Monday, October 8, 2012

Then Calvin's Head Explodes In 3...2...1...

Jack Kirby did a comic book version of The Prisoner? I must seek this out. What a perfect combination of trippy art with a trippy story about trippy people doing insanely trippy things. So much subtext and political commentary about the times. Oh Cold War paranoia, how I love you so.

Go HERE to read a post about this lost gem.
 

"You can read into Jack Kirby’s Prisoner as an allegory for his own professional status in the mid-’70s. It is a story about a man who resigns his position “on matter of principle,” only to find that he is once again is in the grip of an indecent power. He left Marvel, then felt frustrated with his ambitions at DC, and then his ultimate return to Marvel which saw him no better. Jack Kirby has been nicknamed “The King”, but I believe secretly he was “The Prisoner”.
 
 
Do yourself a favor and click to enlarge this gorgeous page. Kirby was called The King for a reason.
 
 

6 comments:

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

Kirby also did the comic adaptation of "2001: A Space Odyssey". Did you know that?

I've got to see if they ever printed a trade of these, because this stuff is INSANE!

http://kirbymuseum.org/gallery2/d/833-3/treasurybackcover.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_r7SVnFoqsHg/TIWucrXFqYI/AAAAAAAABSs/j7LmYmJdZxY/s1600/marvel2.jpg

Kal said...

He is the rarest of rare talents. A master of his craft as important and Van Gogh or Rembrandt.

Kal said...

I have that Kirby adaptation of 2001. Found it in the bargain bin and looked at the guy selling comics the whole time he was ringing it in. Never went back to that comic store again. Anyone who could bargain bin a Kirby doesn't know shit about comics.

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

If we're going to compare comics to fine arts I'd say Kirby is more Michelangelo than anyone else, because of their monumental physiques and many of them look and felt like moving sculptures.

Fitting as Kirby's earliest art training was drawing the figures at the Museum of Natural History, which you can see the influence of Ancient or Old World cultures in his designs.

Van Gogh I'd give to Ditko. Remebrandt would go to someone like Will Eisner.

Kal said...

Wow. Now there is a mental activity. Matching modern comic artists to classic artists of the pass. I agree with all your choices.

Who would Leifeld be like in the past?

Erik Johnson Illustrator said...

Someone whose lukewarm labors have been (thankfully) lost to history.