Review: The Jack Kirby Omnibus, Starring Green Arrow

A couple Doctor Who: Short Trips reviews have been posted over at Unreality SF: Adric meets the fourth Doctor again in "The Ingenious Gentleman Adric of Alzarius" and Susan meets the eighth Doctor again in "All Hands on Deck."

Comic trade paperback, 304 pages
Published 2011 (contents: 1946-59)
Acquired December 2016
Read January 2017

The Jack Kirby Omnibus, Volume One: Starring Green Arrow

Written by Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, France E. Herron, Bill Finger, Dave Wood, Robert Bernstein

Pencilled by Jack Kirby
Inked by Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, George Roussos, Frank Giacoia

This volume collects everything Jack Kirby drew during his first two tenures freelancing for DC Comics (1941-49 and 1956-59) that doesn't fit into the other Jack Kirby omnibus volumes DC has released (e.g., The Sandman, The Newsboy Legion, The Boy Commandos); it's basically an assortment of random issues of Real Fact Comics, House of Secrets, House of Mystery, Tales of the Unexpected, My Greatest Adventure, and All-Star Western, plus Green Arrow features from Adventure Comics and World's Finest Comics.

This isn't Kirby at his best; most of the time he's writing to someone else's scripts, or at least someone else's demands. I mean he's still a great illustrator, and I love seeing his image of our supposed rocket-age future:

I just love the assured tone of this thing: "probably called 'rocketeers.'" Like, why? What leads you to think that will "probably" be the case, Jack and Joe? Also, where's my rocket tube to China?
from Real Fact Comics #1 (script & art by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby)

...but giving him a two-page feature in Real Fact Comics (don't worry, there are no real facts to be found) is a waste of his talents. The Sandman, from the same era, is a much better use of Kirby's abilities; there's little trace of his trademark dynamism here.

Kirby is good at drawing bizarre monsters, so the stories from 1950s "weird" titles are more suited to him, though they're still not great. There's an odd subset of these stories that present "rational" explanations for seemingly irrational events. But I'm actually found it more plausible that a criminal found a magic lantern during a jailbreak that the idea that an undercover cop planted it there and arranged to have the criminal's three wishes granted on command in a convoluted plot to discover the location of money the criminal had stolen. I guess "impossible" trumps "highly unlikely" in the probability stakes. This must have been a thing, though, because there are a lot of stories with these kinds of endings (I'm not really telepathic, the metal plate in my skull is just picking up your dictaphone from miles away; I'm not really immortal, I just wanted to obtain your money; I'm not really a yogi, I just wanted to sell my crystal ball to another fake yogi and so commissioned a women to pretend to be a Cleopatra waxwork and kiss you; and so on).

I feel like if Oliver Queen can get something like that to fly around in circles on command, there has to be a better application for it than trick arrows.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #251 (script & art by Jack Kirby)

This is actually the third time I've read the Green Arrow tales collected here, since DC previously reprinted them in both a thin volume of Kirby's Green Arrow work, and (in black and white) in Showcase Presents The Green Arrow. I have to say, they don't hold up to repeated rereading. Some I still didn't remember reading, though! And man, does Oliver Queen have a loose definition of "arrow" and an ability to make incredibly un-aerodyamic objects fly regardless.

"Straightened out." I think your manservant is having a little fun with you.
from Tales of the Unexpected vol. 1 #24 (writer unknown, art by Jack Kirby)

Still, there are times the King of Comics gets to strut his stuff: the cool visuals of "The Two-Dimensional Man" were probably my favorite thing in the whole book. Give Kirby something totally bizarre to draw, and he will always knock it out of the park.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Sandman Mystery Theatre, Part XI: The Sandman

Comic hardcover, 300 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 1942-74)
Borrowed from the library
Read March 2011

The Sandman

Stories and Art: Joe Simon & Jack Kirby
Additional Inks: Mike Royer

In 1941, DC gave the Sandman a new costume and a new sidekick in an attempt to revive a fading character by making him more like a superhero-- they even ditched Wesley Dodds's girlfriend Dian. It probably would have failed, had not Joe Simon and Jack Kirby taken over the character in 1942, fresh off their success creating Captain America for Marvel. Every story the two of them collaborated on is here. They're goofy, sure, but they're also really quite good-- they've got art by Jack Kirby, you know! Kirby and Simon's layouts are dynamic, with stretching borders and crossing the gutter and just all-out dynamism. The Sandman no longer uses his gas gun or mask here (alas), but the name is kept appropriate with the use of dreams in the stories. Frequently, characters are motivated by their dreams (or even lack thereof), and all the villains in New York City dream of the Sandman. In fact, when Wesley Dodds is replaced by an impostor, Sandy figures it out because "Dodds" mentions dreaming of the Sandman!

Some are better than others, of course, and as you might imagine from a book featuring twenty-four different stories, it eventually gets repetitive. Some are just dumb, but there are a lot of neat ones, too. I also enjoyed the glimpses of World War II propaganda; the Sandman and Sandy exhort the reader to buy war bonds, but even better is the comic about Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito reading The Boy Commandos. They get flat-out terrible at the end, but I think those ones might not actually be by Simon and Kirby-- though I'm basing that on the most fleeting of evidence! It's just weird to think that these adventures happened to the same guy as Sandman Mystery Theatre. And it's even weirder to think that that version of Wesley Dodds hung out with an obnoxious snot like Sandy. (Okay, he's nowhere near as bad as Green Arrow's kid sidekick Speedy.)

Also included is the first issue of the 1974-76 series about the second Sandman, Garrett Sanford, which reunited Simon and Kirby for the last time ever. It's weird and doesn't quite hang together-- what is General Electric's plan, anyway?-- but the concepts and visuals are as captivating as always. You can see why Roy Thomas brought back this version (and even game him a name, which Simon and Kirby did not), and why Neil Gaiman nicked some of the concepts for his Sandman series.