RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books JACK KIRBY: A tribute to the King...

Yeah, Kirby's FANTASTIC FOUR run, aside from building the Marvel universe, showed a range of different work from Kirby, as his style evolved over 10 years on FF, arguably the 10 years of his career where his art style changed the most drastically.

For me it's a little inconsistent as a series, from FF 1-102, because the art style and storytelling changes so much over that 10 years. Although I still enjoy it.
From Kirby's 60's Marvel era, sometimes I prefer Kirby's FF run, sometimes I prefer his JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY/THOR run. Both are filled to bursting with creativity.

FF issues 1-20 (mostly inked by Dick Ayers) are more modest and slow-moving. The first 10 issues are more in the vein of pre-Marvel monster stories.
Issue 11 is the first I consider to have a modern Marvel feel to its 2 stories.



FF 21-27 are diminished, art-wise, because of "George Bell" (a k a, George Roussous) inks. Although his inking additions to Kirby's art helped evolve the Thing's rock-like appearance, an addition that was not continued in Chic Stone's inks, in the issues after Bell's. Although Colletta and Sinnott later continued the rock-like additions.



FF 28-38 inked by Chic Stone evolve a bit more toward the fully developed FF look. I especially like the intro of Diablo (issue 30), with the creepy but decorative statues outside the entrance to his castle.

Stone's inks were much slicker, and more modern looking, but look a bit dated, compared to what came after. (Stone also inked FF ANNUAL 2, adding his magic to the memorable "Origin of Dr Doom" story.)


FF 39 was inked by "Frank Ray" (a k a, Frank Giacoia) and this is some of the cleanest inking by Giacoia I've seen. And while it was interesting to see Giacoia ink one issue, I'm glad he was never the regular inker on the series. The later fill-in issues Giacoia did during Joe Sinnot's inking run were much more loose and caricatured than this issue.

Another interesting thing in this issue (since this issue guest-features Daredevil) all the Daredevil figures are inked by Wally Wood (DD's regular artist at the time), which is reminiscent of the later Murphy Anderson-inked heads in Kirby's JIMMY OLSEN run (issues 135-148). I like when 2 inkers ink a book like this, and you can see the contrast between their 2 styles.



FF 40-43 were inked by Vince Colletta, who I think was in his inking prime, and turned in some nice pages on the series (and also inked FF ANNUAL 3, which presents the wedding of Reed and Sue Richards, attended by just about every character in the Marvel universe).



But both the cosmic level of storytelling, and the level of detail in Kirby's art, finally reached full fruition in FF 44, where Joe Sinnott began inking Kirby's pencils, giving us the half-speed, digitally mastered stereo-surround-sound
full-overdrive FF !



You draw the cut-off line for your favorite FF run at issue 70, Beardguy. And I think a lot of critics agree with you, that FF was slightly restrained in creativity after that, exploring already developed characters, revisiting new battles with Dr. Doom, Galactus, the Silver Surfer, Inhumans, etc.
But I actually enjoyed these later issues just as much.

But clearly, Kirby at this point ( FF 71-102, roughly 1967-1970) was holding back ideas, that would be fully realized in Kirby's Fourth World series (FOREVER PEOPLE, NEW GODS, MISTER MIRACLE and JIMMY OLSEN, from 1970-1974).

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"This Man, This Wonder Boy..."