This article, and the others in the set, were the reason I recognised your name when I came across it in Live Journal and the reason why I 'friended' you in the first place. I'd read them all recently when I found a box of old fanzines in the attic and re-read them. (I really miss print comic fanzines - are there any still out there?)
I'm one of those people who didn't like much about Kirby's return to Marvel and the articles sent me back to re-read those old books again. Nothing in my reading changed my mind about this part of Jack's career. I still loathed his Captain America and Black Panther and the Eternals left me totally cold. 2001 was slightly different. I had not read this series since shortly after it first came out, the issues remaining sealed in their plastic bags in a box marked Kirby. Somehow every time i'd opened that box up something else had caught my attention.
As I read them, I found that it was difficult to argue with very much of what you were saying in your article, the themes, the ideas were all there. But there was something else going on, I wasn't enjoying the books. It was a struggle to finish them. With the exception of panels here and there the art didn't seem to match up to his older work and there was nothing that stuck in my mind like pages from the FF, New Gods or even The Demon.
I've often asked myself what the difference was between the later period Kirby books that I liked and those that I did not. Why did I always enjoy the inconsistant and derrivitive Kamandi and find his Marvel stuff so difficult to read. Why was it that Eternals bored me and Captain Victory was a book I waited for impatiently as each issue came out?
I did think that Kirby's layouts were never quite as exciting again after New Gods, his artwork seemed to become compressed somehow. I did think that he was quite poor with dialogue and pacing and I have always believed that he needed a collabarator to filter ideas, but none of that fully explains my reaction to the Marvel work. Especially my disinterest in 2001 and Eternals, I just didn't like it.
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Date: 2008-04-17 10:31 am (UTC)I'm one of those people who didn't like much about Kirby's return to Marvel and the articles sent me back to re-read those old books again. Nothing in my reading changed my mind about this part of Jack's career. I still loathed his Captain America and Black Panther and the Eternals left me totally cold. 2001 was slightly different. I had not read this series since shortly after it first came out, the issues remaining sealed in their plastic bags in a box marked Kirby. Somehow every time i'd opened that box up something else had caught my attention.
As I read them, I found that it was difficult to argue with very much of what you were saying in your article, the themes, the ideas were all there. But there was something else going on, I wasn't enjoying the books. It was a struggle to finish them. With the exception of panels here and there the art didn't seem to match up to his older work and there was nothing that stuck in my mind like pages from the FF, New Gods or even The Demon.
I've often asked myself what the difference was between the later period Kirby books that I liked and those that I did not. Why did I always enjoy the inconsistant and derrivitive Kamandi and find his Marvel stuff so difficult to read. Why was it that Eternals bored me and Captain Victory was a book I waited for impatiently as each issue came out?
I did think that Kirby's layouts were never quite as exciting again after New Gods, his artwork seemed to become compressed somehow. I did think that he was quite poor with dialogue and pacing and I have always believed that he needed a collabarator to filter ideas, but none of that fully explains my reaction to the Marvel work. Especially my disinterest in 2001 and Eternals, I just didn't like it.
Oh, couldn't agree more about Nausicaa.