jack kirby

…so let me present this pic I’d put up on the Twitter the other day, after finding it in a comic I was pricing at the shop:

…that comic being New Gods #13 (1977), where Gerry Conway, Don Newton and Dan Adkins tried to continue from where Jack Kirby left off. As was pointed out by other Twittering folks, those are quite the choices for representative disco performers. KC and the Sunshine Band, sure; Rick Dees and “Disco Duck,” well…I mean, why not, that’s as much of the era as anything else.

I’ve never really had much exposure to these post-Kirby New Gods comics…it’s a weird alternate universe divergence from Kirby’s particular and peculiar vision, but still it’s hard to complain about some nice Don Newton art. Even if everything is just slightly off-model from what we know, which is easy to forgive as, at the time, the Fourth World stuff was only a few years old, not having the decades to burrow into fandom’s collective heads like it’s had now.

Let us all hail reader Chris K, for ’twas he who came to the rescue and revealed the secret hidden name of Jack Kirby’s most forgotten character, the one I could not recover on my own (as detailed in yesterday’s post). And thus, now shall we never forget the second-most* powerful, yet most enigmatic, creation of Jack “The King” Kirby:

HEIDI HOGAN, LADY LUMBERJACK

Chris K informed me that I was right about originally encountering this in a Jim Woodring interview, but not in The Comics Journal, as I believed, but in Peter Bagge’s comics ‘zine I Love Comics from 1993:

In the interview, Woodring mentions this was just one of many, many ideas Kirby was bringing into the animation studio, and, as Woodring says, “after having drawn 3,000 of these big crescent board pictures he was running out of legitimate ideas, but he was being paid to bring this stuff in.”

Now, in fairness, Woodring only says the character’s name is “Heidi Hogan,” but he did describe her as a lumberjack in a dress, and, well, cartoonist Pat Moriarty provided an illustration based on Woodring’s description of the picture he saw:

I have no idea if the original Kirby drawing still exists but hopefully it’s simply hidden away in storage somewhere, waiting to be unearthed.

Anyway, a big thanks to Chris K for helping out.

Happy Jack Kirby’s Birthday, everyone.

 
 

* First-most.

 
 
(updated 8/2017)

So I was talking with customer Brook on Wednesday about one of Jack Kirby’s unused creations that I remember reading about, but couldn’t come up with the name. I Googled terrible, terrible things trying to find the character, but nothin’ doin’. My memory was that it was brought up in an interview with cartoonist Jim Woodring, who had been employed by the same animation studio where Kirby was working at the time, and that the character was (I think) one of Jack’s many proposed but unused cartoon concepts.

I went directly to the issue of The Comics Journal where I thought this information was located — well, semi-directly, as I’d pulled that issue out a while back to research something else then threw it into the sort-stack instead of putting it back where it belonged — and, lo, that information wasn’t there.

The character was this, assuming I didn’t imagine it: a somewhat burly-ish woman, almost lumberjack-ian in appearance, wearing a helmet with a giant propeller attached. It seems to me that the mention of this character was accompanied by an illustration, either by Kirby or a recreation by the person discussing it (maybe Woodring, perhaps someone else). I also feel like there was a gallery of interpretations of this character by several cartoonists, either in the same publication or sometime later.

Anyway, the Googlings, they did nothing, so if any of you out there can point me in the right direction, or at least remind me of the character’s name, I would greatly appreciate it. The first person to come up with good info will win the very first Progressive Ruin Nope-Prize! (“Do I get a prize?” “NOPE.”)

At the very least, I’d like to tell customer Brook that this was a real thing, and that I’m not crazy. At least about this.

 
 

from Destroyer Duck #1 (1982) by Steve Gerber, Jack Kirby and Alfredo Alcala

 
 
(updated 8/2017)

So back in 1979, pal Cully (whom you’ve probably seen popping up in my comments sections now and again) met Jack Kirby, and got both a sketch from, and a photo with, the King. A number of years back Cully brought his framed photo ‘n’ drawing to the shop, where we had it on display. Cully took ’em back home long before I ever started this weblog, or even had access to a scanner, probably, so I never had those pics to show off on the site. I kept meaning to ask him about them in order to post ’em up here, but, you know, stuff happens and it eventually slipped my mind…

…until Cully told me on Friday “oh, hey, my photo with Jack and my sketch are on my Facebook,” which at long last has given me a reason to log back into Facebook, finally. …Boy, those sure are a lot of notifications. Er, anyway…now, with Cully’s kind permission, here’s that photo of Jack ‘n’ Cully, and the sketch that resulted from that momentous meeting:

That’s a great shot of Jack, and for those of us who have known Cully for a long time, it’s fun to see a picture of him in the full head of hair blossom of youth.

Thanks again, Cully, for letting me show those swell images on my site!
 
 
(updated 8/2017)