Jack Kirby

impossible songs v jack kirby



impossible songs

Jack Kirby

Norman’s comments (Steve Ditko) drew me back to the artwork of Jack Kirby, a contemporary of Steve Ditko and another founding father of modern comic strip artistic style and conventions. Staring for long periods at Jack’s artwork is bit like listening to Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground over and over again – mad, wild, splintered, and extreme and a real sensual onslaught. I’m thinking mostly about his Fantastic Four material from the late sixties as it featured huge chunks of machinery and equipment, often floating in other dimensions or exploding in some universal entropy-like state. He really was a great and imaginative draughtsman and whilst Steve Ditko concentrated on a dark, surreal and film-noire inspired world, Kirby built huge and unwieldy constructions, bleak and expansive landscapes, tortured mindscapes and depicted the graphic hell that is the likely centre of the comic strip universe. Of course I can't ignore the Silver Surfer, particularly now that I am one.