44 YEARS AGO TODAY

Your weekly trip to your local Comic Shop would have rewarded you with 2 comics with new Kirby covers.

Unfortunately neither one have any Kirby story art.

A 1961 example of Kirby abandoning the use of a symbolic splash to begin the story with the first panel instead of the second. In present day graphic literature symbolic splashes are as rare as thought balloons.

ON THE SPINNER RACKS 58 YEARS AGO TODAY

Proto-Marvel was still transitioning from a multitude of diverse artists to Kirby and the favored few.

 Kirby's 20th TALES OF SUSPENSE cover. (Ditko inks)

Not only was there 13 Kirby story pages, there was also 6 pages by Steve Ditko and 5 by Paul Reinman.

79 YEARS AGO TODAY

Kirby's 5th cover went on sale. His first one appeared 3 months earlier. 

His first cover would have already been pulled from the racks and returned since it was cover-dated July 1940. That means that there would have been four different Kirby covers on display - just like the previous month!

41 YEARS AGO TODAY

A visit to your LCS would have rewarded you with two Kirby-covered comics with 17 pages of Kirby words and pictures each.

Sadly, it was the final Kirby BLACK PANTHER and his penultimate DEVIL DINOSAUR.

58 YEARS AGO TODAY

If you saw this Kirby-rendered human transforming into an orange monster in TALES OF SUSPENSE #22...

you probably experienced DeJack Vu when you read FANTASTIC FOUR #1 a month later.

61 YEARS AGO TODAY

Kirby's 4th consecutive cover for CHALLENGERS was his 14th cover contribution to the 1958 spinner-rack zeitgeist.