I honestly don't think any artist drew more different monsters than did Jack "King" Kirby. The variations on a theme are astounding. Some of the designs are stunning and some are stupid, but while all recognizably Kirby, they are all different. I've learned that comic book monsters come from all kinds of places, but mostly from myth and outer space. Those from myth can be pretty awesome and those invaders from space can frequently be pretty stupid, often drawing all sorts of conclusions about the whole of mankind from microscopic sample sizes and flying away in terror, vowing never to return. Here's a ginormous batch of those myriad and mighty Kirby monsters.
Happy Halloween amigos!
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NOBODY rendered giant monsters reaching their hands/claws/tentacles/appendages at the reader better than the King!
ReplyDeleteCovers that grab you by the throat and make you pay attention!
Can I get an "AMEN"?
Hallelujah brother!
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Amen brother! And sincere thanks(!!) to the Dojo Master of this stellar blog for this mind-blowing month of Klassic Kirby Kreatures!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, but really thanks to the King of Comics!
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Great monsters but many awful names!
ReplyDeleteYou mean awfully GREAT names don't ya?
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The names are part of what makes them so memorable!
ReplyDeleteWould you read..."Dave, the Creature that Crushed the World!"?
Or Howard the Duck! Oh wait, they actually did that one! Never mind.
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He had a great intuition about what made a monster work visually. Compare Kirby's Living Colossus with the one that appeared in Astonishing Tales years later. Even Kirby's simplest creatures had bizarre proportions, oversize faces or hands, as if they had a glandular condition, and they were thick and massive so that they loomed and filled the sky. Ayer's version, on the other hand, has fairly commonplace human proportions and a smaller humanoid head so that he looks like a guy in a suit straddling miniatures in emulation of low-budget monster flicks. If the figure of It had been portrayed by a more grandiose artist, that might've carried the series through a longer run.
ReplyDeleteIronically that artist on the IT series was Dick Ayers who inked so many of those Kirby yarns with such gusto. But you make a good point. It heightens the drama and transforms them from mere creatures into true monsters. The King Kong effect in a way. Giant animals are fine, but they are not by definition giant monsters -- that requires some element of imagination.
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Ayers was good, but nobody gave giant figures the "weight" Kirby gave them in comparison to the enviroment and "normal-sized" people in the stories.
DeletePlus Kirby had a better "feel" for perspective.
(Hey, look! "Kirby Quotes"!)
I had the same problem when Ayers was penciling Giant-Man in Tales to Astonish.
His version just wasn't as believable/effective as Kirby's!
OTOH, Don Heck did a great job on both Giant-Man in TtA and his later incarnation as Goliath in The Avengers!