Daily Kirby Blog slights Living Legend.

Imagine my shock and dismay when I was catching up on my email reading and was reminded by the knowledgable Comic Historians on the Timely/Atlas Yahoo List that Durable Dick Ayers, war hero and comics legend, turned 90 yesterday!!! It is ironic that despite his many artistic achievements that he is best known as one of the top ten Kirby embellishers.

No matter how much you know about Mr. Ayers find out more here: http://www.dickayerscom.blogspot.com/

Or if you prefer interviews to art: http://www.nippertown.com/2011/10/26/interview-dick-ayers-master-comic-book-artist/

 

Thanks to Barry Smith every time I see Cap drawn by Kirby I look for sausages from Mars!*

*see yesterday's post (Bloggin' Billy)

How many different ways can a shield be used in battle? Here's two.

The heck with Disney stock!!!!!

Given the sky-rocketing popularity of Cap and Bucky thanks to their latest movie this key 1964 issue is a better investment.

It probably will take the largest price leap percentage-wise of any Kirby comic listed in the the next annual OVERPRICE STREET GUIDE. (The only reason it wouldn't would be if the publisher hasn't hoarded what he considers an adequete amount of copies.)

ANOTHER EXPLOSIVE LEE/KIRBY COLLABORATION

Simon/Kirby created Captain America to be the perfect patriotic hero. Stan Lee's formula for success was to give his heroes a flaw so when Lee decided to revive the character two and a half decades later for the Second Age of Heroes (AKA as the Marvel Age of Comics) he needed an imperfection for Cap.

The "it's lonely being a hero" shtick was the best he could come up without compromising the iconic character's core traits.

Will this thesis get me a step closer to being an accepted Comic Scholar?

Lee/Kirby realize that Cap is the perfect surrogate for John Henry, the technology-battling American Folk Hero from a century and a half earlier. One wonders how long it took the talented team to plan this page out because that whole "Marvel Method" cover story they used in the Silver Age was to give the impression that this high-water mark of their collaboration was because of synergistic/synchronistic creation magic. They were likely advised by child psychologists to inculcate the malleable youngsters that were the bulk of that era's readership to the concept that Lee/Kirby were not calculating and manipulative adults like the Sixties' DC full-script fascists. To further perpetuate this fiction Lee/Kirby adopted the public personas of two archetypes beloved by children - the Fun Uncle and the Whopper-telling Grandpa. 

If it doesn't than this post is just a clever parody. (Yeah, that's the ticket!)

Kirby masterfully creates suspense by waiting four pages before revealing what Cap and the brunette babe were reacting to.

KIRBY'S CAPTAIN AMERICA FED MY PRETEEN EPINEPHRINE ADDICTION BY PROVIDING REGULAR DOSES OF CONSEQUENCE-FREE VIOLENCE. MY NEED FOR NOSTALGIA IN MY SENIOR YEARS KEEPS ME COMING BACK.

WHAT KIND OF KIRBY FAN ARE YOU?

Would you have been happy or outraged if they had used a Kirby cover?