Here is another one of those infamous Marvelmania posters which Jack "King" Kirby produced, something that rankled him because of the lack of extra remuneration he felt he was owed for this work. And then literally there is insult to the injury when Marvel decided to not use this poster.
Instead they had John Romita do another one, but as you can clearly see Romita was following his instructions to use the original Kirby poster as a guide for his own work. Romita had worked over Kirby's layouts many times since he returned to Marvel and has always given Kirby maximum credit for this work there. I do notice that Romita added longtime Spidey villains Doctor Octopus and the Green Goblin while Kirby had had him assaulted by Sentries from the pages of the X-Men. Weird.
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Instead of Don Rickles Kirby should have featured Rodney Dangerfield because they both "Got no respect!"
ReplyDeleteThat said I do prefer seeing the Green Goblin and Dr. Octopus. That would have made me buy the poster more than "generic" villains.
Also what is with Spidey's web in the Kirby picture?
Let me be clear, the Romita poster is better. But it's obvious that Romita was swiping the King, though neither I nor it seems did Kirby hold that against him. He was doing what the editors wanted.
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Kirby always had problems with the web-pattern on Spidey's costume.
ReplyDeleteNever got it quite right.
When Ditko inked Spidey in Kirby-penciled tales, he modified the web pattern, but not the anatomy, so it looked like an odd hybrid of the two styles.
That's true. Kirby could draw a lot of stuff, but the subtle webbing of Spider-Man was not on that list. Getting the webbing right is a trick and Romita might've been the best at it. I like what Ditko did but Romita made it sleek.
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