It's a tribute to Jack Kirby, which I like, but the cover.... Kirby would have HATED it. It's everything Kirby was NOT. It's static, it's generic, it's bombastic, it's stagey, it's melodramatic. It brings to mind a cover for a DC comics 100pager back in the 70s that the late Carmine Infantino, art director there, and life-long pal of Jacks, proudly showed Kirby one day. It had all the DC heroes standing as if on Glee, all looking alike, all shoulder to shoulder, like in a pagent. Kirby hated it, to Infantino's surprise. "You've got all those powerful heroes standing there, and they're not DOING anything!"
And here is John Morrow, who I greatly appreciate, he's kept the Kirby flame going with his marvellous magazines for many years. But this cover is so wrong in so many ways. I'm no Kirby, but I can't stand it either. Kirby was about power, action, drama, movement, story and character. This cover has none of that.
1 comment:
I see where you're coming from and I partly agree with you in principle, NP - but...!
I think the idea is to show Kirby standing proud and noble as an equal amongst the pantheon of characters he (co-) created, and as much a superhero as any of them. In the case of a comic cover, yeah - bring on the action, but for a magazine article about a comics creator, I think it serves its purpose well and is rather dignified.
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