Well all this got me to thinking about my old comic book collection and Kamandi in particular (it was always one of my favorites). And, since all of my comics got loved to death a long time ago, I wondered if I could find any pics of the old Jack Kirby Kamandi art online.
Let's just say it this way: I hit the mother load!
Here's an image of issue one's cover.
If you go here, you will find an archive of every Kamandi issue ever published. You can download them and view them at will. You can even print them out if you feel that obsessive about it. All the Jack Kirby greatness that you could ask for.
I've been sitting here for the past hour or so, just basking in Kirby's style. You can tell a Kirby drawing at a glance. The dude packed a powerful visual punch, and could do more in an inch and a half panel than some modern pencillers can do with a two page spread. Just check out the sample below. Four panels from issue number one. Look at how this dude just propels you; it's like you're the one getting knocked around. Action in every panel! No talking heads here.
What really awes me though is that all of this was before the slick pages and photo-realism that marks so much of the comic art today. We've lost something folks. The old school artists; Kirby, Ditko, and Kubert, produced work that was visceral and powerful, even though the coloring was flat by necessity. There were no gradients, no color-holds, no translucent sparkles or flames that seemed to burn the page. The line art itself was what burned. The color did it's job, supporting the artwork, but it never compensated for poor artwork. (If Kirby had a favorite pencil it had to be named Mjöllnir!)
Look, I could geek out about this all night, but I guess I'm going to go get some sleep. If you follow the link, then scroll down the side. There are issues of Ka-zar if you go down far enough. Some old school Tarzan too folks. (Which I happen to be downloading this very moment.)
Awesome. Just freaking awesome.
4 comments:
I LOVE Kirby and Ditko (and Neil Adams!) and the like, but that doesn't mean that today's artists aren't great too. Kirby and probably mostly Byrne evoke a sense of nostalgia in me, but my all-time favorite artist is probably Bill Sienkiewicz. He and Simon Bisley are probably responsible for a lot of the realistic work going on in comics today (with wildly surreal stuff happening also, esp. in the case of Siekiewicz).
Pick up a recent issue of Iron Fist or Thor and be floored.
Cullen,
Of course I didn't mean to say that none of the current artists are any good. Just voicing my admittedly biased opinion that the older ones were better. I stopped reading comics in the late eighties, early nineties. The Buscema brothers were fading around that time and a lot of the old guard had either died, retired, or were close to doing so.
I remember how McFarlane came on the scene with a fresh style that kind of redefined comic art, and then broke from the pack and (ahem) spawned a new way of producing the books themselves. It was then that I began to lose interest in the art form. I don't blame the changes in comics for that; I just think it was where I was in my life.
Only recently have I begun to delve back into the medium, so a lot of the new guns are completely unknown to me. I don't know if I'll ever 'get' manga, and the plethora of styles available now just leave me scratching my head for the most part.
So while, I can admit that some of the artists today are very, very good. I must maintain that Kubert and Kirby were better.
I honestly couldn't name an artist today (I mean that wasn't around in my comics-reading heyday of the mid-to-late 80s). I can tell you the books I like - specifically the new Thor. I can't say enough good things about Thor.
I am with you on the guys that followed McFarlane. I loved his work, but he opened opened the floodgates so guys like Liefeld could actually get a job and that's a sad, sad thing. Liefeld and his ilk killed comics for me. They just did ... too many things. It was just too much. I mean, I love the expressive heavy ink stuff that Siekiewicz was doing, but that was purposely surreal. Guys like Liefeld and Jim Lee were just throwing in extra accent lines and skewing proportions so it just looked like crap. I still maintain that Liefeld simply doesn't know how to draw something proportionately.
There were some guys who did work for First Comics' Badger (my favorite title in my pre- and early teens) that are some of my very favorites - Bill Reinhold and Steven Butler. Ron Lim also drew for the Badger in the late 80s and had a nice, clean style but he went over to Marvel and jumped on the Liefeld bandwagon. Nasty stuff.
The two comic artists I most enjoy today (well, one of them is from "our" era) that I think capture the essence of what you're saying but still had a very distinct style of their own are Frank Miller and Mike Mignola. Miller's work stands on its own and as a big Hellboy and BPRD fan, well Mignola is a something of a hero.
You know, Kirby, Neal Adams, Ditko ... set the conventions for comics in the 60s and 70s. All the guys in the 80s were using the systems and formats they had put in place.
Gah ... I could go on and on and on.
Seriously though, pick up a recent issue of Thor. You'll be happy you did.
Cullen,
Since you aint steered me wrong yet, I will definitely check out the Thor! I've enjoyed our discourse, and, like you, I could go on and on. Here's a link I came across about a week ago, my only complaint with it is that it didn't mention big John B. or his brother Sal. They established the house style for Marvel in the eighties.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/reinventing-the-pencil-21-artists-who-changed-main,30528/1/
Peace,
Crot
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