Matt Brady left a stirring defense of Jack Kirby on Domingos’ recent post. I thought I’d highlight it here.
I love, love, love me some Kirby, and “Himon!” is one of my all-time favorite comics stories (it’s the one I wrote about in the Team Cul de Sac zine), so I feel like I’ve gotta argue against this piece somehow, but I doubt anything I say will have much impact or change anybody’s mind. Still! I feel like every argument against the King here is a reason I like his work so much, and I see complexities and fascinating art where Domingos sees loud, violent simplicity. The take on good and evil might be black and white, but there’s depth to it, a reflection of how Kirby saw the world. Darkseid is more than just an evil dictator, he’s THE dictator, the very face of Fascism, wanting to subjugate and control everyone and everything. Mister Miracle is Kirby himself, learning to live through oppression and escape to inspire others, and his love for Barda is what keeps him going. Orion (a counterexample to the good=pretty, bad=ugly divide, given that he hides his Apokaliptian visage behind a Mother Box-created facade) is the warrior struggling to use his power for good and fight the evil that spawned him. Yes, it’s all loud, brash, explosive, but it’s pitched at the level that suits the conflicts, stirring the heart with the primal battles of good and evil.
And there’s more depth in the use of violence too. A scene in which Orion loses control and savagely beats an evil fiend to death while laughing maniacally is powerful in its evocation of the way the urge to violence can be seductive. In “The Death Wish of Terrible Turpin!”, a regular human gets in the middle of a fight between Orion and another New God, and he is nearly beaten to a pulp, the damage to his frail body evident and monstrous, a horrible reminder of the way war chews people up and spits them out. This stuff isn’t just punches and explosions for kicks; Kirby examined the meaning behind his bombast and made us feel it on an emotional level as well as a visceral one.
Even the glorification of technology is far from universal; most of Kirby’s cosmic machines were impossibly huge contraptions that loomed over characters and landscapes, frighteningly incomprehensible in their functions. As much as he might have reveled in the coolness of futuristic machinery, Kirby demonstrated how it can and will be used for control and death.
I dunno, I hope Charles Hatfield or somebody will show up and mount a better defense of this stuff than I can. I agree that most superhero comics can be dismissed as “corporate-owned dreck”, but not Kirby. He’s got so much more going on than black and white morality, simplistic characters, technological fetishism, and glorification of violence. I might not be able to do it very well, but I’ll defend him to my dying day.
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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.
I feel this.
Characters don’t always need to have psychological depth. If you’re making a realistic novel/film/comic, yes, you need characters with naturalistic characterization. But if you’re doing other kind of things, they are not necessary. In case anyone needs some “reference of authority”, Žižek often distrusts the “psychological depth” of fictional characters; his argument on this aspect is pretty convincing, see his ‘The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime’. The same goes for manichaeism (a classic cliché of superheroes, needless to say, like the fist fights).
Anyway, the 1970s Kirby is pure abstraction, and this abstraction is what allows open to multiple readings allegory, not necessarily literal readings. The genre clichés, taken to the extreme, also allow the same. They can leave behind their banal meaning, opening to endless readings depending on the reader. I think Kirby got this partly unconsciously, but he did. Otherwise, this Kirby has obvious excesses, I don’t idealize these works as “comic perfection”, but I think those excesses are compensated by the achievements. Actually, sometimes those excesses does allow the stuff to work on another level.
In short, I think Matthew is right. Also in the critical, skeptical vision of war that Kirby offers in Fourth World, or dubious heroes like Orion, as Matthew suggests. ( “The Death Wish of Terrible Turpin!” is a good example, indeed).
And about the ‘triumph of the will’, Domingos – well, the concepts don’t have only one meaning, I mean the common meaning we usually associate with them (especially when the Nazis or fascism comes into the conversation!). The triumph of the will can be understood, as did the Nazis, to invade countries and impose your worldview violently on others –a totalitarian and racist worldview, etc. But the triumph of the will according to Kirby always alluded to the will for overcoming the difficulties of life and surviving them, also here in these comic books. ‘Never give up’, no matter how hard life is or what it throws on you. Very American, yes. That is Kirby’s personal theme, is in all his comics, because he saw his own life in those terms, like Turpin-Kirby in New Gods. And this is his personal theme because Kirby was just that: the “ghetto kid”, the worker that could survive the hardships of life, like Turpin does not yield to the blows of Kalibak and finally survives. That is the “triumph of the will” according to Kirby. I see nothing fascist about it.
Domingos, no need to remember here in Spain, Portugal and other countries we have a huge economic slump, with corrupt political parties, etc. If I don’t trust my will now, the will to keep working hard to survive, I have nothing to hold on to keep fighting. Call it myth if you want, of course. But every human beings need myths, personal or collective, to build their lives, to conceive and make things, to ultimately survive and put food on the table for their children. Just like Kirby did his whole life.
PS. Indeed, Kirby not only fought literally against the fascists in Europe during WW II. Throughout his life he despised behaviors close to that kind of fascist thinking, as McCarthy’s witch hunts.
Cheers
I didn’t say that psychological depth is always needed.
I answer to the “abstraction fallacy” in my post (reread, please).
I don’t call it myth, I call it kitsch.
Ok, Domingos, I’m on my way to the original post.
I think some people are getting Kirby’s personal life and his creative life all mixed together as if it was all one big work of art. Yeah, he did go through a lot of adversity. As have a lot of other people. That doesn’t change the fact that most knowledgeable people outside the comics world no doubt if they saw his work would think it’s pretty fucking dumb.
Not that certain pages of his lack for charm, of course. It’s just the dumbness is pretty glaring. But hey, I agree the Silver Surfer is cool.
Kirby’s art is really weird and striking though in a way that I think could easily work for a lot of people, whether interested in comics or not.
@steven: “getting Kirby’s personal life and his creative life all mixed together as if it was all one big work of art. Yeah, I did go through a lot of adversity. As have a lot of other people ”
Indeed, but I particularly didn’t say so. Just wanted to remember the background of Kirby to interpret his worldview and the ‘triumph of the will’ (if we’re going to call it that way) as he understood that ‘will’, in my opinion.
(I know Domingos said ‘fascism’ in a broader aesthetic sense, but then the talk ended with the ‘triumph of the will’ in Kirby, etc.)
“his work would think it’s pretty fucking dumb”
I prefer to call it naivité. To some extent.
(I wrote the following in response to Domingos’ predictable Kirby-bashing. Then at the end, considered it was more of a “fit” here, laden as it was in praise of the King…)
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Domingos Isabelinho says:
Charles: “[…] such great eye candy that I don’t care and love them anyway — which is probably the best defense of Kirby, too.”
That’s not a defense at all in my book.
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And, later…
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Charles Reece says:
…Domingos is pretty much right about the content, kids’ comics or not. I have similar problems reading Gardner Fox comics — it’s all so blandly mechanical at the same time as not making a lick of sense. Some of Barks’ comics, which I recently read for the first time, actually had some depth to them. When I read intellectual re-descriptions of what Kirby was doing with his narratives, they never remotely resemble the actual comics.
[But…] I don’t have a problem with eye candy. A well-crafted thing is a well-crafted thing. I also can appreciate the aesthetics of action/violence — few people do it really well, so why is that less important than depicting relationships, or whatever?
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Let us recall that, for Domingos, the writing in a story must be every bit as great as the art; ere the entire thing is utterly worthless garbage.
(If Domingos gripes he wasn’t actually as thoroughly dismissive as that: what, you don’t like the persona you’ve worked so hard to build up for yourself? It’d be like Anton LaVey [ http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e5/Anton_LaVey_photo.jpg/220px-Anton_LaVey_photo.jpg , http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1B3_-ff27nk/T2nkMeu6JLI/AAAAAAAAAFo/swZCMgVgbrc/s1600/anton.jpg ] griping that he’s actually a nice, “jes’ folks,” wholesome kind of guy. And I sure do recall a comment along those lines…)
Yet, who says we cannot greatly value certain characteristics of a work of art, dismiss others?
For instance, I’m told that in opera, the lines being so bombastically sung, making tears stream from the audience’s eyes, can be utter banalities like “Open the…window!” It would probably take a Domingos to dismiss opera aficionados as lowbrow fanboys, yet they’re universally considered an erudite, sophisticated bunch.
So if in opera the characters are two-dimensional, the plot machinations ludicrous, the wording of the lyrics banal…
…are not opera audiences then appreciating the “eye candy” of lavish sets and costumes, “ear candy” of glorious music and singing?
With the insipid characters and narratives mere raison d’êtres for that which delights the eye and ear?
Likewise, one can exceedingly appreciate Kirby’s visual artistry, considering similarly the stories as raison d’êtres for the creation of powerfully kinetic action scenes…
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http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qAuq6a54Wpk/Tz_t_0xDdaI/AAAAAAAAF9o/B-i-3CUOADg/s1600/Jack+Kerby+New+Gods.jpg
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/heardmentality/ca1.jpg
http://welcometotripcity.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cap.batroc.KIRBY_.jpg
http://www.theawl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/pic7-e1342698092681.jpg (Actually, aside from Cap’s shield smashing the goons’ helmets, these figures are in a moment of frozen stasis; yet look what power and energy is compressed in this two-dimensional space, all the more effective in its stylized near-abstractedness for the lack of “realistically” shaded computer-coloring.
Again, barely an action scene, yet here how forcefully sculptural is the frozen energy on display: http://www.comicscube.com/2010/06/top-ten-most-influential-comics-artists_08.html
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…panoramas teeming with vitality…
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A Depression-era scene from “Street Code”:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uiiNcTY7WOs/UA5rBDe7bWI/AAAAAAAADB8/CTLsreY_nzo/s1600/streetCode05-06.jpg
…which, with not even one millionth the budget, managed in a single image to outdo with seething vitality the spectacularly re-created 1900s New York tenement street sets and scenes in Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II” (Not much in the way of good pictures online, alas: http://feminema.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/rober-de-niro-godfather-part-2.jpg )
What a scene, featuring an inventively varied cast of characters: http://www.theawl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/pic12-e1342698486390.jpg
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…mind-boggling machineries (what two-hundred-million-dollar Hollywood SF epic, with an army of top-of-the-line production designers, ever came up with such spectacularly imaginative gadgetry as Kirby?)…
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http://www.comicbookdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Captain-America-issue-109-splash-by-Jack-Kirby.jpg
http://kirbymuseum.org/gallery2/d/14893-4/Fantastic_Four-065-p16-p3.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YKPd1gUPBrw/SQu9IrQKylI/AAAAAAAABp8/q952rBYCmGA/s400/landing.jpg
http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/365fourth/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/FearMachineNG2pg11_sml.jpg
(OK, so it’s not a comic panel) “Ghost in the Machine,” detail: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UmBV-L0GusA/T0Kbuexh2lI/AAAAAAAAM-s/MN15o24NH_M/s1600/jack+kirby.+portfolio+piece.+004.jpg . The whole: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_YKPd1gUPBrw/TQV5uIUpfLI/AAAAAAAAFpI/3UnWFr0OXmI/s1600/computer%2Bpic%25282%2529.jpg
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Why, Kirby could put more drama into a frozen tableaux…
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http://cityoftongues.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/2800806039_f8710e2ac7_o2.jpg
http://www.theawl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/pic9-e1342698235684.jpg
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…than, again, some lavishly-financed filmic spectacle, aided by swooping cameras, dramatic editing, booming John Williams score and soundtrack.
Greg Theakston on Kirby’s working methodology: http://kirbymuseum.org/jackmagic
Pshaw! When I posted,
“Again, barely an action scene, yet here how forcefully sculptural is the frozen energy on display: http://www.comicscube.com/2010/06/top-ten-most-influential-comics-artists_08.html ”
…It’s the Thor tapping Hercules’ chin panel I was referring to; thought the link led to the large view…
MG, I just deleted your comment for obvious reasons. Keep it civil please.