Showing posts with label Jack Kirby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack Kirby. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Captain's Library: TOM CORBETT : SPACE CADET "Spaceship of Doom"

We're introducing the only major 1950s space hero we haven't covered...
...with his first appearance in his second comic series!
So, let's join the crew of the Space Academy ship Polaris...
Besides being the longest-running tv/radio show of the genre, Tom Corbett had the longest run of any of the comics adaptations...fifteen issues with two different publishers!
The second series was published by Prize Comics and packaged (as were a number of Prize titles of the period) by the Simon & Kirby studio.
The primary artist was Mort Meskin, but there are apparently other artists doing layouts and inking including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.
This tale from Prize Comics' V2N1 (1955) was penciled by Meskin and inked by several different artists.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Captain's Library: THE PRISONER Conclusion

The Prisoner awakens to find himself in...The Village.
He plies a waitress at an outdoor cafe with questions (closely paraphrased from the tv show's pilot episode), but learns nothing.
A flashback (Jack Kirby's version of the tv series' main title sequence, cleverly interpolated) reveals how the Prisoner resigned from his position, summarily kidnapped, and transported to The Village.
He leaves the cafe and takes a taxi ride, which, again, reveals almost nothing.
Back in his appointed cottage, he receives and accepts a telephoned invitation from Number Two to meet him at "the Georgian House" (aka "the Green Dome").
As you may have noticed, some pages are completed, some are lettered and partially-inked, some are lettered, some are partially-lettered, and some are only penciled.
As to what happened, TwoMorrows, publisher of the amazing magazine Jack Kirby Collector, did a feature piece on the project in #11, which was reprinted in the trade paperback Jack Kirby Collector Volume 2 and posted HERE.
Presumably, the second issue would have adapted the remainder of the pilot episode, "Arrival".
After that, Kirby might have gone off on his own, the way he did with his adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In the mid-1990s, Topps Comics, who had done a series of books called the Kirbyverse, using previously-unpublished Kirby material along with new stories by other writers and artists, planned to publish a Prisoner trade paperback combining this story with the other unpublished Marvel Prisoner adaptation by Steve Englehart and Gil Kane.
But the comic division's demise prevented it from happening. (The rest of Topps is still chugging along 15 years later.)

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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Captain's Library: THE PRISONER Part 1

There are numerous projects that never got off the ground...
This is one of the most famous ones...Jack (King) Kirby's adaptation of The Prisoner!
They are indeed, sir.
If you want to be as well-informed as those who run The Village, come back tomorrow to learn more about this never-completed Marvel Comics project (and read the second half of this never-published story)!

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