Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby

Cover

HAND OF FIRE GREAT COMICS ARTISTS SERIES M. Thomas Inge, General Editor “Few know Kirby’s name but everyone is familiar with the characters he cocreated : Captain America, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Thor and countless others. Kirby was the throbbing heart and soul of the American comic book industry and a crucial figure in global popular culture. Charles Hatfield’s erudite and enthusiastic survey of Kirby’s career is among the very best studies ever devoted to a cartoonist, a major work of scholarship that does justice to the creator’s protean and influential life’s work.” —JEET HEER, coeditor of the Walt and Skeezix books “With judicious intelligence and infectious enthusiasm, Charles Hatfield takes on the daunting task of understanding the titanic career and accomplishments of Jack Kirby, emphasizing the crackling excitement of what he compellingly refers to as Kirby’s ‘delirious graphiation.’ Focusing on two of the peak periods of Jack Kirby’s long history of innovation—his years as Marvel’s founding conceptualist and the self-edited/written/drawn Fourth World saga of the 1970s— Hand of Fire explores the specificity of Kirby’s achievement without ignoring the very real commercial constraints on his practice and demonstrates the farreaching legacy of his prodigious output. Hatfield helps us understand how Kirby’s art works specifically as narrative drawing and explores its profound connection to the aesthetics of the sublime. His discussion of comic art in relation to sign theory represents an exciting contribution to comics studies.” —SCOTT BUKATMAN, author of Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century HAND OF FIRE The Comics Art of Jack Kirby CHARLES HATFIELD University฀Press฀of฀MississiPPi฀•฀Jackson www.upress.state.ms.us Designed by Peter D. Halverson The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Publication of the book was made possible, in part, by a subvention from the College of Humanities, California State University, Northridge. Copyright © 2012 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2012 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hatfield, Charles, 1965– Hand of fire : the comics art of Jack Kirby / Charles Hatfield. p. cm. — (Great comics artists series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61703-177-9 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-61703-178-6 (paper) — ISBN 978-1-61703-179-3 (ebook) 1. Kirby, Jack—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Cartoonists—United States. I. Title. PN6727.K57Z69 2012 741.5’973—dc23 2011026939 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available In memory of my friend Dio This page intentionally left blank ...