365 Days of KirbyTech, Day 29: Hydra's Spy Camera

As one of the great thinkers of our age once orated

I always feel like somebody's watching me
And I have no privacy
Whoa, I always feel like somebody's watching me
Tell me is it just a dream?

Words so true they cut deep to the heart of our paranoia about the NSA watching us argue on comic book board discussion groups about whether the Powerpuff Girls should grow up or not. But even smack dab in the rich nougaty center of the Cold War, some guys were watching other guys. In this case, an agent of HYDRA* is peeping in on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.**!


Panel from "Find Fury or Die!" in Strange Tales #136 (September 1965), co-plot and script by Stan Lee, co-plot and layouts by Jack Kirby, finishes by John Severin, colors by Stan Goldberg, letters by Artie Simek
Geez, Hydra-Guy. Could that super-secret spy camera be more conspicuouslistenstar (he said, in his Chandler Bing voice)? For Pete's sake, dude, use a Polaroid One Step! It's less suspicious! And if it was good enough for Jim Rockford and Zarabeth, it oughta be good enough for HYDRA!



Wow, that was so close to being the world's first selfie, wasn't it?

Here's a longer view of the Hydra Spy Camera in action, and whoa mama! i hope that guy doesn't have acrophobia! That's a bee-yootiful panel, isn't it, by the way? Great all around: Jack's layouts, Sevrein's very sharp inks, and a wonderful color palette from Stan Goldberg. And since that HYDRA spy is sixty-seven stories up on the facade of the Chrysler Building, it made have one humdinger of a zoom lens.


My conclusion from all this: 10,000 Maniacs were HYDRA agents. Aw, no, Natalie, say it ain't so!



*Hanging Yonder, Dangling Really Acrobatically
**See How I Espy Little Dudes

Ten of a Kind: Shine like the top of the Chrysler Building

Of course, there's always this classic and ultra-realistic rendition of the Chrysler Building:



And you gotta love the CB's cameo in this film:



(More Ten of a Kind here.)

1 Rm Rv Vu Hi Ceils

Jim Shooter is supposed to famously (although probably anecdotally) have ordered Marvel pencillers to make certain that the splash page of each Marvel comic contained 1) the title hero(es) 2) in action 3) using their powers. I'm glad that story's just a made-up slur about Shooter (honestly, I liked his tenure at EIC of MC), because although an action-packed splash-page is an immediate adrenaline rush that pulls you into the story, sometimes a quieter, more mundane tho' still quirky full-page moment when you open the cover is just what the doctor ordered. In fact, it's pretty much the Marvel Age summed up in its very first page: their heroes are just like you and me—rushing to a high school physics test, arguing with your best friend's brother-in-law who set fire to your bed, or, say, just off the top of my head, fine-tune-adjusting your television antenna. Not that these things look anything like they do when you 'n' me 'n' the boys next door do them, oh no sirree. Even in their quietest or most ordinary moments, the Marvel heroes do things...shall we say...larger than life. Take this, f'r example:


Splash page from Giant-Man story in Tales to Astonish #66, scripted by Stan Lee, pencilled by Bob Powell, inked by Frank "Frankie Ray" Giacoia, colors by Stan Goldberg, letters by Ray "Sherigail" Holloway

Click picture to Pym-particle-size
Check out the fine details: the architectural gargoyles; the Chrysler Building in the background, Hank's office chair, his super-computer with EIGHT, count 'em, EIGHT KILOBYTES of memory, his ash tray and speed-caulker. Not to mention the window in the next building where a vandal has scrawled the names of some miscreants all over the shades. More seriously, the way the window's in Hank Pym's building almost work, in a semi-Eisnerian way, as individual comics panels. No coincidence there: penciller Bob Powell worked from Will Eisner's scripts on, and later wrote, the "Mr. Mystic" comic strips in The Spirit Section.

So there you have it: Giant-Man isn't smashing commies or racing ants to a disaster; he's just trying to get better TV reception. Quiet as it is, it's one of my favorite splash pages of all time. We do not see the likes of this wonderful sort of splash page anymore, do we. Here's to you, Bob Powell—we salute you.

Friday Night Fights: Self-destroyer, wreck your health/Destroy friends, destroy yourself

This is the final week of Friday Night Fights—Classic Edition!!! presented, as always, by the Inimitable Bahlactus. The past eleven rounds of FNF have been all in black-and-white, and in the spirit of stepping into the monochrome ring with the fightin'est, black-and-whiten'est, righten'est comic there is, I've pulled out the 1986 Scott McCloud classic aptly titled

DESTROY!!

PARENTS BEWARE!

(it says on the front)

This comic book is exactly what you think it is: 32 pages of meaningless, overblown violence, mayhem and destruction! (Plus one Naughty Word)

And, up below the bombastically immense title on the cover:

THE LOUDEST COMIC-BOOK IN THE UNIVERSE!!

It only cost $4.95 in 1986, but this comic book is huge. How huge is it? It's fourteen inches tall and eleven inches wide...twenty-two inches across when you open it up. It is so huge I can sit entirely inside it.



It is so large I couldn't fit it into my scanner. So yes, you are looking at photographs of the comic book here, not scans. Don't sue me, Mister Understanding Comics McCloud!

The plot? Well, such as it is: The Red Basher has gone berserk in Manhattan, destroying everything in sight, and only Captain Maximum can stop him. So, you're likely to get several pages of angsty discussion and conversation over what's eating the Red Basher, huh? Not in a comic book called DESTROY!!, baby!:



The mega-sized pages and McCloud's crisp distinct inkwork are perfect for displaying the most intense and violent fistfight in the history of comics. Well, at least the most destructive:



Remember that Justice League issue where Batman laid out Guy Gardner with the famous "one punch"? That's child's play. With one punch, the Basher sends Captain Maximum flying from the Wall Street district on Manhattan's south end straight uptown to Rockefeller Center: as a character screams, "a total of more than four miles!" And, right into the Time-Warner Building, too!



Say goodbye ("Bye bye!") to most of New York's most famous architectural wonders, as the Flatiron Building, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal, and Chrysler Building get smashed into rubble during the mighty brawl!



Because once big superpowered guys start hitting each other with buildings, it's sorta like potato chips...it's hard to stop!



From there on the fussin', the feudin', and the fightin' (not to mention the SHOUTIN') start to get a little outta control:



My goodness. It's getting mighty violent in here.



All good things must of course come to an end:



(Granted, that's a pretty macabre panel, but hey, it was published in 1986, when we still could think blowing up New York was fun to look at.)

Anyway, the punchline, in the final two panels?



So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The ultimate black-and-white Friday Night Fightin' comic book. Graphic novel literature at its finest, and a masterwork of visual narrative fiction that simply must be experienced in the original big-ass format to be appreciated. That, my dear friends, is the magic of...DESTROY!!

(Buy your own:


...and read about DESTROY!! on Scott McCloud's website.)

Bahlactus is big, yeah yeah yeah. He's not small, no no no.