At July 2008's Comic-Con International: San Diego, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund auctioned "The Teacher!", a story Jack Kirby wrote and drew for National Periodical Publications' aborted Soul Love magazine. Inked by Vincent Colletta and possibly lettered by John Costanza, "The Teacher!" was one of six stories Kirby produced for Soul Love.

One of the most striking things one notices after studying Kirby’s work over time is his use of interior and most dramatically architectural shapes to give greater power to his compositions. Kirby used this method fairly early on, but he was focusing most of his attention on figures, and the backgrounds that he used to amplify the motion of his characters were generally given short shrift. Still, the use of the room’s interior here does provide more dynamic energy to Cap and Bucky’s scuffle with the gangsters. When Bucky throws the vase, Kirby uses a simple one point perspective treatment of bricks to give the panel more impact.

As Kirby’s skill as an artist developed, he incorporated more and more complex background elements into his compositions and these became more significant aspects of his designs. As I have stated in a previous blog, I believe that the inking provided by a draftsman as outstanding as Wallace Wood had a major effect on Kirby’s desire and ability to create three dimensional backgrounds that would bring greater force and- to his drawings. One can see how the structures surrounding the figures in this panel add drama and substance to the narrative.

As time passed, Kirby grew more daring, until sometime in the mid sixties, he seemed to reach a point where the creation of vast areas of space was a primary goal. This development seemed to coincide with his cosmic period, where he would depict land and space-scapes that would boggle the mind. Growing up in New York, Kirby had always had an affinity for the metropolitan megaliths that surrounded him. With the advent of the Fantastic Four, whose Baxter Building headquarters were located in the heart of town, Kirby brought his treatment of skyscrapers to the level of masterworks.

If I had to come up with of two words that embodied the sixties, they would be “Cosmic Consciousness”. Kirby and Lee’s Fantastic Four, conceived in 1961 at the dawn of the space race, certainly shared in that zeitgeist, but actually ended up in the forefront of the Cosmic movement. The Fantastic Four began their adventures by attempting to journey into space, but, altered by Cosmic Rays they brought space back to earth with them. The team continued to explore intergalactic sci-fi themes in its early years. An intriguing character known as the Watcher was introduced. This benevolent huge headed creature was from a race of beings that could only observe and not interfere. Kirby and Lee toyed with various conventionally villainous bug eyed aliens before bringing us a creature that was so far off the scope of power that he was like unto a god.

Galactus, monstrous consumer of planets was so awesome that the cover announcing his appearance did not even feature him. The cover of Fantastic Four #48, dated May, 1966, showed the shock and awe of our heroes as the Watcher pointed upwards at approaching doom. We could only imagine what could inspire such trepidation.

The story begins in the completion of the previous issue’s tale, as the FF attempt to return to normal life after their encounter with the Inhumans in their Great Refuge. This is not to be. The doorway to weirdness has opened and there is no going back. A small panel at the bottom left of page 7 opens a window to the vista of the infinite cosmos. This is followed by our first view of the Silver Surfer as he zooms towards earth. The camera does not linger. It changes Point of View again to another observer, as the speed trail of the Surfer’s board leads our eye to the nefarious Skrulls who are watching the herald’s approach with dread.

In 1969, Sheldon Feldner contacted Marvel Comics, asking if one of Marvel's artists would be interested in designing costumes for a production of William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar by the University Theatre Company at Santa Cruz at the newly-built Cowell College of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

In an earlier blog, I discussed the influence that Wallace Wood as an inker might have had on Kirby’s artwork. I suggested that Wood’s powerful style could have caused Kirby to rethink his approach to drawing and influence him in subtle ways that might have been more harmonious to the pairing. While it is interesting to speculate on these matters, it is certainly a revelation to study the different qualities of various inkers on Kirby’s pencils through his career.

Kirby inked his own pencils frequently early on, and throughout his career.

He generally preferred to use a brush, and his line quality varied from a precise fine stroke to bolder swatches of black. Here in the 1953 unpublished cover of “Strange World of Your Dreams, we can see that Kirby was arguably his own best inker.

When he began working for Marvel, Kirby’s page output was too great to spare the time for his personal inking touch. As a result, we have a wide variety of stylistic interpretations of Kirby’s line by other inkers over time. Fortunately, we also have many samples of his pencils, so we can determine who was more or less faithful in their rendering and who weakened or perhaps in some cases reinforced the King’s artistic intention.