Some time ago, there was a thread on THE DRAWING BOARD— a wonderful community of pro and novice artists hosted by the uber-talented SHANE GLINES– that focused on Jack Kirby characters. I drew this HIGHFATHER sketch from Kirby’s wonderful FOURTH WORLD series as my contribution, but for some reason, I never posted it to the board. I’ve been in a Kirby frame of mind recently, so I thought I’d post it here and now… so here goes.

Of course, it doesn’t come anywhere NEAR the majesty and sense of power that Jack Kirby infused all his work with, but then there’s really very few artists out there that will ever come close to THE KING in ANY catagory… so we can all only try our best and awkwardly fumble with the wonderful characters he created in our vain little strained attempts to brush up against just a bit of the glory he left us with.

I was THRILLED to see that there’s a JACK KIRBY APPRECIATION THREAD over at Joe Quesada’s message board. It’s full of wonderful scans of just an IOTA of the incredible body of work that Kirby produced in his career– but it’s some great stuff. It’s heartwarming to see that in a time when so much of the present comics readership doesn’t even know who Jack Kiry IS that there are still some who appreciate what he contributed to the comics industry. Hell– there wouldn’t even BE a Marvel Comics without Kirby.

Do yourself a favor go to the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR section of TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING and see the wonderful selection of issues and Collected Editions of the JKC they have offered. They’re all there– and between each amazing cover is a look into the history of Jack Kirby, his life, his work– and literally TONS of pages of classic, rare, and never before seen drawings by the King. I’ve been buying the Collected Editions as they’ve been available, and it’s thrilling to have them and to be able to pull them from my bookshelf any time I want to look at this man’s amazing legacy (which is quite often). You really get a sense of how prolific Kirby was from this magazine. I’m stunned at just how much material he produced and just how many fantastic concepts he created in his time. There will never be another creator like Jack Kirby.

I’m just so glad he gave us the wonders he did.

Mike