After I wrote a post about my disappointment with Jack Kirby’s run on Jimmy Olsen comics, Chris K wrote a lovely defense of Kirby, which is reprinted below.
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.
Pretty much all of his comics really are unsatisfying on a fundamental level – unfinished, poorly sketched out, compromised…
Well, no. There are polished gems scattered throughout, on an issue by issue level. If you’re talking longer series, yes, I concede that: I don’t think there’s a Kirby series of any significant length that doesn’t hiccough and falter from time to time. Why this is so, I think you’ve expressed very well:
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.
Yes. Agreed with whole heart.
Hey, Charles,
Yes, the flaws across longer series are what I was getting at; I wasn’t clear about that. Noah was discussing the collected Olsens and I carried it to the complete Mister Miracle series.
I completely agree that Kirby is frequently brilliant in bursts – “Himon” is a classic example. But Kirby’s career is very vaudeville… his comics run on a “Strike the set boys! On to the next show!” energy that often threatens to shake the stage apart, but that means you have to listen to the floorboards creak and sit through blown lines a lot of the time. And watching a complete run of a vaudeville show just does not give the same tightly controlled long-term experience as, say, a DVD set of an HBO series (not to say that that was Noah’s objection). But looking at each individual comic as an individual performance by a committed artist out to give the most bang for the buck and still fulfill his artistic urge is a thrill. For me, at least.
And, hey, speaking of the most vaudevillian Kirby book… After I had made that original comment, I did pull out and re-read the entire run of Mister Miracle, and, somewhat to my surprise, enjoyed the hell out of it this time around. It read much better than I had remembered from years earlier, although the flaws that I brought up were still there. (The Doctor Bedlam story is a textbook example of “Awesome Cliffhanger / Lame Resolution.”) Re-reading it conscious of the drawbacks going in actually allowed me to take them in stride, and just enjoy Kirby’s performance as performance.
Chris K: “enjoy Kirby’s performance as performance.”
That’s the problem with most comics sacred cows. What they did is virtuosity, not great art.
Oooh, it’s not “great art,” fit to stand alongside “King Lear” and Goya’s “The Shooting”!
Therefore, Kirby is a “sacred cow”; a mere bovine absurdly given totally undeserved admiration and appreciation.
Rather than his work simply expressing slick technical ability and little more, Kirby’s art had vision, imagination; an explosive brashness of inventiveness.
I love Dr. Bedlam:
http://www.tcj.com/bedlam-and-baby-parables-of-creation-in-jack-kirby-and-chris-ware/