SDCC 2013 - A Couple of Neil Gaiman Stories

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman on meeting Will Eisner early in his career at the Will Eisner Tribute panel (joined by a stellar group: Paul Levitz, Denis Kitchen, Scott McCloud & Jeff Smith): "When I was getting into writing comics, I learned from Comics & Sequential Art. I gave Will a copy of Signal to Noise in an elevator. He was always supportive of young artists & writers... You would excitedly tell him about a brilliant new idea you came up with, and he would nod & listen, and then say "yes, when we tried that back in 1947, it didn't work because..."

Neil Gaiman & Denis Kitchen

At the Annual Kirby Tribute panel (another stellar group: Attorney Paul Levine, Mark Evanier & Tony Isabella), Neil talked about his first experiences with US comics as a child: "I was 7 when Marvel started reprinting anthologies... a few years later my Dad gave me a big box of Marvel Comics... Years later, I asked "Dad, where did that big box of Marvel Comics come from?" He said, "I'll tell you," and then a few days later he died. I never knew."

Neil Gaiman & Tony Isabella

Gaiman said he was particularly intrigued by the ads in the comics, "how do Father Sea Monkeys smoke their pipes underwater? How did the Americans get the technology for x-rays spectacles and make them so inexpensive that children could buy them for a dollar? If I could only get dollars in the UK, I could find out"!

Eisner panel - Levitz, Gaiman, Kitchen, McCloud, Smith

Kirby panel - Levine, Evanier, Gaiman, Isabella

Brower on Kirby Collages

A quick post to point out a great article on the Kirby Collages by Steven Brower on the Imprint design blog. This is a topic of great fascination for me, and I'm glad to see so many excellent examples of both Kirby's collages and possible inspirations in one place. Check it out!

Kirby collage from Fantastic Four #62, 1967

Photos - San Diego Comic Con 2010

Greenberg on Kirby at SDCC 2010

We're off to ComiCon!  I'm not speaking this year, but husband Marc is doing his annual "state of the Superman case" round-up, plus a summary of the latest doings in the Kirby copyright recapture case.

Thursday, July 22
2:30-3:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #4: Recapturing Copyright for Gold and Silver Age Comic Book Creators— Copyright lawyer Marc Greenberg (Golden Gate University School of Law) covers key developments in the Superman case (Siegel v. DC) and explores the claims filed by the Jack Kirby estate to the rights to the major Marvel Comics characters he created or co-created. Room 26AB

As always, I look forward to meeting colleagues and just geeking out for a few days. Lots of news to come!

Jack Kirby's Collages & the Sublime

The above image from Fantastic 4 Annual #6 (1968) was one of a series of photomontages created by the comics genius Jack Kirby (1917-1994). Kirby had a long and fruitful career as a comic artist spanning from the beginning of the comics industry in the 1930's through the 1970's. He is best known for his collaboration with Stan Lee (writer) which spawned many famous Marvel comics characters like the X-Men, The Avengers, The Hulk and The Fantastic Four.

Kirby was an artist that liked to experiment. In the mid-1950's he began making collages out of ads and magazine photos as a hobby. In the mid-1960's he put his collages to use in the comics he was working on. The most notable series of these were published in the Fantastic Four. The F4 had adventures in far-flung locations; the undersea world of Atlantis, labs filled with alien technology and the "negative zone," which existed in the 4th dimension. It's the negative zone collages that I would like to explore further.

I’m hypothesizing that Kirby used the collages because he was trying to find a way to differentiate our 3D reality from the disorienting and scary yet beautiful negative zone/fourth dimension within the limitations of 2D characters and (not so great) printing technology. The collages evoke feelings of the sublime, in Burke’s sense of terror and awe. Also, the idea of the technological sublime; attempting to show the unshowable (advanced alien technology, the vastness of the universe). Later Kirby experimented with the collages in a short-lived (only one issue) publication called Spirit World (this is one of his collages for it on the left). These collages, even more than the ones featured in the F4, suggest feelings of the eerie and the surreal.

At this stage in my research I can't say that I know specifically what art/collages Kirby might have seen that inspired him to create these. It seems logical that one influence might have been the early British pop artist Richard Hamilton's Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? (1956), which prominently features Kirby's cover for Young Romance #26 (October 1950) hung as a painting in the center of the piece. It was widely reproduced, and logically, he must have seen it. My sources, so far, say that he started playing with collage around this time. There are also many surrealist elements, reminiscent of works like Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (1919) by the German collage artist Hanna Hoch. Kirby may have been especially affected by these surrealist works due to his war time experiences.

I plan to continue research on this topic and write an article about it in the fall.

Here are some interesting links about these collages:

http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/13spiritworld.html
http://booksteveslibrary.blogspot.com/2006/03/jack-kirbys-spirit-world.html
http://bullyscomics.blogspot.com/2009/01/fantastic-photo-world-of-jack-kirby.html