I learned on Boing Boing that recently a museum (and research center) celebrating the works of Jack Kirby has been started. The website is interesting, and there is a pretty good link there to a biography of Jack Kirby . Have a look, and you’ll discover how many of the comic book characters (X-Men, The Hulk, Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Captain America…) that you may have heard of were created and/or developed by him. I grew up with several of these characters – they, and characters of my own inspired by them, occupied a large portion of my childhood imagination. I learned from a press release (dated 6th July, so this is old news, relatively speaking) that the museum and research center is
devoted to promoting and encouraging the study, understanding,
preservation and appreciation of the work of comicbook creator Jack Kirby, by:* illustrating the scope of Kirby’s multi-faceted career,
* communicating the stories, inspirations and influences of Jack Kirby,
* celebrating the life of Jack Kirby and his creations, and
* building understanding of comicbooks and comicbook creators.To this end, the Museum will sponsor and otherwise support study,
teaching, conferences, discussion groups, exhibitions, displays,
publications and cinematic, theatrical or multimedia productions.
Well, that can’t hurt can it?
Now, you know what I’m excited about that this brings closer to happening?
A Frank Miller museum! Most of my favourite comic book work from my youth, with regards both story and art (I spent a lot of time reading comics for the art… no, really – I was/am very keen on drawing) was by Frank Miller. I followed his work a lot (particularly the Daredevil title, where I watched him gradually develop pretty much all the ideas and techniques he would later use to great and famous effect on the Batman character in the Dark Knight work. I would trade and buy what I could find when I could (it was hard to get a good reliable supply of American comics where I was, and I had little money for what was there). But it is only recently that I realised how many of my favourite issues of early comic work with which I did not know he was associated, actually had him doing guest art on parts such as the cover, or a middle-page spread of frame sequences, etc. He was quite an influence, and remains very creative all these years later (witness the Sin City film work, based on his striking – and at times darkly beautiful, though highly violent- graphic novels of the same name, or the excellent Dark Knight Strikes Again.)
A good start on a museum to his work is this wonderful site – The Complete Works of Frank Miller – which is where I learned of some of his surprising (to me) involvement in some comics from the early days, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
-cvj
September 1st, 2005 at 3:01 am
Jack Kirby is God. I respect Miller, but my Kirby love goes down my DNA. Summer afternoons in the 60’s with a Fantastic Four King Size Special (cost a whole quarter) and some Kool-Aid. Those dotted plasma clouds, Reed Richard’s strange machines and the Silver Surfer. No one has done it better.
September 1st, 2005 at 8:15 am
Hats off to Miller for infusing a lot of the energy into the Elektra and Wolverine characters. I think their more recent popularity is heavily due to his work. I couldn’t believe, however, this was the same guy that did “Hardboiled”.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:38 am
Jepe – Yes, but it is nearly criminal that the movie studios made such a mess of the Daredevil and Electra characters after all his careful work. It will take years to undo that embarrassing mess.
-cvj
September 1st, 2005 at 1:37 pm
Hi Clifford,
Not to mention the total screwup the movie studios made out of Miller’s Robocop sequel script…
But, as much as I love Frank Miller’s work, Alan Moore rules
.
September 1st, 2005 at 1:51 pm
Yeah.. Alan Moore is fantastic. For somethign completely different, I love the painterly approach of Alex Ross. His visuals are sometimes just sublime. And when he is working with good writers, the combination can be unparalleled. Get “Marvels” or “Kingdom Come” sometime, if you’re not familiar with him. A collection of Alex Ross’ work would do well in an exhibition in a big art gallery one day. I hope that happpens.
-cvj
September 1st, 2005 at 4:55 pm
And we get someone praising the wonder of Jack Kirby–such a fine blessing Clifford, thank you immensely. With Kirby and Starlin guiding the paths towards excellence in comix, those who have followed, paying careful attention to their genius, continue to offer us fine works of art and excitement. For years i kept threatening to sell my collection, many from Kirby and Starlin as well as others, until my youngest son discovered them. He has embraced them and moved on to Miller and many more(the Top Cow crew in West LA/Santa Monica are great). It felt good to have been able to share the best with him so that he could perceive quality amongst the morass of computer generated images. Thank you for your reminder.
September 12th, 2005 at 5:51 pm
[...] So you might have noticed that I’ve read the odd comic or two. You may also have noticed that I think about physics from time to time. So you’d guess therefore that if I saw this post about a book on physics and comics over at Caolionn’s QuantumDiaries blog, I’d not be able to resist commenting, and then when the author showed up and commented as well, and pointed me to the website, and I saw the book’s table of contents…..how could I not blog about it?! [...]