In a recent thread on Jack Kirby, there was some speculation that Darkseid may have been influenced by Nixon. In comments, Peter Sattler wondered about that and about Kirby’s influences more generally.
I know that this thread is fairly unraveled by now, but it seems that I find myself siding with Russ on simple matters of history. These two things seem likely (with a third question added on):
1. The Nixon of 1970 was not perceived in the same way — even by his opponents — as the Nixon of 1973 and after. That year, Nixon’s approval ratings hovered around 60%. He was viewed (domestically) as a political moderate/pragmatist. Yes this was the time of Cambodia, Kent State, and CSNY’s “Ohio.” But this was also the Nixon who publicly supported the ERA, attempted price controls, backed environmental enforcement (and Earth Day), regulated Big Tobacco, and did not try to stop the progressive agenda of the Democratic Congress.
This is before the Imperial Presidency, the enemies list, and of course Watergate became associated with the man. Sure he was a Cold Warrior, but he was not — I think — seem as a Goldwater or a second-string McCarthy.
My point is not that he’s a liberal — or that’s he’s *really* anything. But I am curious how he was viewed back then. Were other political cartoonists viewing him as a ruthless dictator and power-mad autocrat? Was Kirby — if you accept his version of events — the only one? It seems unlikely.
2. It seems to be a fact that Kirby’s stories about his creative process in the 1960s and ’70s tended to evolve as he grew older, growing more elaborate and even inflated. I am no Kirby exert, but I can recall plenty of doubtful stories about his intentions or thoughts behind The Hulk, Galactus, Dragon Man, and even his own later work — stories that seemed to become embellished with time, making things sound more serious, more poetic.Again, is that the case here? I don’t know. But Russ seems to indicate such a timeline. Has anyone made an effort to track the ways in which Kirby’s stories changed over the decades?
3. I would, finally, like to here what evidence we have for Kirby being a “voracious reader.” I’ve heard this many times, but I am not sure why we think that it is so. (Indeed, if I recall correctly, his wife said that she had few memories of Kirby reading.)
Once again, I have no problem believing Kirby did love to read. I simply wonder how we know this. Do we see evidence of deep reading in his comics? (I, for example, don’t see a deep understanding of evolution in his little essays for, I think, Devil Dinosaur — just a pretty standard, Life Magazine-level images of life and energy and what ‘science now tells us’…. Of course,that is just one subject. fantastically inflected.)
I honestly do not know. But I do know that this blanket claim is often made to link Kirby to other writers or to vouch for his historical accuracy/acumen. On what grounds is it made?
None of these comments is meant to disparage Kirby, for whose work I have no great feeling either way. (Heck, I love Charles Schulz, but I don’t believe that he loved Tolstoy, no matter how many times he said it — and in part because of the number of times he said it.) But the facts behind the discussion interest me nonetheless.
The only people who could answer this would be people who visited or knew Jack in his home. And that doesn’t mean just anyone, because even someone as familiar with Kirby as Mark Evanier didn’t care, or was not observant enough, or just plain doesn’t have the sensibility to notice certain types of things. I think Richard Kyle might have been, but I have yet to talk to him about this specific issue. I know Kirby did have piles of sci-fi pulps, Life magazines, Scientific Americans and a few collections of Druillet’s comics. But did he have a collection of history books, Shakespeare volumes and Dumas novels, did he study Donald Judd’s Specific Objects as he progressively reduced his alien structures to simplified geometric forms, did he have a copy of Raw magazine or Panter’s first cardboard-covered Jimbo book as his art became more cartoony and patterned at the end? I’d like to know, too.
Kirby’s son Neal offered these memories: “Two walls in the Dungeon [i.e. Kirby’s den] were covered in bookcases. Dickens, Shakespeare, Whitman, Conrad, were names I remember seeing, and one of his favorites, Damon Runyon.
There were shelves of mystery and mythology and plenty of science books and they ranged from rocks to rockets, from the inner ear to outer space.”
See here: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2012/04/09/growing-up-kirby-the-marvel-memories-of-jack-kirbys-son/#/0
I think this is a topic that would benefit from actual research rather than speculation. In the case of George Herriman, Michael Tisserand and I have been able to reconstruct a fair bit of his reading just by tracing the allusions in his work. I think something similar can be done with Kirby.
As for Schulz, both the Michaelis biography and other accounts of Schulz (including a long essay by his son) testify to his wide reading and literary culture. He engaged in corresponded with and befriended several writers (Dideon, Ann Tyler), participated actively in a literary festival and even tried his hand at writing a novel. There’s really no reason to doubt his comments on Tolstoy.
As for Nixon and Darkseid, two points. 1. Mark Evanier is someone whose critical opinions I often disagree with but on factual matters I’ve never seen him make a serious mistake or claim something that goes against the evidence. So his testimony carries a lot of weight. 2. Russ I think is conflating his memories of the late 1960s and early 1970s with Kirby’s sense, forgetting that Kirby was a much older man. Kirby was a New Deal Democrat who would have been familiar with Nixon since the late 1940s. New Deal Democrats absolutely hated, hated Nixon since they saw him (quite rightly) as a lite version of Joe McCarthy. Almost every standard biography of Nixon talks about he animosity between him and 1940s/1950s liberals. See Rick Perlstein’s work or Stephen Ambrose’s multi-volume biography.
I disagreed with you often on this blog, Jeet, so, to balance things a bit: great comment! That’s all I have to say… please carry on…
Thanks Domingos! In the spirit not just of reciprocity but also acknowledging a debt I should say that I’ve learned much from your writings and envy your erudition in global comics (particularly in, but not reserved to, Europe & South America)
A further thought on Kirby’s reading: just from his work I think it’s pretty clear he read a lot of pulp science fiction in the 1940s and 1950s (there’s a Kirby story in “The Losers” about a sci-fi fan which suggest some intimacy with that era as well). Of the classical writers, I suspect Kirby felt the closest affinity to Dickens. There’s a lot of Dickens in the New Gods stories, particularly the slum and orphanages that Scott Free grew up in (and even Kirby’s names have a Dickensian feel — compare Darkseid with Murdstone). There’s some Shakespeare influence in Thor (Falstaff being evident).
In Wikipedia, Evanier is quoted as saying Darkseid was based on Hitler — which makes perfect sense. Darkseid had a Red Skull-like air about him, and the Red Skull, historically, was Hitler on steroids.
The other statement allegedly said by Kirby — that Darkseid was his Nixon — also makes perfect sense if said in the mid-1970s. By that time, Nixon was viewed as the contemporary example of “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
I’d have to look up the original Evanier statements but my memory is that Evanier said Kirby was comparing Darkseid to Nixon while actually working on the first run of the New Gods — i.e. before the mid-1970s. Also, it’s not mutually exclusive to say that Darkseid was inspired by Hitler and Nixon. Artists think in metaphorical clusters. In Star Wars, the story is inspired by Arthurian romance, Samurai movies, westerns, World War I and World War II movies. Similarly Kirby’s New Gods and all the characters were drawn from a host of sources melded together.
‘The other statement allegedly said by Kirby” — why “allegedly”? It’s a report from Mark Evanier about something he heard Kirby say during a period when Evanier was working for Kirby. And as I indicated above Evanier is not someone who has a record of making up things and passing them off as facts (whatever disagreements I and others have with him about how to interpret those facts). There is no reason to say allegedly except that you don’t like what Evanier is reporting.
I agree with Jeet on all points, yes, Dickens too of course, but about M.E., he isn’t necessarily the expert on EVERYTHING Kirby, because of his particular taste parameters and because he only worked for Jack for a few years; Steve Sherman was there much longer. And I can’t see why Russ thinks that no one hated Nixon before Watergate…so many of us did!!! And he was already long reviled….commie-baiting, his sweating upper lip in the JFK debate, “I am not a crook” and the “respectable cloth coat”, Tricky Dick, etc.
Thanks for the input, everyone. I did pose these questions in good faith, but I also know that the inquiries (or my phrasings) themselves can be seen as demeaning or disparaging — as if a lunk like Kirby couldn’t possible read, or think against the stream of popular opinion. That was never my intent.
(Although here, too, I have to admit that even my gut reactions have been influences by years in the now-defunct kirby-list. So who knows?)
I am with Jeet on the nature of these questions: they are empirical, or are at least open to bona fide research. And my opinions about, say, Schulz’s range of reading are based on no more research than a familiarity with a wide range of interviews. And in those venues, I never saw any indication that “Tolstoy” was anything other than a catch phrase — kind of a stand-in for great art. And while interviews are always caged in by their questions, I never remember any moments where Schulz talks about a scene, a passage, or even a character that affected him.
For me, it’s not so much a question of whether or not he lied, but of the meanings and motivations behind different kinds of explanations. People explain themselves in different ways, for different purposes — and not all of them are amenable to a truth-test.
But, like you, I really would like to know what Kirby read. Heck, I’m interested in knowing what pretty much any visual artist read, and the extent to which they were influenced by literature. (My last question to Chris Ware was about how poetry affects him as a reader. Short answer: not much, not often.)
I like the image we get above of Kirby’s bookshelves. Pretty standard stuff, for well-appointed middle-class home. But the influences, as Jeet indicates, seem fairly broad (Dickens = orphans). And is there anything wrong with that? Nope.
Does Evanier talk about the Nixon/Darkseid connection at all in his Kirby book? And does he respond to emails to his blogsite? It might be interesting to send him a quick email to ask about the genesis of the character.
And most of you have probably seen this clip, but I’ve always enjoyed this short Kirby interview in Ken Viola’s The Masters of Comic Book Art (1987). Kirby talks about the influence of the Bible as well as “myth and legend” on the creation of Galactus and the Silver Surfer (I detect some Milton in his Surfer comments, too). His miniature history of the evolution of comic strip and comic book art at the end of the clip is also a lot of fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M50Mjdsh_iw
Harlan Ellison frames the interview well in his discussion of the “new universe” Kirby created at DC in the 1970s. The rest of the documentary is also on YouTube. All of the interviews are interesting, but the Moebius one is also worth watching.
Hi James,
“Tricky Dick” does seem far more on target: my question was never about whether someone could hate Nixon, pre-Watergate. Indeed, the “Tricky” label had been put on him at least since the early ’50s. But that seems to speak of a scumbag, not Satan.
(Then again, Helen Douglas, his opponent in the 1950 Senate race, I think, called Nixon a fascist pretty openly. And she was, as you folks note, one of those Nixon-hating New Deal Democrats. So maybe… But doesn’t this already depend on a picture of Kirby as having strong, decades-deep feelings about that former Veep?)
Lastly, “I am not a crook” is from 1973.
All right, this has nothing to do with Kirby anymore, unless someone wants to talk about the nature or strength of his political commitments.
Has anyone made an effort to track the ways in which Kirby’s stories [about his own influences and creative process] changed over the decades?
To my knowledge, no, and that’s a very important question.
Re: Kirby’s reading, what I’ve read to date leads me to think that Kirby read voraciously when younger, but had less time to read, obviously, when he was older: nose to the grindstone, late nights and long days, deadlines weekly if not daily, and so on. I detect in his work a keen interest in the headline news and fads of the day, but a lag between his understanding of, say, SF and what was actually going on at the cutting edge of that genre in the 1960s and 70s. I stress that that’s a mere guess on my part, but, my god, given the back-breaking intensity of his deadlines and commitments, it would be a wonder if Kirby could have continued to devour books and magazines then.
Of course, Kirby was a wonder in so many ways, but, realistically, he didn’t have all the time in the world. The intensification and closing in of his imagination in the late work suggests a mind contained in pressure cooker partly of his own making, always deadline-driven even when cooking up big schemes such as the Fourth World.
Re: cartoonists like Schulz, it’s possible (and indeed Tom Inge has done a lot of work in this area) to see in his strips a record, albeit selective and deferred, of his reading life: his intense interest in Fitzgerald, for example. Schulz often used Peanuts to comment on his cultural events, or rather drew his cultural interests into Peanuts when hitting those daily deadlines. With Kirby, I don’t think there are nearly as many overt references to what he had been reading in the work. The straits of genre, the absurd workload, and Kirby’s own hell-for-leather narrative improvising seemed to rule out overt references to specific texts (beyond the pop culture texts he was busy ripping off and riffing on, as in Kamandi, but in those cases he seemed to be taking off from premises he had heard about, not responding in detail to texts).
To Peter’s point above: “on no more research than a familiarity with a wide range of interviews. And in those venues, I never saw any indication that ‘Tolstoy’ was anything other than a catch phrase”
The thing is, those interviews were conducted by people interested in Schulz who wanted to talk about him and his life, with Schulz’s reading of Tolstoy being a low priority. An interview isn’t like a graduate seminar or oral exam where you have to prove your depth of reading (in my experience I only talk about literature in depth with close friends, rarely in public settings).
A partial exception is Gary Groth’s great Schulz interview, where there is substantial discussion of Schulz’s reading, based partially on the fact that both men were interested in contemporary literature. In that interview Schulz comes across as well-read and opinionated about the books he read.
Another empirical source is Schulz’s actual library, which still exists as far as I know. According to Michaelis, Schulz would underline and put marginal notes in the books he read (Michaelis cites an Updike story collection). So if we wanted to, we could reconstruct Schulz’s readings in a fair bit of detail. I’m not sure if that is actually worthwhile since I’m not sure how much his reading actually influenced his cartooning (the same applies to Kirby: I think surviving the Depression and WWII was a bigger impact on Kirby than the books he read).
I’m with Charles re: Schulz and reading — I think there’s definitely evidence in his cartooning of reading. Biblical references are the most obvious, but (as Charles says) there’s other things too (Snoopy’s garbled novelistic efforts, for instance.) I think it would be pretty interesting to know about his marginal notations myself….
I absolutely believe in Schulz’s erudition. I even wrote a paper in college comparing Peanuts to the aphorism-montage poetry of H.D. There’s a whole thing about Charlie Brown reading “Pilgrim’s Progress” over Christmas break one year.
I would have suspected him more of being a Dostoevsky fan, but what do I know?
Would have suspected Schulz, that is, but maybe Charlie Brown too. Linus more likely.
A further thought on Kirby’s reading: the New Gods has a fair number of Biblical references, often of a fairly complex sort. The series can be read as an alternative creation myth.
What we really need is someone who is very well versed in pulp fiction — especially pulp science fiction — from the 1930s to the 1950s to go through Kirby’s work and figure out sources. One example leaps to mind: I think the X-Men were an outgrowth of Van Vogt’s Slan and maybe Kuttner’s mutant stories.
For the record, here are some (but not all) articles where Evanier makes the Nixon/Darkseid connection
http://www.newsfromme.com/2010/06/26/glorious-godfrey/
http://www.newsfromme.com/2010/02/15/captain-divided-america/
http://www.newsfromme.com/2008/05/21/nixons-the-one-2/
http://www.newsfromme.com/2006/11/10/the-palance-darkseid-connection/
http://www.newsfromme.com/2005/03/10/the-politics-of-captain-america/
http://www.newsfromme.com/2002/03/07/master-villains/
Russ wrote: “In Wikipedia, Evanier is quoted as saying Darkseid was based on Hitler — which makes perfect sense.”
Actually this is what the Wiki entry says: “According to writer Mark Evanier, Jack Kirby modeled Darkseid’s face on actor Jack Palance.[3] Kirby modeled Darkseid on Adolf Hitler and the world of Apokolips on Nazi Germany.”
It’s not clear from this passage that Evanier is the source of anything more than the claim about Jack Palance. It’s possible that Evanier also mentioned Hitler but I’d like to see a quote backing up this claim.
Jeet: “I’m not sure how much [Schulz’s] reading actually influenced his cartooning (the same applies to Kirby: I think surviving the Depression and WWII was a bigger impact on Kirby than the books he read).”
Agreed. And, indeed, it seems to me like the Groth interview (CJ #200) gives us a pretty clear picture of just how scant literature’s influence was on Schulz, where most of those two pages or so give the impression — and then the explicit impression — of a man of a man who is not quite sure where he stands in regards to fiction, literature, “the classics,” etc. A lot of, “Yeah, I read that one” and “No, never heard of him.”
And then the link: “I did a term paper on Katherine Ann Porter.” About there, literature (so-called) becomes “college” stuff, which leads to a somewhat disgruntled exchange about his intelligence or lack thereof.
Which gets me back to Tolstoy. For Schulz and Peanuts, there are references to things like this — but that’s about all they are references. Metonymic stand-ins for “great achievements” or “important culture,” and all that implies. So we see the same cast of characters: War and Peace, Beethoven’s Ninth, van Gogh, and — well — Andrew Wyeth.
Sounds to me like straight-up middlebrow American culture, in the best sense of those words. I’ve always imagined Kirby the same way. Jack the New Deal Democrat and Schulz the Eisenhower Republican would, I imagine, have had a lot to talk about.
Last note: Just flipped through the Schulz: Conversations collection. Definitely a direct reference in there to Tolstoy’s “Bear Hunt.” And the 1957 profile describes Schulz as “yawning through Proust.” I wonder… Sounds like a set-up to a Charlie Brown strip.
@Noah “I think it would be pretty interesting to know about his marginal notations myself….”
Yeah, I think I was too brusque in dismissing the value of this sort of research. Inge’s essay on Schulz and F. Scott Fitzgerald is excellent and more research along this line would be rewarding. I seem to recall a fair number of Tolstoy allusions in Peanuts (some of which were quite subtle). So, yes, it would be great to look at Schulz’s marginalia & also to track the influence of reading in Peanuts.
Hi yet again Jeet.
Thanks for the links. To add to the record, only half those links make a Nixon-Darkseid connection. And, interestingly, the three that do make their cases at very different levels of intensity — one presenting a direct claim about Kirby’s feelings about Nixon (“the most dangerous and sinister human being alive”), one setting up Nixon as sort of a cultural catch-all boogeyman at the time (“a monster du jour” of 1970), and the last denying a direct connection altogether (but insisting on shared actions and traits).
@Peter. It’s a fair point that a lot of the allusions in Schulz (and perhaps Kirby) are superficial cultural markers. But I’m not sure if that’s that’s true of all of them. I think that’s particularly true of the Biblical and theological references (Schulz, I forgot to mention, read a fair bit of theology). Lots here for someone to research.
Jeet,
Re: the Bible and Schulz. Definitely. Indeed, a fair number of the “Gatsby” allusions in Inge’s essay are also Bible references: “Gatsby had a mansion in Jericho.” But when we start worrying too much about the content of 1990s Peanuts, I need to bow out.
@Peter — sorry, I should have said the links are of Evanier talking about Kirby & Nixon. The contradictions are interesting — perhaps they will be smoothed over in the massive Kirby bio that Evanier will one day release. Interestingly, I think Schulz started doing more literary allusions in the 1990s — especially of Tolstoy as well as Fitzgerald. Again, a great research project.
It’s also interesting that we’re just focusing on literary influences. But I think both Schulz and Kirby were also influenced by the visual arts, especially film & painting.
I, too, would love to see more about art and films that really mattered to these two visual creators. The Groth-Schulz interview, sadly, barely touches on these topics — aside from Schulz’s clear and voluble enthusiasm for cartoons and cartoonists. (Then again, maybe that’s the point: cartoonists are the kinds of people who get their inspiration from cartoonists.)
Back to Kirby, I think that the various stories from Kirby’s colleagues and acquaintances give many (and strangely different) pictures of him as a reader. Some tell stories of a man who remained completely up-to-date on the newest works of science fiction. Greg Theakston says that Jack was, to his mind, mainly a reader and lover of histories, who could drop references to obscure military leaders and events on a dime.
And still others — like his wife, Roz — give a very different picture of the part that reading played in his life, and at different times of that life:
Interestingly, the Roz immediately goes onto to say that she and her husband did not go to the movies very often either. But in both cases — with film and with reading — Jack was clearly influenced by the art and books he (ravenously?) consumed in his younger days. It was the movies of his childhood and young adulthood that mattered, that stuck. The same seems to go for Schulz, who talks with much more energy and enthusiasm about westerns and Buck Rogers and Beau Geste than about Citizen Kane and Fellini.
This is a picture of the two creators that I can appreciate.
One last thought, this time from some lines that Pat Ford first introduced me to back in 2007 or ’08. They’re from The Nostaligia Journal, 1976, where Jack talks about inspiration, experience, and his creative process. This may speak as much to these issues of reading and politics as anything, reminding us how much of this engagement with “the world” (where this discussion started) is internal:
Great words.
Jeet — The only reason I said “allegedly” is because I did not have access to any direct quote. Until I do, I can’t be definitive.
As far as comparing Nixon to Darkseid goes, my point is that I think there is some unintentional recollective revisionism going on here. The fact is, Darkseid was a character capable of a level of evil that would make someone like Nixon a piker by comparison. Kirby was a smart guy, and knew about the horrors of a real despot — Hitler — firsthand. Give him some intellectual credit, for pete’s sake!
I don’t much care who Jack modelled Darkseid on. I only went into Nixon to dispute the allegation that everyone bases their opinions on polls. I’m interested in the contents of Jack’s library, but I begin to doubt the question will be resolved, because most people who visited him were more interested in talking to him than observing their surroundings, and in conversing with him, superhero fans would lean towards sci-fi and myth and so he was in the habit of emphasizing those aspects of his work when speaking publicly. My speculations about him being influenced by minimalism, for instance, could have been as a result of him reading about that movement in Life or an art magazine. It is true that his free time was so limited that he could rarely have done more than scan then-popular periodicals for his ideas.
James — Yes, I wish I could have had the privilege of seeing Jack work for just an hour or so, or even just talk to him for awhile. None of the interviews I’ve read ever really explored Jack’s work processes in depth, including research. When I visited Ditko, I asked many artustic process-related questions, including why he approached certain projects the way he did, research methods, etc. I would have done the same with Jack. I sent Kirby a mail interview in 1974, but most of his answers were very brief. If the conversation was in person, however, I would have done follow-ups to try and get him to expound a bit more.
Russ, I’d love to read a piece about your visit with Ditko—-perhaps you have already done one? If so, maybe you could rerun it here? If not, maybe you could consider doing so?
I’d certainly be happy to run such a thing here, if Russ was up for it.
Can’t do it. Sorry.
Oh okay, Russ.
Peter: a friend just refreshed my memory with copies of your old posts from the Kirby list….how could I forget years of interactions with so-called “Kirby fans” whose real interest seemed to be to show Kirby as an essentially ignorant drawing machine who was best when leashed by a “real writer” like S. Lee. Nice to know I don’t need to bother with this discussion any longer.
I don’t think Peter said anything like that here? And he’s sparked a really interesting conversation from my perspective…though obviously mileage will differ in this as in all things….
———————
R. Maheras says:
…The fact is, Darkseid was a character capable of a level of evil that would make someone like Nixon a piker by comparison. Kirby was a smart guy, and knew about the horrors of a real despot — Hitler — firsthand. Give him some intellectual credit, for pete’s sake!
———————–
Indeed so! And, even a “New Deal Democrat” — if Kirby can be characterized thus — could detest Nixon and still keep him in historic perspective.
Nixon was often pitiable (why, when courting Pat he used to drive her to dates she was having with other men!), insecure, capable of at least going out and trying to talk with protesting students…
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104×4295874
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/july-dec11/nixontapes_11-25.html
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-10/politics/politics_nixon-lincoln-memorial_1_timothy-naftali-lincoln-memorial-richard-nixon-presidential-library?_s=PM:POLITICS
…with other good impulses like considering a basic wage for all Americans, whether employed or not. Is this an utterly self-confident, brutal Darkseid? Hardly. Indeed — how have times changed! — he was ‘way more liberal than any modern-day Republican politico, and plenty of Democratic ones.
The latest “New Yorker” featured this article that adds more nuance to this fascinating, intelligent, tragic figure: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2013/02/04/130204crat_atlarge_mallon .
That same TCJ website discussion mentioned Kirby’s Glorious Godfrey being supposedly inspired by Billy Graham. On that vein: http://comicscomicsmag.com/2010/02/billy-graham-as-glorious-godfrey.html …
Oh, and here’s Mark Evanier on those two: http://www.newsfromme.com/2002/03/07/master-villains/
Oh well. That doesn’t sound like me, especially the Stan Lee part, and the Kirby-as-mindless-hack part, and most of the rest. But it’s more than possible that I said some dumb things.
However, James does help me to recall one thing about the old kirby-list. It was the kind of place where, even if your last post tried to say the nicest things about Jack Kirby — in the current case, if you proffered a quote that testified to Kirby’s humility, brilliance, and (in my opinion) the strength of the human imagination — it would still not be nice enough. For some, I guess, nothing can ever be nice enough.
Peter, your points or so-called questions promote a negative view of Kirby; you disparage him as self-indulgent and disengaged with the world, you do everything possible to ignore the documented contemporaneous references imbedded into his work and you dispute his accounts of his contributions to the character/properties he was involved in. But as obviously as the fact that Kirby post-Lee continued to create vibrant and still-profitable concepts, while Lee post-Kirby produced nothing of value, Lee’s credibility was obviously compromised by his testimony that contradicted his own previous statements but still was the primary factor that lost the Kirby’s recent case. By that act, he deprived Kirby’s heirs of ANY part of what even Kirby’s most fervent detractors acknowledge he had a major hand in. That alone should lead you to reconsider whose version of events is more credible.
Re: “Schulz loved Tolstoy”
The mind boggles…
I’m more concerned with this business in the other thread in which the site host and contributor are nodding their heads in agreement that Kirby was mired in solipsism. He was not a sophisticated, erudite man, his influences seem mainly pop cultural, but he was curious and engaged with the world, and the evidence is all over his work. Whatever the true division of labor for his partnerships with Lee and Simon nobody argues that his sole billing projects in the 70s and 80s represented his own vision, and there I would advise these people to look.
James,
I know I should just let this alone, and yet I just keep typing. (I guess you do as well.) Please recall that this “post” of mine was simply a series of statements/questions at the tail-end of a previous thread. I didn’t ask to lead this new parade.
Second, I have never said anything here about Stan Lee, unless you are implying that any questioning of Kirby partly gives credence to the legal/financial case being waged against him. (Lee clearly is in the business of making stuff up.)
Third, I never said or even implied that Kirby was self-indulgent or disengaged. Others may have; I didn’t. Perhaps I do think it is more likely Kirby did not have Nixon in mind in 1970 — and that the Nixon traits become intertwined with Darkseid in time. But that doesn’t speak to Kirby’s character, even if he did make the former claim. Heck, I clearly can’t even remember what I did to piss you off five years ago. Artists tell different kinds of stories, for different audiences, for different reasons.
Fourth, most of my posts in this thread have been about Charles Schulz, a man whose work I admire in the extreme. But do I sometimes question Schulz’s own self-image (or the image that other have foist upon him)? Yes, sometimes, I do. Does that mean I am gainsaying the genius of his work? Not to me, it doesn’t.
Personally, I like the image of Kirby as a ravenously reading kid. But I also like the image of Kirby sitting alone in his Dungeon or office, thinking — the image Kirby gives of himself.
And I like just as much the image of Schulz as a man more comfortable with Westerns than with Welles — and a man sometimes uncomfortable with that middlebrow comfort. (Like many, I feel that Peanuts is often at its worst when struggling for “relevant” gags or “classy” references.)
These images and many of my points above may be factually incorrect. And if that’s the case, I’ll have to change my beliefs. But for now, I find nothing insulting about my pictures of these two artists — much less the work they produced.
I don’t think Nixon was “pitiable,” as I’d save my pity for his victims in Vietnam, Cambodia, and the US. But he was about the opposite of a Kirby-style, larger-than-life supervillain. He was more of a “corrupt, paranoid, seething little creep” kind of villain.
Actually, he was a little like Mole Man, the guy from the first issue of The Fantastic Four. I can picture that guy ranting to his henchmen about stealing money to bribe people so that the Jews and Harvard graduates won’t be able to expose him.
Hmmm, well Peter, yeah, it’s hard to stop, haha. Noah seemed to be quoting you as referring to Kirby’s “doubtful stories”…but his reposting may make your intent in your questioning seem more specific than it is. And I’d hate to be held up for stuff I said in the Kirby list, for one thing because I have had 6 years of additional college education since then! You do make a point about the self-image of artists like Kirby and Schulz—how much do we take that as gospel, or let it color our own view of the work? On TCJ today Greg Sadowski responded to my critique of his omission of Bernard Krigstein’s full-length 87th Precinct comic from his upcoming collection, on the grounds that the artist hated the work. But I think Krigstein made a mistake dismissing the thing so easily. That is partly based on my appreciation of the bizarre tale itself, and partly based on the knowledge that the artist would never again have the opportunity to do a long story—-and so the piece is more significant than Krigstein himself could have known when he dismissed it. And what about that, had it been left up to Alex Toth, he might well have consigned much of his best work to the furnace because he was so relentlessly self-critical? I tend to think Kirby’s talk about myths was a canned spiel that he used by rote because he thought it was what people wanted to hear….I would much rather have heard his real life war stories.
Jack — Bingo! You hit the nail on the head regarding the Nixon/Mole Man comparison. Like the Mole Man, Nixon had this grand view of himself, yet he came across as a sad sort of Rodney Dangerfield persona — always finding a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Democrats tend to forget that they were so unpopular because of Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War that almost any moderate Republican with a pulse could have won the election in 1968.
If you look at the cover I drew for the 100th issue of “The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom,” I show the Mole Man climbing out of a hole in the foreground to conquer the world, not realizing that directly behind him are assembled some of the most powerful superheroes around.
Like Nixon, the Mole Man seemed to walk around with a cloud over his head — perpetually waiting for the inevitable other shoe to drop.
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peter sattler says:
And I like just as much the image of Schulz as a man more comfortable with Westerns than with Welles … (Like many, I feel that Peanuts is often at its worst when struggling for “relevant” gags or “classy” references.)
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Yes, and yes. TCJ.com recently featured an early “Peanuts” strip exemplifying the latter. Would like to link to it, but damn, it sure is hard to find even recent posts in that website…
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Jack says:
I don’t think Nixon was “pitiable,” as I’d save my pity for his victims in Vietnam, Cambodia, and the US.
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What, are we given in life (as was once argued — I kid you not, kids — about sperm: “You don’t want to waste it in promiscuity, because then when you want to father children, it might be all used up”) only a limited store of pity, that should be saved for distribution to the most abjectly victimized?
I’m not the mushiest-hearted person out there, but have no trouble extending (along with the barge-loads of condemnation he deserved) some sympathy for the insecurities, resentments, awkwardness in interpersonal relations (as one of the links I posted earlier attests, he carried cue cards to help him in managing casual chit-chat) of this conflicted man.
How that televised debate with JFK must have rankled! Why, he must have felt like R. Crumb trying to win a popularity contest against Fabio. Here was Kennedy, everything Nixon was not; “old money” (slimily acquired by the family at that), handsome, blond, a “war hero” (as a result of bungling), effortlessly attractive to women (with the womanizer’s contempt for the gender), treating Nixon condescendingly…
I like finding complexity in figures that give plenty of reason to detest; such as reading how Hitler could be a kindly, solicitous boss, inquiring about the health of a secretary’s ailing family-member; even coming across as lovable, when he was utterly delighted and charmed by receiving a letter where some parents told how their little girl wanted to marry Hitler when she grew up.
And — much as I loathe the beady-eyed twerp — relished hearing (as told me by someone who was actually there) details of when word came in of the 9/11 attacks to George W. Bush and his entourage after his reading with a classroom of kids of “My Pet Goat.”
The Secret Service wanted to immediately spirit him and the other officials away to “secure locations.” But Bush refused to go until he was assured that those kids would be made safe. Who’d have thought he had a bit of altruism in him?
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But [Nixon] was about the opposite of a Kirby-style, larger-than-life supervillain. He was more of a “corrupt, paranoid, seething little creep” kind of villain.
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Oh yes, as Herblock “got” from the start:
http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/childs1/Nixon_files/image023.jpg
Shades of “Mole Man”:
http://web.utk.edu/~glenn/Nixon.jpg
“Now, When You Get To This City You Turn Right And Come Up At The Auditorium”: http://photos.state.gov/libraries/amgov/3234/week_2/081308_HerblockNixon_500.jpg
Uriah Heep also comes to mind, with his faux humility and piety…
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James says:
…I tend to think Kirby’s talk about myths was a canned spiel that he used by rote because he thought it was what people wanted to hear…
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Like George Lucas’ (an infinitely lesser creator, needless to say) comparing “Star Wars” to Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey”…
Nice cover, Russ (http://tinyurl.com/b58e2u5). Your politics usually annoy me, but I enjoy your art. Is that you behind the Swamp Thing?
Mike, Oliver Stone is another guy who finds Nixon to be a facinating, conflicted, tragic enigma, etc., and I’ve heard similar descriptions of Ariel Sharon from people who didn’t particularly like him. The thing is, both of those guys helped to kill a lot of innocent people whose facinating, conflicted, tragic, enigmatic personalities we’ll never know about, along with a lot of kids who never got to grow into facinating, complex, tragic enigmas. I guess that’s what bugs me about the “great man” view of history. But I’ll leave it at that, as I don’t want to get into an argument with Russ about the morality of Vietnam or Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.
I’d feel more comfortable with this discussion if people were referencing Kirby’s actual comics. On the one hand, yes, the traits we associate with Nixon today, the woundedness, self-loathing, discomfort in his own skin, private paranoia, are totally absent from Darkseid. Darkseid is an unapologetically brutal, power-hungry tyrant. On the other hand, Darkseid’s tactics are to sow mass hysteria in order to shake loose the “anti-life equation,” a magic formula that confers the ability to control one’s listeners with a word. So Kirby sees Darkseid and his cohorts as using terror and division to advance a dictatorial regime, shades of “Nixonland”. Maybe we never see the private Darkseid, and there were stories waiting to be written there. But his appeal for his followers is very clearly the absolutism and certainty embodied in the massive stone face: look at the things his followers say to him. So I have no problem believing that the overarching Fourth World plot of a covert invasion from Apokolips could have been inspired by Kirby’s feeling that Nixon was sowing a climate of fear, and that it was McCarthyism or Fascism all over again. But it’s that theme he’s tackling, not any one person. Over and over in his appearances, Darkseid as much as tells you he’s an archetype.
Mike: “an infinitely lesser creator, needless to say”
I grew up a much bigger Lucas fan than Kirby fan, so I’d be curious to hear why you think the former is a significantly lesser creator. I never really thought about arguing the two against each other. I guess I’d give it to Kirby in terms of longevity at a certain level of quality, but I still prefer the first 2 Star Wars films to anything Kirby’s done … I mean, if I were going to spend 2 to 4 hours doing something.
James said, “I tend to think Kirby’s talk about myths was a canned spiel that he used by rote because he thought it was what people wanted to hear….I would much rather have heard his real life war stories.”
And Peter absolutely agrees on both counts. The “canned spiel” problem must be particularly hard to avoid when an artist is continually asked questions that emerge from an enamored fan base.
Not that fan-love is bad-love, per se, but it’s a love of a sometimes very intense and circumscribed variety, especially when one is talking about fans of characters and creations.
“I tend to think Kirby’s talk about myths was a canned spiel…”
Then again, someone who creates a family of comics around the title “New Gods,” one which relies comparatively little on the fantasy genre archaicisms but focuses on technology, competing directions for society, mass movements and other contemporary issues, could be interpreted as having thought about the nature and uses of myth from the inception of that project in a more than superficial way.
Okay, Crabby. I shouldn’t have said that the way I did—I have certainly seen Kirby do the myth rap more and less convincingly at various times. It depends on who was asking what I think. There are some good interviews in TJKC where he goes into it pretty seriously. Then there is a tape that Art Spiegelman showed when I was in his Columbia seminar, filmed when Jack was obviously tired and I think ill, late in his life, that was pretty mushy and scrambled and that Art used it to justify his assessment: “See? —he was an idiot”. Grrrrr. So just personally, and caring as little for the goddamned superheroes as I do, I prefer Kirby’s more grounded, real-life based work, which of course exists or I wouldn’t be able to prefer it. As for Nixon, it may seem that he hardly deserves such an imposing villain to be based on him, but tell that to the many human beings who lost their lives because of his actions.
Jack — No, that was my buddy Roy Kinnard.
It was nice getting the opportunity to do the cover for the 100th issue. I had a lot of fun with it!
Charles — Hmmm. Star Wars. That opens up another angle to the discussion. Was Darth Vader a cross between Dr. Doom (which Kirby either created outright or at least had a strong hand in creating) and Darkseid?
Vader was certainly not a Ming clone.
Indeed! Here’s another Darth Vader/Darkseid correlation:
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….Darkseid had briefly been forced by his mother to marry Tigra, with whom he also had a son. After murdering his mother, Darkseid had both Tigra and their son, Orion, banished from Apokolips.
The destructive war with the rival planet, New Genesis, was stopped only with a diplomatic exchange of the sons of Highfather and Darkseid. Darkseid’s second born son [Orion] was surrendered to Highfather…
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkseid
As Orion, in the heat of battle, shows the bestial face of his origin ( http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4irVuZamOhA/S8CaXExcdbI/AAAAAAAAA_Y/RiqS3lGg9eM/s400/Orion+4.jpg ), recall how Luke Skywalker is exhorted while fighting, by his “dark father” and the Emperor, to “give in to the dark side of the Force…”
(That Orion image from this site, where DC’s trashing and exploitation of Kirby’s Fourth World Saga is compared to the destruction of an ecosystem: http://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.com/2010/04/leave-it-alone-no-1-jack-kirbys-new_10.html )
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Charles Reece says:
Mike: “an infinitely lesser creator, needless to say”
I grew up a much bigger Lucas fan than Kirby fan, so I’d be curious to hear why you think the former is a significantly lesser creator. I never really thought about arguing the two against each other…
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Not to wholly trash Lucas — I’ve enjoyed much stuff in his “Star Wars” movies — but consider the…
-Gigantic quantity of inventiveness that Kirby produced: Western, romance, science-fiction, war, crime, horror, humor, superhero tales. His powerful sensibility shining through.
-Imagination of his visual designs. While Lucas had an army of designers (and kudos to him for hiring talents, picking the best work they offered) doing costumes, gadgets, spaceships, aliens for his movies, Kirby did all that and the equivalent of cinematography, film editing, direction by himself. And, he often wrote, too!
-As a writer, for all the “funkyness” of his prose and dialogue, Kirby beats the Lucas of “Star Wars” hands-down. (Hard to believe this was the same guy who’d scripted the charming “American Graffiti.”) It’s painful to see talented thespians struggling with some of Lucas’ clunky lines of dialogue. Plotwise, Kirby wins, too, esp. in that masterpiece, “The Glory Boat,” with its dissolution and transformation: http://geoffklock.blogspot.com/2009/07/jack-kirbys-new-gods-6.html )
(This last panel from “The Glory Boat” reminding of Ulysses having himself lashed to the mast to resist the song of the Sirens, Ishmael’s survival at the end of “Moby-Dick”: http://matthewslikelystory.blogspot.com/2011/03/final-panel-new-gods-6-glory-boat.html )
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I still prefer the first 2 Star Wars films to anything Kirby’s done…
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I’ll never forget melting into the theater seat with awe as the huge spaceships swooped overhead at the beginning of the first (and, overall, best) “Star Wars”; whooping with delight as Han Solo zoomed in to the rescue at the attack on the Death Star. But, Lucas didn’t even direct the 2nd one; which many consider the best! (I favor the more heartfelt, innocent first “Star Wars”…)
BTW, while researching, ran across this piece, where sections (esp. re “The Hunger Dogs,” which I — incredibly, for such a Kirby-phile — never have read) add nuance to Darkseid, making him far more “Nixon-ish”:
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The [“Mr. Miracle”] story does, however, end in…a unique portrayal of Darkseid. We’re all so used to the character being depicted as the ultimate evil in the DC Universe that it’s kind of shocking to see the odd humanity of the character in this book. Kirby’s Darkseid is evil, absolutely, but he’s also oddly vulnerable and complex. It’s interesting to see Darkseid philosophize, and it’s difficult to not see Kirby really believing Darkseid’s words…
[In “Armagetto”] …along with that epic feel is an interesting sort of sadness. Only Kirby could portray Darkseid saying lines like, “I could use a friend. Desaad, perhaps. He was a strange one, but he had the gift of finding humor… where none could thrive.” When Darkseid resurrects Desaad using his memories of his friend, Darkseid finds to his great sorrow that the resurrected Desaad is not truly the man he missed….
[In “The Hunger Dogs”] Most tragically, Darkseid is never able to transcend his weaker impulses in the way that Orion was able to. Though he sees himself as strong, Darkseid is never quite able to give up his passion for evil. He even sows the seeds of his own destruction, as the very forces of terrorism that Darkseid unleashes are used against him to destroy Apokolips. Good actually has triumphed over evil. The victory is not simply because of a battle, but also because good people can actually defeat their evil impulses. Bad people simply have a harder time turning good.
Ultimately it’s hard not to feel sympathy for Darkseid. Shockingly, by the end of “The Hunger Dogs,” Darkseid has become a tragic hero, a man brought down from the heights of power by his own hubris. The most tragic element of it all is that Darkseid is fully aware of his failings, but seems incapable of ever transcending them. Orion, his son and greatest enemy, has grown and changed. But Darkseid can never change. He may be a feared monarch, but ultimately he is a pitiable character. “Life is at best bittersweet” for Darkseid and there is little hope for things to improve for him.
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More, at http://www.comicsbulletin.com/columns/4262/this-bittersweet-life-jack-kirbys-fourth-world-omnibus-vol-4/
And yes, I’m perfectly aware of the countless thousands who suffered and died as a result of Nixon’s actions. And let us not forget his cohort in criminality, Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize winner, multimillionaire (check out the dirty deeds of his company: http://publicintelligence.net/kissinger-associates-inc/ ), revered as an Elder Statesman.
In “Hitch-22,” Christopher Hitchens recounts his visit to right-wing-ruled Argentina, and mentions…
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Do you know why General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina was eventually sentenced? …Because he sold the children of the tortured rape victims who were held in his private prison.…And this subhuman character was boasted of, as a close friend and genial host, even after he had been removed from the office he had defiled, by none other than Henry Kissinger.
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(Emphasis added)
Peter Sattler: “Do we see evidence of deep reading in his comics? I, for example, don’t see a deep understanding of evolution in his essays for Devil Dinosaur…”
Wouldn’t he need to be a scientist to do that? It’s one thing to “understand” evolution, another to write about it on the level of an article for Scientific American. It seems like the prosecution is swinging from accusations of extreme ignorance, last post, to expectations of extraordinary erudition.
For Darkseid to have been inspired by Nixon would have required Kirby to have known who was president and to have cultivated a dislike for him. That’s the guys who hang out at my 24 hour diner.
“It seems to be a fact that Kirby’s stories about his creative process in the 1960s and ’70s tended to evolve as he grew older, growing more elaborate and even inflated. I am no Kirby exert, but I can recall plenty of doubtful stories about his intentions or thoughts behind The Hulk, Galactus, Dragon Man, and even his own later work — stories that seemed to become embellished with time, making things sound more serious, more poetic.”
First, is there a reason those three examples are Stan Lee co-creations? Because that’s another argument; what is Galactus without those antlers. But let’s take his own creations. The creative process is intuitive; an artist doesn’t draw up charts and crunch equations and produce a character, and so an artist’s insight into his work can change over the years. The New Gods, Thor, and the Eternals are at least evidence that he wasn’t forcing the myth angle onto his work after the fact. My research has led me to suspect Kirby was familiar with Erich Von Daniken, Planet of the Apes, and 2001.
The problem with calling him out for using a canned “myth rap” for interviews and convention appearances is that a) anybody would develop a spiel for hundreds of those occasions, and b) his own writing can be observed as a kind of “myth rap” from the time he handles his own scripts; one could argue he imbibed the cultural zeitgeist of the 70s too well. At what point is that just his writing? And I guess it is kind of bullshit, in the sense that he’s not producing verifiable information about the universe. But how do you prosecute that? Is Devil Dinosaur the same kind of truth-claim as a diorama in the Creation Science Museum? David Bowie, isn’t it true that you have never actually been to space?