These are two of the classic Jack Kirby images from his final tenure at Marvel Comics. Kirby was tapped to do lots of covers and he did some dandy ones including these, but clearly Kirby did not know that Hank Pym was both Giant-Man and Yellowjacket. It's clear to me, that Kirby puts both characters on the back cover because he thinks they are two different people. It's a neat time capsule from a time when Marvel's editorial oversight was at best shaky.
On the plus side, this features some great Frank Giacoia inking. Giacoia brought out the best in Kirby at Marvel, and it's on display with these two images for sure.
For the record none of the stories contained in the issue have a whole lot to do with the cover images. Here's a link for the contents of this issue.
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You can forgive Jack Kirby for not knowing about YJ also being Hank Pym since Kirby didn't design the YJ costume (John Buscema created it).
ReplyDeleteYou'll also note he did Goliath on the front and Giant-Man on the back, and I suspect they were supposed to color the Wasp's costume yellow/red on the front (with Goliath) and red/blue on the back (with Giant-Man) to match the versions she wore with each incarnation of Hank. ;-)
Oh I know that Kirby had nothing to do with the creation of Yellowjacket. I assume actually that the folks at Marvel just gave Kirby some reference material for the heroes they wanted featured on the cover and let him go. They probably never assumed he didn't know about the YJ/Giant-Man thing so they didn't bother to tell him. That's speculation on my part, but it seems right to explain the image.
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