The Charlton Companions!

In addition to my year-long reading of the many, many works of the late, great Steve Ditko, I will be rekindling my longtime love of Charlton Comics, the company which welcomed and to some degree nurtured the work Ditko. He loved the artistic freedom he enjoyed at the company which paid such low page rates that they didn't dare tell him what to do. But the company was the home to more than a few wonderful talents such as Dick Giordano, Pat Boyette, Jim Aparo, Denny O'Neil, Steve Skeates, Sam Glanzman, Frank McLaughlin, Pete Morisi, John Byrne, Joe Staton, Mike Zeck, Wayne Howard, William Sattler, Joe Gill, Nick Cuti, and many more. 

To assist my long look at the Derby, Connecticut publisher I'll be using The Charlton Companion from the friendly folks at Twomorrows. This is a great history of the company, giving proper attention to the company from before its birth in a jail cell in the 1940's until its demise in the 1980's. 

There's also Charlton Neo to consider, a small outfit which reprinted some choice material as well as produced some new adventures of long forgotten heroes. Many of Charlton's best have appeared under the labels of other companies such as DC and AC among others. There's a lot to explore. 

The Charlton Companion is a derived and expanded upon from two seminal Comic Book Artist magazines from years ago. The first focused on the early years and the explosion of the "Action Heroes" line in the 1960's. The second looked at the rollicking 1970's spurt of horror titles and brand-new heroes such as E-Man among others. I've long loved Charlton Comics, so expect to see lots of covers as more of my vintage "Charlton Reports" posts. Charlton was a company eager to license characters, and I'll be looking into anything tied into such as that including the creations of Hanna-Barbera, Jay Ward and others. You might well be surprised how far that can be expanded. 

I will also revisit the delightful Charlton Spotlight fanzines from Charlton super-fan Michael Ambrose. This little magazine entertained me off and on during its intermittent but relentless run. Sadly, Ambrose has passed away, and I dedicated this year to him, arguably Charlton's finest fan. 

So, hang in there this year. I hope to take it a bit easier, but at the same time I want to deliver some fun. Look for Charlton-related reviews on Saturdays throughout the year. 

Rip Off

Destroyer Duck - Graphite Edition!

As it did with Captain Victory and Silver Star, Twomorrows Publishing has created a "Graphite Edition" of one of Jack Kirby's oddest 80's comics. In conjunction with Steve Gerber who first created Destroyer Duck, Kirby and Alfredo Alcala produced the pages in the original comic to help Gerber defray his legal expenses. 

He needed the money to continue his lawsuit against Marvel Comics for a piece of Howard the Duck. The lawsuit had been percolating for a time and Gerber was going to have to abandon it for lack of funds until some of his colleagues got together created a "Special Lawsuit Benefit Edition". 

And so, we get one of the grand comic books of the 80's, the totally in-your-face satire named Destroyer Duck. The comic started out as a method by which like-minded talents (Jack Kirby, Alfredo Alcala, Mark Evanier, Joe Staton, Sergio Aragones, among others) donated their time and talents to produce a comic with various features, but headed by Gerber's and Kirby's Destroyer Duck. Goo the Wanderer by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones debuted in this little Eclipse comic too.

The debut story is about that struggle directly and hilariously as we meet Duke Duck, an ally of the "Little Guy", a small duck who gets sucked into a distant dimension where he is exploited and killed by Godcorp Ltd., a soulless organization which lives up to its credo of "Grab it all! Own it all! Drain it all!" (Remind you of anyone we know?) Duke ends up going to this other world and kicks some Godcorp butt. 

(Kirby with Neal Adams embellishment.)

After this one-shot though it was deemed smart to do more Destroyer Duck stories and Gerber and Kirby and Alcala kicked out four more issues before seven issue series was taken over by Buzz Dixon and Gary Kato. Duke has showed up a few times since, in the pages of Total Eclipse in the late 80's and the Image one-shot guest-starring with Savage Dragon in the late 90's. Surely there's an audience for these bizarre tales of the "Marauding Mallard of Vengeance".

 (Frank Miller)

Destroyer Duck is far from prime Kirby comics, but even his worst have charm. Tomorrow, something different. 

Rip Off

Captain Victory And The Galactic Rangers!

One of the most fascinating pieces of my Kirby collection is Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers - Graphite Edition. This jewel published by Twomorrows Publishing way back in 2003 captures the original story by Jack Kirby which was to form the basis for his own comic book company in the late 70's. That didn't come to pass and later the project was put forth as a screenplay. That didn't happen either. 

Here is the Captain in glorious black and white sans the bright shiny inking by Mike Royer. I got the latter to sign my copy of issue number one several years ago, and he seemed quite happy to see a book he says doesn't come his way very often.

I loved the series, which took vintage sci-fi melodrama and bonded onto that a cosmic scale and echoes of then popular flicks like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It is generally held that Captain Victory is a sequel of unofficial sorts to the grand Fourth World saga. When we learn Victory's backstory we discover (unofficially and between the lines) that Victory is supposedly Orion's son and Darkseid's grandson. He was mentored by a man who in likelihood was Scott Free, Mister Miracle, who wears an eyepatch but looks strikingly like Highfather. 

When Pacific Comics came calling and Kirby dusted off the good Captain, revised the story a bit and started a whole series and by extension a whole new side of the comic book industry when Captain Victory became the first direct sales comic by a major mainstream comic book talent.

Seeing Kirby's work in the raw is a spectacle in itself. He put so much into the pencils that it's fascinating to see what inkers brought to the mix. Kirby reputedly had little interest in inks, preferring to get on to the next story, because as much as I admire the dynamics of his artwork, it was making that serve the needs of storytelling which really marks the genius of Kirby. The Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers Graphite Edition captures that beautifully. Highly recommended.

Here's the cover gallery for the original run. 

Even with at least three revivals that I know about, this original run has never been collected and made available to a larger audience. Almost everything else from this era of the early Indy market has been reprinted, but this one just goes neglected. It's a shame. 

Rip Off

Into The Fourth World!

Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" is his magnum opus, his masterpiece. He was at the height of his powers, and he was driven by years of being a second banana to prove he was a significant artist in his own right. With the Fourth World he proved it in spades. After being kicked out of DC back in the 50's and forced to scrounge for work, he found it with Stan Lee at Martin Goodman's lackluster outfit. He'd worked with Stan before when the latter was a kid working for his uncle back in the "Golden Age", when with partner Joe Simon, Kirby had made Marvel very successful with the monster hit Captain America. Seeking to maximize their worth, the duo went to DC and repeated that success with the best-selling Boy Commandos. Then came the army, and after that some gypsy years of trying to find success with their own company Mainline and later with other projects for Harvey Comics. 

After a split from Simon, Kirby found himself back at DC but left on hostile terms after editor Jack Schiff sued him over a newspaper project. He left behind the successful Challengers of the Unknown. Once again, he was out with an artistic style which was a favorite of readers but seemed unpolished to DC editors. Partnered with Stan Lee he created scores of monsters then later the most famous Fantastic Four which kicked off the "Marvel Age". There was no denying Kirby's power to sell comics then as Marvel crept up on the elder DC. Soon DC was confronted at once with a generational change and with the need for new ideas. When Kirby felt slighted by Stan "The Man" he decided to hold back some big creations. Those new creations became the Fourth World and he offered it to DC and they said yes. 

The Fourth World is made up of the three main new titles New Gods, Mister Miracle, and The Forever People. Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen is a fourth title in the tetralogy which sought to tell four independent stories within the framework of a larger over-arching saga. As was his wont, Kirby created two new worlds, each an opposite reflection of the other. One was dedicated to good and the other to evil. Pretty simple stuff really, but of course the stories soon showed that simple ideas of good and evil were much more complex than normal comics had allowed. The heroes were conflicted, the villains confident, especially their leader the notorious Darkseid. To put it mildly, the Fourth World blew my mind. It still does. Sadly, before he could complete the epic, Kirby was forced by DC to abandon it and turn his attentions to other projects which while often quite good lacked the scope of the Fourth World. 

And that explains why I keep buying it. Most recently I picked up the handsome sleeved Absolute volumes which present the saga in its proper way, as it was published. This allows a reader to enjoy not just the magnificence of the single series but the majesty of the whole epic. And now I'm going to read it again. I try to read the saga every few years, to savor it and remind myself of its glory. It's never let me down. 

Since its earliest days I have always adored the Fourth World. When Kirby returned to DC for a fourth time in the 80's to put a finale on the project he'd been forced to abandon it was okay, but clearly the great man was past his prime and the ending was adequate but hardly up to the standard of the saga itself. For its part DC seemed of two minds about the concepts, little interested in making the originals available for new readers but exceedingly keen to use the concepts and characters for new stories by new talents. 

The Fourth World books New Gods and Mister Miracle were revived mere months after Kirby left DC in the 70's and sturdy talents such as Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, and Steve Gerber wrote new stories with art by reliable artists such as Don Newton, Marshall Rogers and Michael Golden. It was good stuff, true in many ways to what Kirby had imagined. He'd always thought these books would eventually by done by new talents, but he also imagined he'd be the one overseeing the operation. 

Later still, after Kirby's return and finale had appeared the books were revived yet again. This time with the writing being done by Marve Evanier among others. Evanier had been an assistant to Kirby when he first worked out the concepts for the Fourth World and seemed a reliable candidate to carry it forward. 

Later still Walt Simonson brought out a new book starring Orion. Simonson is also an exceedingly worthy talent, fully capable of approaching the vision that Kirby first imagined. 

Before Simonson, John Byrne had taken at stab at the Fourth World. Just as Simonson had recaptured some of the glory Thor after Kirby's departure, so had Byrne done on the Fantastic Four. Sadly Byrne's work has not been made available in a handy trade, though it has been reprinted in an omnibus. Some of the back up stories have been reprinted though and feature many modern exceedingly good folks such as Frank Miller, Steve Rude, and Steve Ditko among others. 

Jim Starlin had a few cracks at the Fourth World. First he took the heroes of the New Genesis on a Cosmic Odyssey to save the universe and later wrote some early issues of the second revival. This was drawn by Mike Mignola.  Over two decades later he both wrote and drew the unusual The Death of the New Gods series which was a great read but eliminated from DC's constantly shifting continuity almost as soon as it was written. 

It's all of this I want to revisit this month which just happens to be Kirby's birthday month. All month long expect each day to offer up a sometimes heaping helping of Fourth World goodness. For context I'm reading the Twomorrows Publishing special Old Gods and New which lays in some background for the epic as well as Ronin Ro's compelling read Tales to Astonish which documents Kirby's career including those tumultuous years in which the Fourth World was at the center of his attentions. 

And if it all does as planned I will take a brief break from the Fourth World to take another look at Kirby's 80's project Destroyer Duck. By this time Kirby had given up on the comics industry to no small extent and was making his money in animation. But he was drawn back to the fold a little bit by this and other projects such as Silver Star and an unofficial sequel to the Fourth World from Pacific Comics titled Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers. 

All this and maybe even more as the hot summer draws to a close. 

Rip Off