelligent iteration of the Vampire myth ever written, and a cracking good yarn!

92. eric b:

    “Does anyone else want to join me in imploring Mike Hunter to format his comments differently? I can never make anything out of them…I’ve been mum about this for a long time. I often disagree with MH…but I find the formatting of his comments far more annoying than anything he says. (Yes, I know I have my own commenting tics…..including….ellipses…(and parentheticals…))”

    What’s the specific problem?

    They seem clear and efficient to me.

93. I’ve deleted a comment which seemed to me to be over the line. I appreciate everyone’s efforts to keep this discussion civil. Just, you know, take a breath before posting. Thanks.

94. Matt Thorn: “I can enjoy moments of Kirby, but, come on. ‘Devil Dinosaur’? Giving Kirby nearly complete creative freedom was probably the worst thing D.C. or Marvel ever did.”

    Later: “I bought ‘Devil Dinosaur’ #1 (I don’t think there was a #2) when it first came out, when I was a kid.”

    Noah Berlatsky: “I actually think Grant Morrison’s Darkseid is more interesting than Kirby’s.” [Has read Jimmy Olsen.]

    “I’ve never read Devil Dinosaur.” [Ruminates at length about standards for children’s art, holding comics to standards, various authors he thinks are better, and how people who disagree with him want to isolate comics from other art forms and aren’t just pleading with him to stop typing and read them.]

    Noah: “Haney’s not subtle, and the quality varies obviously. But he’s way more attuned to a world outside his skull than Kirby is.”

    Matt: “Noah, I think you nailed it there. Kirby seems unable to successfully step outside of the world inside his own skull.”

    TYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYGGGGGGGGGGGGGGTVGFHFHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Sorry, that was my head.

95. But…people haven’t been especially impolite. I mean, you’re a little snarky, and there’s been a bit of friction, but overall as these things go we’ve done pretty well.

    Also I’ve read a fair bit of Kirby other than Jimmy Olsen. A collection of monster stories and a collection of x-men are what I own; also various issues of other titles over the years. I haven’t read a ton of it because I don’t really like his work that much — but I’ve definitely seen hundreds of pages of his art at this point. Matt’s read more than that it sounds like. I feel like that’s enough to have an opinion…though I know that that can be something of a controversial stance in comics circles.

96. Matthias: “Domingos, I’m surprised (almost disappointed!) that you like Game of Thrones. Granted, I only saw the first and last episodes of the season, but I found it to be crass, sexist, muddled in its storytelling, and almost entirely reliant on the most trite clichés of the genre. What gives?”

    As I said: I’m surprised too.
    I like palacian intrigue, I guess… I don’t think that it is sexist. It depicts sexist societies in a medieval world, that’s different. Even so there are a few strong woman (and a strong girl): Catelyn Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Arya Stark. Since we were talking about manichaeism it bothers me that the Lannisters are clearly the bad guys (in spite of … Tyrion Lannister being a sympathetic character) while the Starks are the good guys. This perpetuates the Romantic myth of the good barbarian vs. the corrupted and Machiavellian civilized aristocrat.

97. Wow, I really, really hate that street code story. Sentimental histrionic self-dramatizing drivel. I can see why Spiegelman likes it, I guess; it’s Jewish, it’s ethnic, it’s autobiographical, it’s real. Must be art!

    Personally, I’d much rather see the man draw monsters if the alternative is paens to mother-love and the umpty-umpth reenactment of stale sincere ethnic drama. Barf.

98. I agree with you, Noah. It’s funny that when work for hire artists try to create something out of their daily routines, they find out that they can’t. The worst example that I can think of is Joe Kubert’s _Fax From Sarajevo_.

99. By the way: http://geekadelphia.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/alexross_obama.gif See what I mean? Capitalist popaganda!…

100. Noah: No, I’m with you. I’m grateful this has been more polite than the Crumb and Hernandez brothers threads, and I don’t understand why people have trouble remaining civil, like that comment you had to delete. It’s just that EFGTGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHU my head keeps hitting the keyboard.

     I, personally, have no use for C.S. Lewis, and I think I made a fair bit of effort. I tried reading The Screwtape Letters, and I do not approve of Satanism. I also watched every preview for the Narnia films, saw very little added to the Lion King material, and found Lewis’s CGI much less polished than Pixar’s.

     I know my views are not respected in the world of Lewis fandom because I haven’t read every little thing, but what can we infer about the judgment of devil worshippers? And having defended my position online over the past several years, I’ve noticed they are becoming increasingly rude.

     Plainly we’ve been encountering the same problem: exceptionalism.

101. Noah:”…which is why his plots also tend to feel like just one damn thing after the other and whatever pops into his head at the moment.”

     That’s exactly how the first gigantic volume of Sandman felt to me.

102. Well, the Screwtape letters are pretty great. It’s not my favorite thing he wrote, but if you didn’t like them, it seems reasonable that you might not like the rest. If you wanted to try something else with minimal effort, I’d go for the animated version of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is really great and quite faithful. His best book is “Till They Have Faces,” IMO. One of the greatest books ever written, I think — but that’s a minority opinion, obviously.

     If you read as much C.S. Lewis as I’ve read Kirby, you’d probably be up to at least 700 pages or so, which would get you through several Narnia books, or a couple of the space books. I think that’d probably give you a good sense of whether you wanted to read more, and I certainly wouldn’t think you didn’t have a right to talk about it. But I’m not really a part of the C.S. Lewis fandom per se, I don’t think; I know it exists, but I’ve never really run across it. So maybe your criticism of them is valid; I couldn’t say.

     “That’s exactly how the first gigantic volume of Sandman felt to me.”

     Really? I’m not an unqualified fan of Gaiman or anything…but to the extent I have problems with him, it’s almost for the opposite reason. Everything feels too planned out, too obviously freighted with Meaning. He doesn’t feel free-wheeling to me at all.

103. Noah: Wow, I really, really hate that street code story. Sentimental histrionic self-dramatizing drivel. I can see why Spiegelman likes it, I guess; it’s Jewish, it’s ethnic, it’s autobiographical, it’s real.” Um, if you actually take the trouble to read the interview where Spiegelman talks about “Street Code” he doesn’t like it because its “Jewish, ethnic, autobiographical, real.” He describes the story as “nuts” and “one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.” The appeal of the story for Spiegelman is that it isn’t autobiographical or real but rather that it takes Kirby’s memory and translates it into the over-the-top melodrama of the superhero idiom, thus creating something outlandish and outre. As so often, you are projecting on to a cartoonist your own assumptions about what they are thinking rather than listening to their actual words.
     Here is the relevant portion of the interview:

     GROTH: Did you ever see that eight-page strip he did —

     SPIEGELMAN: Wonderful. I really enjoyed that. It was nuts. That was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.

     GROTH: The autobiographical strip?

     SPIEGELMAN: Yeah.

     GROTH: That was amazing.

     SPIEGELMAN: It was amazing because it was nuts. It was as crazy as Rory Hayes. To retranslate his life into superheroic idioms… [Laughs.] Like when somebody goes through a door to come home for milk and cookies, and he’s basically splintering it like the Hulk! [laughs] It’s really nuts!

     GROTH: Do you remember the two-page spread? It was teeming with people, it was like an old Cagney movie.

     SPIEGELMAN: Yeah, I liked that.

104. I’ll add that Kirby is a major but problematic cartoonist so I appreciate the dialogue this posting has generated. I think many of the issues discussed here will be taken up by Charles Hatfield in his forthcoming Kirby monograph.

105. Jeet, as I’ve mentioned before…while what Spiegelman has to say about his reaction is certainly interesting, I don’t necessarily feel like it has to be the final word on the subject. Nor for that matter does what he says there have to contradict what I said.

     Glad you’ve enjoyed the discussion!

106. ———————–
     orb says:

     …Look up [George R. R. Martin’s] Southern Gothic vampire novel ‘Fevre dream’. Probably the most intelligent iteration of the Vampire myth ever written, and a cracking good yarn!
     ————————

     “Fevre Dream” is outstanding! At the very least (nods to Stoker) the second-greatest vampire novel ever written.

     ————————-
     Domingos Isabelinho says:

     I agree with you, Noah. It’s funny that when work for hire artists try to create something out of their daily routines, they find out that they can’t. The worst example that I can think of is Joe Kubert’s _Fax From Sarajevo_.
     —————————

     Indeed so! Though I enjoyed “Street Code,” the jabs I aimed at Kubert for being unable to jettison his “Sgt. Rock” melodramatic stylings when dealing with reality could be aimed at Kirby there as well.

     From an old TCJ message board thread:

     —————————–
     sinous

     …I think that’s one way to define most of those long time mainstream guys. They all seem to have one flaw or the other when it comes to writing their own stuff. Their draftmanship may be perfectly fine, but they have seemingly no idea how to escape or redefine genre conventions. Their conceptual and verbal skills are severely undeveloped or arrested.
     —————————–
     Mike Hunter

     …Joe Kubert in “Fax from Sarajevo” unfortunately did not turn loose of visual genre conventions. So effective in his mainstream comics work, so inappropriate here. (While mainstream fans would find “Fax” more appealing, to anyone with a jot of sophistication Joe Sacco’s “Safe Area Gorazde” is clearly superior.)

     But (- perhaps learning from criticism of the earlier work? – in “Yossel” ( http://www.jbooks.com/firstchapters/index/FC_Kubert1.htm ), though his compositions remain highly dramatic, at least by employing sketchy illustrations he tones down the polish of his more tightly-rendered usual art, gives it an immediacy…
     ——————————
     http://archives.tcj.com/messboard/viewtopic.php?t=4945

     A couple pages from “Fax,” by no means the worst offenders:

     http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wvXJ6tSTiXI/SquAUYbhl0I/AAAAAAAABq4/tne_TxXsGhw/s400/sarajevo-2.jpg

     http://www.safcomics.com/pictures/134350.jpg

     In utter contrast, from Joe Sacco’s “Safe Area Gorazde”:

     http://genocideinvisegrad.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/visegrad-strip.jpg?w=423&h=428

     http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Tj8DeMxpvBI/TVD8g-af-KI/AAAAAAAABC0/RJY4d5GyI2c/s1600/gorazde+1.jpg

     Even in low-res scans, those Sacco images are horrifyingly real, not least because of the matter-of-factness with which the appalling events are composed and rendered. There is not the slightest touch of what Noah had found troubling about Sabato tregua, on another current HU thread:

     ——————————
     Noah Berlatsky says:

     …how much of a problem is it to be launching a social critique in such aesthetically beautiful terms. The car burning, for example…you note that it’s a violent image, but it’s also just really appealing formally. Is there an aesthetization of violence and despair, and is that a problem?
     ——————————
     https://hoodedutilitarian.com/2011/07/monthly-stumblings-11-andrea-bruno/

     …At least Andrea Bruno’s renderings are far more powerful and sophisticated — this is truly Art — than Kubert’s skillfully-drawn yet totally “comic-bookish,” in the worst sense of the word, approach.

107. I should maybe elaborate. The Spiegelman quote is funny, and it’s a smart take on what’s going on in that story. But he’s still interested in *that story*. He responds to it because its Kirby’s take on this material that he (Spiegelman) cares about. Jeet’s right that it’s a more thoughtful take than I was attributing to him, but I don’t think my instincts were entirely wrong either.

108. I’m too late for the non-Kirby part of the discussion, it seems, but I thought I’d chime in with some Dick-clarative statements-

     Jones said The VALIS trilogy is about the direct intervention of benevolent alien forces with incredible power into human affairs to defeat the evil empire which rules secular society. How much more Manichaeanism do you want?? Except that he goes out of his way, in Valis anyway, to undercut this, over and over again. We, and Horselover Fat, are not left with any kind of certainty whatsoever, that the events depicted are real, and if they are, if they really represent some kind of benign or good intelligence. The dual cosmology is the focus of a lot of Fat’s speculations, but it’s not the exclusive explanation of the phenomena.

109. @Noah Berlatsky. You’re not wrong in connecting Spiegelman’s affection for that story — a rare bit of Kirby that Spiegelman has kind words for — with Spiegelman’s interest in Jewishness and history. But your comments would have been sharper and more focused if you had attended to Spiegelman’s own account (which you acknowledge is “funny” and “a smart take” and “a more thoughtful take than I was attributing to him”). The point being that criticism benefits from actually paying attention to art and listening to other critical voices, including the voices of artists.
     @ Sean Michael Robinson. I think your take on PKD is exactly right. He may have had Manichaean tendencies but they were counterbalanced by a desire to test out all possible theories of reality. Dick never settled on a single explanation for the Valis experience.

110. >>counterbalanced by a desire to test out all possible theories of reality>>>

     I completely agree. I think that’s really the primary difference between Radio Free Albemuth (an early draft of Valis/attempt to fictionalize his Valis experiences that wasn’t published until after his death) and Valis itself is that RFA is too pinned down–it loses some of the searching qualities that make so much of his fiction so compelling. The Adversary in RFA is too overt, and unquestionably malicious–essentially Dick’s counter-culture political views and FBI paranoia wedded to portions of the exploding reality themes of his Exegesis. It’s an interesting contrast to the book that it eventually became, and even though I think it’s a lot less successful in exploring the exploded reality that Valis posits, I would bet that a lot of people would find it more readable as a consequence of that.

111. “The point being that criticism benefits from actually paying attention to art and listening to other critical voices, including the voices of artists.”

     I don’t think I’ve ever said anything that suggests I disagree with that.

112. Pertaining to Gaiman, I meant that even though everything seemed planned and full of meaning, it felt like he didn’t know where the Sandman book was going and was writing story to story(I’ve only read the first gigantic book, so it might have changed). I didn’t mean that Gaiman put everything that he thought of on the page, just that it was one thing after the other with no general direction in sight.

113. For Sandman,the whole story coheres pretty strongly I think; it’s very thematically unified, and Dream’s character arc is definitely planned out. If he didn’t have it all thought out in advance, he took some care to have the end fit the beginning, anyway. Or at least that was my take.

114. I read it a while back, but I remember one story where there were cats dreaming or something. To me, it seemed like that story didn’t fit.

115. I am definately joining this discussion too late. I like a lot of what Kirby was involved with. I find I like his stuff when his collaborators are allowed to shine through – Joe Sinnott inking the FF, Chic Stone inking his Captain America, and of course Stan Lee helping with the plotting and the diaglogue. Kirby on his own, not so much. I remember in 1975 being so excited that he was returning to Captain America. I was 12 at the time, and within a year dropping the book. All those great ideas didn’t interest me. The art seemed boxy and busy. Something was lost in the 10 years since his “classic” days.

     I have a theory. An artist only has so many good ideas in him or her. It might just be one a la Joseph Heller of Catch 22 fame. Or that artist might have a boatload, like Shakespeare (though not everything he did was great. Everyone strikes out). I just believe Kirby was at his best when he was confined. I recall reading an interview with, I think it was Roy Thomas, who recalled Kirby redoing something because it wouldn’t get past Stan Lee, who was the ulimtate decider of what got printed.

     I can understand someone resenting that kind of control, but who’s to say his work wasn’t the better for it. Just look at George Lucas, sometimes limits sharpen focus, and that’s not a bad thing.

116. The danger of these discussions is that people seem to lose sight of the bigger picture. The real reason why I asked, if it is good that Kirby virtually wrote the hyperdynamic visual language of superhero comics was because no matter how well done these are, at best, escapist fluffy stories for children or, at worst, charlatan epic notions about the cosmos, etc… Not to mention fascistoid comics to boot.
     I promissed to myself that I would never again discuss Kirby. I breached my promisse, but I’m going to shut up now.
     Lucas I positively hate… He’s second rate Kirby.

117. Yowza. Jeet, Sean AND Noah agree on something. Either you’re all right and I’m wrong, or else the apocalypse is nigh.

     Or both.

     Without going into detailed textual exegesis, I guess I can only baldly reassert my view. It’s certainly true that VALIS fits firmly into the tradition of Dickian books which posit a difference between “surface” or phenomenal reality and a deeper reality. These books often further posit the existence of a sinister and powerful force that tries to prevent people trapped in the phenomenal realm from discovering the deeper reality.

     Many of his books then undercut these first two themes by calling into question whether, (1) epistemologically, we can know (or know that we know) the deeper reality and (2) metaphysically, whether the “deeper” reality is the fundamental reality, or whether there is a deeper one than that — or, indeed, whether the second reality even is actually deeper than phenomenal reality (or is instead, say, a psychotic delusion).

     So VALIS definitely says there’s a different realm from the phenomenal one. In that realm, the empire never ended, we’re still in the year 103 CE, a divine or quasi-divine force has intervened into mundane affairs to overcome the forces of evil, etc. etc.

     Where VALIS differs from the pre-VALIS books is, I think, that *we’re supposed to take this at face value* — that I don’t think Dick problematises Fat’s revelations; or else problematises them only to reaffirm their truth all the more strongly. Fat’s visions of the deeper reality are factive: the emmpire *did* never end, he really *has* been contacted by a benevolent alien force, etc.

     At least that was my reading of the book, and I thought it was supported by both the text itself — for one thing, it explains the inclusion of the appendix, a quasi-paratextual device not seen in any of Dick’s other work, I think — and by the context of Dick’s life and other books.

118. —————————
     Domingos Isabelinho says:

     The danger of these discussions is that people seem to lose sight of the bigger picture. The real reason why I asked, if it is good that Kirby virtually wrote the hyperdynamic visual language of superhero comics was because no matter how well done these are, at best, escapist fluffy stories for children or, at worst, charlatan epic notions about the cosmos, etc… Not to mention fascistoid comics to boot…
     ——————————

     Sounds like the choice offered in “Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?”

     How about, “entertaining adventures with often-amazing visuals, chock-full of ideas”?

     And, are we ONLY supposed to read Serious Literature, and look down our noses at those who indulge in lighter fare?

119. Speaking of PKD, for those who may not have seen it, R. Crumb’s “The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick”:

     http://www.scribd.com/doc/3230/Robert-Crumb-The-Religious-Experience-of-Philip-K-Dick

     (Alas, a more hi-res version online has been taken down…)

120. Mike: “How about, “entertaining adventures with often-amazing visuals, chock-full of ideas”?

     And, are we ONLY supposed to read Serious Literature, and look down our noses at those who indulge in lighter fare?”

     No, of course not, but we’re not reading here, we’re writing comments on a blog.

     The entertaining part is doubtful. I, for one can’t read the damn things to save my life. I agree with the amazing visuals part, but we must also acknowledge what do these amazing visuals mean. If we just look at them in awe we’re not much better than magpies looking at shiny objects.

     As for the ideas… what ideas are you talking about? Is it Kirby the philosopher now?

121. At the risk of repeating myself, Domingos: realism isn’t the only way to address life and the fundamental issues governing it.

122. I’ve always thought that PKD piece is one of the more uninspired things Crumb has done. It’s even duller than than his Genesis adaptation. The Boswell and Kafka strips have a lot more juice to them.

123. What are you talking about Matthias? In which of my comments is the word “realism” even mentioned? Kirby’s approach to life is the approach of a fascist. Do you support fascism, now?

124. Oh, come on Domingos. You can like Kirby’s work without being a fascist, and it’s even possible to see his work as explicitly anti-fascist (Darkseid as Hitler seems like it’s probably an intentional analogy.)

     I presume it’s the celebration of force that you’re seeing as fascist? And/or the superhero emphasis on law and order?

125. This is exactly what I’m talking about, Domingos. When you say Kirby is manichean and fascist, it’s because you’re applying realist parameters to his work. But Darkseid is not a person, he is an idea. He is the manifestation of evil in the form of total control. The ultimate fascist (and there’s is even a major conflict underlying his wish for control). It’s something very different from positing that individual *people are good or evil.

     As for the fascist allegations, it’s one of the great fallacies of Kirby criticism. He is very ambivalent about power, but recognizes the capacity for violence in people and the necessity of using power. This is what many of his most significant characters are about, from Thor to Galactus to Ben Grimm to Orion. The challenge is tempering your use of force with a moral outlook, something which is never easy and which several of his struggle with, especially in his later work. Pretty far from fascism, in other words.

126. Fascist ideas are ideas, thanks for reminding me. Kirby, though, was a person. Do you deny that he said to Will Eisner that he admired the SS? Kirby’s fascism is in his graphics as art Spiegelman clearly saw (Marinetti would love them). You try to whitewash him, but solving problems using violence is at the core of the superhero genre. You remind me of my comment to _Comic Book Nation_ on this very blog: “Another true historian is Bradford W. Wright in _Comic Book Nation_. The problem with this book is that Bradford had an agenda. He wanted to show that super-hero politics are not right wing, but liberal. One of his strong evidences was a page in which Captain America doubted himself: “And, in a world rife with injustice, greed, and endless war — Who’s to say the rebels are wrong? / […] I’ve spent a lifetime defending the flag — and the law! / Perhaps — I should have battled less — and questioned more!” I was so impressed by this monologue (I think that the subtext of the super-heroes is vigilantism – Fascism that is…) that I bought the book. Unfortunately here’s Cap again a few pages later: “So I belong to the establishment! I’m gonna not knock it! / It was that same establishment that gave them a Martin Luther King — a Tolkien — a McLuhan — and a couple of brothers — named Kennedy!” Huh?…

     I’m not interesting in discussing the absurd conclusion, what I want to stress is Wright’s intellectual dishonesty: he showed only half of the story, the part that interested him.”

127. I don’t remember him expressing admiration for the SS, but it’s been a while since I’ve read that interview with Eisner. In any case, any admiration he may have had must have been purely aesthetic. You seem to deny the fact that he fought in Normandy and spent most of his career expressing his disgust with fascism in his work.

     By your logic, any non-pacifist work of art would be fascist. You may not like it, and I certainly don’t, but violence is a part of life, and there is no power if it is not exercised (or rather, the power shifts elsewhere). This is what Kirby deals with in his mature work. He even recognizes the problems you describe, compromising several of his most violent characters, fundamentally questioning the use of violence (most notably in his 4th World cycle, with Himon, Scott Free, and the Forever People each representing idealist alternatives).

     As for his graphics, they can’t be isolated from his ethos as expressed in his writing. Yes, they share elements with so-called fascist art, as does any heroic art I suppose, but his work is also an attempt to reclaim heroism from such issues. And in any case, this to me is merely the mark of a great artist: to recognize and realize in one’s own art the issues one is dealing with (something that applies equally, if more clearly problematically, in Crumb).

     Again, it seems you can only accept art that corresponds with your own worldview — a sort of Marxist/PC projection, far as I can tell. I sympathize politically, to an extent, but as we have discussed before, I’d prefer my art not be held to such dogmatic standards of acceptability.

128. “I wound up in combat one time, and I met the Lauffen SS. They were thorough professionals and I talked to them and I felt that if I was going to survive, I was going to have to be like them. And I wasn’t. They were professionals at combat, and I knew that I could never beat them unless I became like them.” Nope, no aesthetics on sight…

129. You have a lot of nerve when you accuse me of being dogmatic. I never found more dogmatic people than comics fanatics who defend the children’s comics canon with claws and teeth…

     And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

     I’ve been here before and its a place where I don’t want to be, so, bye for now…

130. That quote is hardly an endorsement of fascism though…he’s impressed by their professionalism, not their ideology.

     I just wrote this piece on the place of violence in superhero comics which might be relevant….

131. As long as I’m giving links…Alyssa Rosenberg argues for Kirby’s anti-facism (at least compared to Frank Mlller) here. Of course, “less politically unpleasant than Frank Miller” is a fairly low bar, but take it for what it’s worth.

     Matthias, your ideas about power seem fairly Niebuhrian, I think? The inevitability of power, the importance of dealing with it, the worry that if it is not seized it will go elsewhere for other ends is all more or less pragmatist (not fascist per se.) I just wanted to note that there are other ways to approach those issues….

132. Domingos, I think it’s worth noting that that particular anecdote is followed in another interview by Kirby seeing red and ending up on the floor with a pile of German corpses. He may have been telling tall tales, but he certainly didn’t admire these people for their philosophy.

     As for calling you dogmatic Domingos, I think it’s pretty clear why I think so. Manichean = bad art seems to be an absolute in your opinion, and you see manicheanism everywhere, it seems to me. I didn’t mean to offend you though, just state my disagreement. I actually appreciate arguing with you on this, believe it or not.

     re: the proverbial beam: where have I been dogmatic in this discussion? I could choose to be equally offended that you lump me in with your “comics fanatics”, when I’m trying to present a cogent, considered argument for why I think Kirby is more interesting and considerably more profound than you give him credit for. Maybe I’ve failed, but I’ve hardly been dogmatic?

     Noah, sure, but I’m not talking about my views, rather Kirby’s as I understand them. And I think his is an interesting take.

133. Matthias: I’m not offended and, yes, you’re right, you’re not a fanboy, sorry if I implied that you are.

     Noah: sorry, but you’re stating the obvious. The ideology may be different, but the practical result is the same. When Kirby embraces violence to defeat violence he may not be embracing Nazism, but he’s embracing the ideology of violence. And don’t get me started on what I think Capitalism has done… Americans tend to see WWII as the good war in which there were clearly good and bad guys, but do good guys kill thousands of civilians (in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, war crimes, all)?, not to mention what happened during post-war times: a ruthless pillage of the world’s resources. Superheroes, like Dirty Harry, are hardly like Gandhi. That’s what the only superhero artist (yes, I know that he’s a writer) who seriously addresses these issues, Alan Moore, explored in _The Killing Joke_, if I remember correctly. I must confess that I haven’t read a superhero comic in a long time and my memory is seriously beginning to fail me…

134. ———————-
     Domingos Isabelinho says:

     Mike: “How about, “entertaining adventures with often-amazing visuals, chock-full of ideas”?

     And, are we ONLY supposed to read Serious Literature, and look down our noses at those who indulge in lighter fare?”

     No, of course not, but we’re not reading here, we’re writing comments on a blog.
     ———————-

     Oh; so if, say, a Vegan would post here, “eating animal flesh is barbarous, animalistic, and unhealthy,” they’re not looking down at what people are eating, but just “writing comments on a blog”?

     ————————
     The entertaining part is doubtful. I, for one can’t read the damn things to save my life…
     ————————-

     Which is fine; I am likewise baffled/irritated by much of what others find entertaining…

     ————————–
     I agree with the amazing visuals part, but we must also acknowledge what do these amazing visuals mean. If we just look at them in awe we’re not much better than magpies looking at shiny objects.
     —————————

     …So we’re only supposed to look at “amazing visuals” which are deeply meaningful?

     “No, of course not, but we’re not [looking] here, we’re writing comments on a blog.”

     And, the difference between humans and magpies is that we can appreciate an astonishing sight because it looks amazing and/or for any meaning we might perceive it as having.

     For instance, this Doré illo for “The Divine Comedy” can be appreciated in that and/or fashion: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lauzl63ntu1qahuhjo1_500.jpg

     ———————-
     As for the ideas… what ideas are you talking about? Is it Kirby the philosopher now?
     ———————-

     What he said:

     ———————-
     Noah Berlatsky says:

     Kirby fans often note that his comics are bursting with ideas. And, after reading DC’s two volume 2003 collections of Kirby’s run on Jimmy Olsen, I can’t deny it…
     ———————-

     ———————-
     Domingos Isabelinho says:

     Kirby’s approach to life is the approach of a fascist. Do you support fascism, now?
     ———————-

     Not even, “Kirby’s approach to comics,” but his “approach to life.” Oy!

     Am reminded — as with the debates on PC-talk — of how behind so many “liberals” is a little commissar waiting to get out. One can imagine at some “show trial,” the question being hurled at a hapless prisoner:

     “These superhero comics were found among your possessions. Superhero comics are fascistic. Do you support fascism, now?”

     ———————-
     Do you deny that he said to Will Eisner that he admired the SS?
     ———————-

     …Can you get more commissar-esque? What’s the next question,”Are you now, or have you ever been, a reader of superhero comics?”

     ———————-
     [Domingos quoting Kirby] “I wound up in combat one time, and I met the Lauffen SS. They were thorough professionals and I talked to them and I felt that if I was going to survive, I was going to have to be like them. And I wasn’t. They were professionals at combat, and I knew that I could never beat them unless I became like them.”
     ———————-

     …Another reminder of how so many people who can “read,” can’t read; can’t figure out the meaning of a statement beyond the most utterly simplistic “Kirby admires the SS” fashion.

     Kirby says “They were professionals at combat, and I knew that I could never beat them unless I became like them”; and somehow this respect for their professionalism at warfare is “understood” as his wanting to become a Nazi. Oy! again…

     ———————-
     Domingos Isabelinho says:

     When Kirby embraces violence to defeat violence he may not be embracing Nazism, but he’s embracing the ideology of violence.
     ———————-

     So, what is “the ideology of violence”? That, when an armed creep is trying to kill you, it is somehow justifiable to use violence to stop him? Outrageous!

     Look at Obama trying to compromise and make deals with a lesser evil*, Republicans; they’re running over him like a steamroller over potato salad. Do you think anything other than overwhelming violence would’ve stopped the Nazi war machine?

     With all the “superheroes are Fascist” talk getting tossed around, let’s look at some definitions:

     ———————-
     fas·cism
     1. a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
     2. the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.
     ———————-

     …Are superheroes running the world? Demanding obedience, suppressing any attempts at self-governance? Is a certain DC icon saying ordering the President, “Kneel before Superman!”?

     Or, are they just cops in gaudy outfits? Not even getting pay, or health benefits…

     (Check out http://www.generalzod.net/ ; now, that’s the “Fascist Superhero” spirit!)

     * Speaking of people who can “read,” but can’t read, hadda insert that caveat in case a certain Chicago-ite is lurking about: “You’re saying that Republicans are exactly the same as Nazis??!!”

135. I don’t see these issues much explored in the Killing Joke…but Moore circles around them in Watchmen, Miracleman, and V for Vendetta, Lost Girls, The Last Days of Superman (or whatever that’s called), and other places. He’s definitely skeptical of violence in general and superheroes in particular….

136. Noah: Batman is a lot more creepy than the Joker in _The Killing Joke_. That’s enough to doubt his “goodness.”

137. Besides the Joker functioning as a psy tells it clearly (more or less): we both come from some kind of deep psychological trauma. We’re both psychologically damaged.

138. Oh, okay, I see what you’re saying.

     It definitely calls Batman’s sanity into question, which is nice…but the good/bad binary is still fairly stable, I think. I actually much prefer the way Bob Haney undercuts Batman by (at least sometimes) basically making him an incompetent dolt. I think that’s a more effective critique of law and order than mythologizing — and psychological doubling is still a kind of mythologizing in this context, I think.

     I think you like the Killing Joke more than I do, which is a surprise….it’s one of my least favorite of Moore’s comics.

139. You guys are too funny. Kirby a fascist? Please.

     About what Noah wrote in the first place, the best way to absorb Kirby’s run on Jimmy Olson is by reading DC’s four volume hardcover Fourth World collection which presents the four interrelating “New Gods” titles in the order they were originally released. The larger story then takes form as Kirby intended. Of course the reader then realizes that Jimmy Olson was an absurd title to begin with and that the narrative falls apart where DC cancelled the epic, it staggers through the 4th volume in a drastically weakened state. But some of the artists finest moments are in there.

140. Oh, I don’t like _The Killing Joke_. I don’t like any superhero comic.

141. Noah/Eric

     I think the comics you are trying to remember might have been reprints of Jimmy Olsen stories from the Superman Family book from the 70’s. That book featured solo adventures of Superman’s supporting cast, including Jimmy, Lois, Supergirl, Krypto, and Nightwing and Flamebird. I’m pretty sure the Jimmy Olsen stories were drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger.

142. Hmm; I guess that’s possible. But even with the artist name, I”m still not really finding anything that quite fits online….

143. Like him or not, Kirby was extremely innovative and influential – you have to admit that. At his peak(s), he was copied by (er, he “influenced”) many well-known peers. But the bottom line for me was that his art was fun – plain and simple.

144. Tolkien’s LOTR was influenced by his time in WW1, not WW2. Your ignorance regarding this simple truth informs your other opinions and completely invalidates all of your pretentious and uninformed criticisms of Kirby.

145. Surely it could have been informed by both.

146. That sounds plausible, Noah, until one examines the facts.

     a) The history of Middle-Earth was outlined by Tolkien in the last years of the 1920’s, and the War of the Ring was already part of it.

     b) Tolkien started writing LOTR in 1937– two years before WWII started.

     c) Tolkien himself very vigorously denied LOTR was based on WWII, and went into this in detail. He pointed out, for example, that in a WWII parallel, the Men and Elves would have harnessed the Ring’s power (=atom bomb), not destroyed it.

     That said, of course there can be unconscious influences at work. I think the wounding of Faramir and the death of Boromir may have gained in poignancy from Tolkien’s son Christopher’s service in the Royal Air Force.

147. The books weren’t written till after the 2nd world war though. yes?

     It took me about 15 seconds googling to find various articles discussing the relationship of WW II to LOTR. Suggesting there is a link is just not particularly unusual.

148. Oh…and by 1937 Hitler was already around, and fascism was already a big issue. And the book wasn’t published till 1954! He never revised it in all that time?

149. Here; says one of the most prevalent allegorical interpretations is with WWI and WWII.

     It seems to be a live issue in Tokien scholarship as to how much to link the books to WWII, but it is a live issue, not a settled one.

150. Actually it is settled. He started on elements of the Hobbit in 1917. He wrote the book between 1925 and 1932. Hitler was still involved in his campaign for the presidency. So the mythos had it’s building blocks well before WW2.

     It’s not even debatable. There’s a freakin book on the subject by John Garth called Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth. You probably would have done well to spend an additional 15 seconds on google.

151. Nope. Lots of people suggest he was still writing them well after 1932. And lots of people argue that they’re post war novels. So it’s still being debated.

152. “So the mythos had it’s building blocks well before WW2.”

     Just to note…I don’t really see how it redounds to Tolkien’s benefit to suggest that he basically stopped learning, thinking, or being creatively engaged years before he actually wrote the series for which he’s most famous. The fact that he had an outline or ideas before Hitler came to power doesn’t mean that he was unable to assimilate other ideas after that.

153. Noah:
     “Nope. Lots of people suggest he was still writing them well after 1932.”

     No, they aren’t. Chris was referring to ‘The Hobbit’, not LOTR.

     “And lots of people argue that they’re post war novels. So it’s still being debated.”

     Yes, just as lots of people argue that Intelligent Design is as valid as Darwin’s ‘descent through modification’ theory of evolution. So it’s still being debated.

     Not a single serious scholar considers LOTR to be an allegory or transposition or even allusion to the Second World War.

     Tolkien himself, repeatedly, categorically, going into specific detail, denied many, many times that LOTR was a transposition of WWII. This isn’t just some un-self-aware artiste. Tolkien was for decades an expert historian, literary critic, philologist– as formidable and shrewd an author as ever examined his own output.

     Tolkien, from the introduction to the 2nd edition (apologies for the long quote):

     “This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great War of the Ring and included many glimpses of the yet more ancient history that preceded it. It was begun soon after The Hobbit was written and before its publication in 1937; but I did not go on with this sequel, for I wished first to complete and set in order the mythology and legends of the Elder Days, which had then been taking shape for some years. I desired to do this for my own satisfaction, and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this work, especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of ‘history’ for Elvish tongues.

     When those whose advice and opinion I sought corrected little hope to no hope, I went back to the sequel, encouraged by requests from readers for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures. But the story was drawn irresistibly towards the older world, and became an account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its beginning and middle had been told.

     The process had begun in the writing of The Hobbit in which there were already some references to the older matter: Elrond, Gondolin, the High-elves, and the orcs, as well as glimpses that had arisen unbidden of things higher or deeper or darker than its surface: Durin, Moria, Gandalf, the Necromancer, the Ring. The discovery of the significance of these glimpses and of their relation to the ancient histories revealed the Third Age and its culmination in the War of the Ring.

     Those who had asked for more information about hobbits eventually got it, but they had to wait a long time; for the composition of The Lord of the Rings went on at intervals during the years 1936 to 1949, a period in which I had many duties that I did not neglect, and many other interests as a learner and teacher that often absorbed me. The delay was, of course, also increased by the outbreak of war in 1939, by the end of which year the tale had not yet reached the end of Book I.

     In spite of the darkness of the next five years, I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin’s tomb in Moria. There I halted for a long while. It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to Lothlórien and the Great River late in 1941. In the next year I wrote the first drafts of the matter that now stands as Book III, and the beginnings of Chapters 1 and 3 of Book V; and there as the beacons flared in Anórien and Théoden came to Harrowdale I stopped. Foresight had failed and there was no time for thought.

     It was during 1944 that, leaving the loose ends and perplexities of a war which it was my task to conduct, or at least to report, I forced myself to tackle the journey of Frodo to Mordor. These chapters, eventually to become Book IV, were written and sent out as a serial to my son, Christopher, then in South Africa with the R.A.F. Nonetheless, it took another five years before the tale was brought to its present end; in that time I changed my house, my chair, and my college, and the days though less dark were no less laborious. Then when the ‘end’ had at last been reached, the whole story had to be revised and indeed largely re-written backwards. And it had to be typed, and re-typed: by me; the cost of professional typing by the ten-fingered was beyond my means.

     The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault.

     Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But, even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short.

     As for any inner meaning or ‘message’, it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit. The crucial chapter, ‘The Shadow of the Past’, is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels.

     The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

     Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes of views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers.

     I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author. An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.

     It is also false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the events of times common to both were necessarily the most powerful influences. One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by, it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years.

     By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead. Or to take a less grievous matter: it has been supposed by some that ‘The Scouring of the Shire’ reflects the situation in England at the time when I was finishing my tale. It does not. It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset, though in the event modified by the character of Saruman as developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis in experience, though slender (for the economic situation was entirely different), and much further back.

     The country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when motor-cars were rare objects (I had never seen one) and men were still building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important. I never liked the looks of the Young miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman.”

     But what would the author know?

     Noah
     “Sure…LOTR is about WW II as well. It’s just better, is all.”

154. I have a link above to a reference work on tolkien scholarship that specifically states that linking the books to ww ii is a common position in scholarship.

     Intelligent Design is not being debated among scientists. And, anyway, literary criticism isn’t science, so analogies like that are pretty much completely misleading and useless.

     And no, authors don’t necessarily get to determine the meaning of their work. Tolkien seems to be protesting a lot too much there, it seems to me. That’s an extremely defensive piece, in which he’s attacking his critics. He also seems to believe (or at least writes as if) allegory is the only way that one can comment on or be influenced by current events.

     I mean, it’s certainly interesting to see what he says…but I don’t in any way see it as precluding readings of the book which take note of the fact that he lived through ww ii while he was writing it. On the contrary, he clearly seems very interested in the war, and in how it might relate to his book.

     I’m not saying you have to read it as a ww ii allegory, or as reflecting on or being influenced by ww ii. I’m just saying people do read it that way, and they’re neither insane nor misinformed.

155. They aren’t, but they are simply wrong.

     “I have a link above to a reference work on tolkien scholarship that specifically states that linking the books to ww ii is a common position in scholarship.”

     Very well, if you reject the ‘Intelligent Design’ analogy, what of the ‘Shakespeare Denialism’ movement? Many scholars of impeccable pedigree waste scarce journal space defending the silly proposition that Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford or God knows who wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

     The informed consensus is that this is wrong. It’s a fake debate. And I’d venture to thus characterise the ‘LOTR=WWII’ debate in the same category.

     “And no, authors don’t necessarily get to determine the meaning of their work.”

     That’s a mere article of faith in the post-Derrida landscape; it does have a kernel of truth, however– as Tolkien himself acknowledges:

     ‘I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.’

     This is a surprisingly modern statement, recognising the difference between ‘readerly’ and ‘writerly’ texts, with a decided preference for the former. But this was purposed from the beginning by Tolkien, who otherwise was surely on of the most controlling, planning, cerebral novelists who have evr existed, the man who invented 3 complete languages for his books.

     You would have to go a long way before finding an author as self-aware as Tolkien, as the above text shows. His denial of the LOTR=WWII parallel isn’t a mere lashing out against critics; he goes into detail about why the hypothesis falls apart, both on historic and thematic grounds– in fine, on factual grounds.

     He doesn’t deny that WWII might have influenced LOTR, but his warning on this approach is apposite and wise:

     “An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.”

     Of course, those are exactly the grounds tenured pedants love to till.

     What intrigues me, Noah, is why you would advance the ‘LOTR=WWII’ as an accepted fact? And it’s a curious rod to beat Kirby with, at any rate. Even if LOTR=WWII were true, it still wouldn’t measure up to Kirby’s depiction of WWII in the Losers.

     That said, Chris should chill a bit. The original article was a review of a piece of entertainment that didn’t measure up in the writer’s view. No cause for fury there.

     PS– It’s interesting to read of Tolkien’s contempt for allegory, given his friend CS Lewis’ apologia for it. Lewis adored LOTR; Tolkien detested the Narnia books.

156. Lewis sneered at allegory too, I’m pretty sure.

     “And I’d venture to thus characterise the ‘LOTR=WWII’ debate in the same category.”

     You can characterise it however you’d like.

157. “What intrigues me, Noah, is why you would advance the ‘LOTR=WWII’ as an accepted fact? ”

     I made a off hand comment in the comments of my blog. In parentheses. For christ’s sake.

158. True, there was humor there.

     Actually, Lewis (following Chesterton) made a case for the superiority of allegory over fantasy, which he regarded as a form of mock creation and thereby somewhat blasphemous, whilst allegory was redeemed by being another way of conveying God’s truths.

     I can imagine how Tolkien would have reacted to any such view…

159. Well, Lewis didn’t think of the Narnia books as allegory quite. More alternate history….same with his space books, I think.

     Narnia is better than LOTR, IMO.

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