Pencils by Jack Kirby; inks, Mike Thibodeaux; colors, Craig Yoe. Copyright Walt Disney Company
The late, great cartoonist Jack Kirby (1917-1994) is chiefly remembered for his epic superhero and awe-inspiring science fiction creations. But over his long career he dabbled in every known popular genre — often to surprising result.
What to make of this, for example?
It’s a strip proposal for a Valley Girl series, loosely based on the early-eighties hit song by Frank Zappa (1940-1993). A case of an old-timer trying to muscle in on the latest thing?
Not quite. It turns out that Kirby drew it at the suggestion of Zappa himself; the two California residents were friends.
Frank Zappa and Jack Kirby
Despite belonging to the ‘greatest generation’ that came of age in the Depression and fought WWII, Kirby was very much open to the pop culture of the young. In turn, pop artists often hommaged or appropriated his work. Case in point: Paul McCartney and his post-Beatles band, Wings, produced a ditty titled ‘Magneto and the Titanium Man’.
Jack, the creator of Magneto, was delighted. And it came to pass, in 1976, that Kirby met McCartney backstage at a Wings concert:
Linda McCartney, Paul McCartney, and Jack Kirby
Kirby later portrayed Paul, Linda and the band alongside Magneto, as a gift for the singer:
The cartoonist Jim Woodring reports that Kirby was part of a rock band at the animator Ruby-Spears back in the ’80s.
**************************************************
Kirby was also involved in an extremely bizarre case of international intrigue.
A Hollywood producer hired him to design the costumes and settings for a film based on Roger Zelazny‘s myth and SF novel, Lords of Light. Kirby was also retained to conceptualise a grandiose theme park for the same party:
Like most such megalomaniac ventures, the twin projects came to nothing.
But the enterprise had a strange aftermath.
In 1979, a mob of Iranian students occupied the United States embassy in Teheran, taking all its personnel hostage. Six employees of the American consulate, however, managed to escape capture and were hidden by the Canadian embassy.
The CIA, in cooperation with Canadian authorities, devised a plan to exfiltrate the Americans by having them pose as location scouts for a fictional upcoming Hollywood movie. The agency chose for the non-existent film project the Lord of Light script, retitled Argo.
And so, along with the script, Jack Kirby’s numerous pre-production drawings were flown into Iran, where they were issued (along with fake Canadian I.D.’s) to the beleaguered Americans, who were able to fly out of the country to freedom.
This bizarre story was the subject of the well-regarded 2012 fictionalised film, Argo, directed by Ben Affleck; alas, Kirby’s drawings were not used.
I’m still mourning that awesome theme park.
**********************************************
In May 1972, Kirby published a strip in an unusual genre (reportage) and an unusual venue (the slick Esquire magazine) for him: a three-page re-telling of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedy’s assassin, by Jack Ruby. Here’s the third page, with inks by Chic Stone:
Kirby’s career encompassed so many genres, though, that perhaps it’s inaccurate to describe any of his work as an oddity. It’s still a trifle jarring to encounter the following work from the beginning of his career: a political cartoon.
All drawings by Jack Kirby — under various pseudonyms.
The image at the top of this column is from Craig Yoe‘s The Art of Mickey Mouse. Here’s a rejected Kirby drawing for the same book:
Truly a Jack of all trades!
Alex here — the above is the first of an occasional series of posts I’ve been researching, Oddity,pointing out unusual works by cartoonists. Also coming up are Albert Uderzo, E.P.Jacobs,Steve Ditko, Neal Adams and Al Plastino.
Suggestions for further study gratefully accepted.
Hey Alex, cool stuff, I particularly like the Jack Ruby strip with color by Jack. Here’s a link to sources about the Kirby/LoL/CIA/Argo business, including the pretty comprehensive work that Marguerite and I did on the subject early on, well before the Wired article that Ben Affleck optioned for his film:
http://kirbymuseum.org/2012SeptLOLSFLA
Great stuff! Thanks for sharing…
You’re welcome, Mike;
James, I didn’t know you and Marguerite had investigated that wild tale!
I still think it’s a shame the movie didn’t use Kirby’s designs…
Fun. Stream of consciousness, as I read: “Cool. Hang on, is this an April Fool’s thing…? Ha, didn’t know that about Argo, seems like the filmmakers missed a marketing opportunity to mention how it tied in with art from the co-creator of The Avengers, Captain America, The Hulk, Thor, etc.
“…oh wait, except of course Kirby didn’t co-create any of those exciting intellectual properties, duh.”
The prospect of Kirby designing a theme park based on Lord of Light is…I don’t even know how to describe that. I just read that book this last year, and, although it had never occurred to me until just now, it is really just straight-up Thor 101.
I went through a serious Zelazny phase way back when. Lord of Light was definitely the high point.
The Kirby connection was the main reason I was interested in Argo, but I’ve heard they left him out completely. Although there’s apparently a deleted scene involving him, so maybe I’ll check it out on DVD.
AB — Yeah — the storyboards in the film weren’t even good Kirby ripoffs. They were pretty blah. I’d have done some great Kirby clone-work if Affleck had only known to ask me.
I went to the “Argo” premier by the way, and Affleck MC’d it just about 20 feet away from where I was sitting. Most of the major stars were there, including executive producer Clooney. Some of the State Department folks involved in the 1979 event were also there, including Tony Mendez, who Affleck plays in the film. An interesting unrelated side note is that a different Toni Mendez — this one a female — was Milton Caniff’s long time agent and friend.
Cool, Russ!
Zelazny– I’ve read just about evrything he’s written. I’d especially recommend ‘Jack of Shadows’.
Around 1980 Byron Preiss edited ‘The Illustrated Roger Zelazny’, with dazzlingly pretty art by Gray Morrow. But Morrow seemed a little too tame for this writer (although his restraint and delicacy worked beautifully on his adaptation of ‘A Rose for Ecclesiastes’.)
Nope, Zelazny’s volcanic excesses and feverishly prolific imagination practically shouted out for Kirby.
Alas, ’twas not to be…
Oh, yeah…forgotten Jack of Shadows. That was a good one. I liked the amber books too (at least the first few….
As we implied in our article, it seems doubtful that a Lord of Light theme park was ever seriously considered and I wonder if a film was even really on the table. One does not make the sets for a film to the same stringent standards and consideration for the safety of the public that buildings and rides in a theme park would certainly require. The CIA’s plot followed the dissolution of the alleged film by a ridiculously short period of time. There is such an atmosphere of bullshit on every level of the story, that I am inclined to think the whole thing was a CIA setup to begin with. And as we found from talking to Kirby family friends, Kirby himself was aware of the CIA’s plot well before it was declassified, which makes it all the more pathetic that he was deprived, by Affleck or whoever thought it was appropriate to leave him out, of yet more credit for his brilliant work.
I agree 100%, James — but then, my parano-meter is permanently in the red zone…
Good call on the Jack Ruby pages being colored by Kirby. I thought as much, because the palette is so close to that of Kirby’s paintings.
Still, I’m frustrated because I STILL don’t know who wrote the furschluggener script! Too robotically factual for Jack, wouldn’t you say?
Re the filmmakers leaving Kirby and “Lord of Light” out of “Argo,” a few possibilities:
-The movie lawyers might’ve preferred to feature a wholly fictionalized “property,” the better to avoid any possible legalistic complications with the Zelazny and Kirby estates.
-Wouldn’t the Affleck flick have thus been confusingly named “Lord of Light,” the name of an actual existing work?
-Kirby’s designs were too good, too spectacular and eye-poppingly brilliant, to be featured in “Argo” as part of the plans for a cheesy low-budget SF flick.
Wonderful stuff. Alex, if you’re reading, where did you find all this?
I bought a couple issues of Kirby Collector a while back, and it had a series of drawings Kirby did of God coming back and looking over his creation. Also wonderful.
I agree, Tom!
I have a typical fanboy mind for trivia…then Google Images helps me out.
I heard that copyright holder Barry Geller and/or the Kirby family wanted some compensation for the use of the art in the film and that Affleck declined, although he had been happy enough to pay Wired (who cited none of their sources for their retread article: Jim Steranko, John Morrow, Marguerite and I) for their dubious contribution to our knowledge of the escapade. In the end though, certainly Kirby’s over-the-top work gave the spooks the confidence to pull their scam off and so the omission of his art from the film takes away from the believability of the whole.