Jack Kirby Heroes Thrive in Comic Books and Film

[hadrons]

Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay," is set in the world of 1940's comics publishing. The author's acknowledgments end with this loving coda: "Finally, I want to acknowledge the deep debt I owe in this and everything else I've ever written to the work of the late Jack Kirby, the King of Comics."

Kirby, a prolific writer and illustrator whose bold and sculptured hero drawings have been emulated for decades, died in 1994. Tomorrow would have been his 86th birthday. He had an enduring influence on comics, but he left his stamp on the movies, too. There he is survived by many of his creations and by films that used his work as a starting point.

"It just says something awful and it says something about comics that someone like Jack Kirby is so little known, and the characters he created are everywhere still," Mr. Chabon said in a telephone interview.

....

Another film version of a Kirby product had successful ticket sales for one weekend: Ang Lee's adaptation of "The Hulk," the gigantic green hybrid of the Golem and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mr. Lee updated the Incredible Hulk from the character invented by Kirby and his Marvel Comics colleague Stan Lee, but he kept the brooding Badlands setting and the mutated-muscle-powered leaps that sent the Hulk miles across the deserts in several bounds.

In addition to the X-men, Kirby drew and helped write Thor's character and "The Fantastic Four." A Fantastic Four film has been discussed and gone unmade for so long that the characters must feel trapped in some odd version of "Groundhog Day," stuck in a rerun of never being freed from the printed page.

The Kirby influence can also be seen in "The Matrix" and its sequel by the Wachowski brothers, who are comics fans. In the "Matrix" pictures, comics readers can notice parts of Kirby's "X-Men," like the intense band-of-brothers philosophy that held the mutants together and the mixture of popular culture and mythological grandeur rooted in "X-Men" and "Thor," Kirby's turn on the Norse gods. When Neo travels from the outer world of the Matrix to Zion, the world-within-worlds scenarios that Kirby pioneered in comics are visible. These movements are reminiscent of the Negative Zone, a netherworld that Kirby conjured for "The Fantastic Four."

There are elements of the "Star Wars" mythology in "Matrix." But the idea of a hero turning out to be the offspring of the most inconceivable evil, an immensely grim force that dominates out of pride, did not begin with George Lucas. In 1971 Kirby left Marvel after disagreements over rights to characters he had helped bring to life. After going to DC Comics, the home of Superman and Batman, Kirby hammered together a new vision: an expanse of planets and the gods that controlled them called the New Universe, which unfolded in the "New Gods," "Forever People" and "Mister Miracle" comics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/27/arts/design/27KIRB.html?8hpib

It nice to see someone who had such a huge impact on popular culture get his due (sadly, Jack isn't around to enjoy it)

[newyorican]

1. Kirby *is* King

of pulp culture.

[Khephra]

2. I love Jack's creations

But I can't say I'm a fan of his actual writing. I tried to read his New Gods work but I couldn't force my way through them.

I am, however, one of the biggest Machine Man fans around!