Peaceful poetics/Beautiful eastern verse forms/Lois Lane haiku.

Clark Kent, where are you?
That man is never around.
Look, it's Superman!

Let me puncture Clark
With this pin. If he's super
He won't feel a thing.

This story is hot!
A Pulitzer Prize for sure.
How do you spell "splayed"?



Jimmy, get that shot!
That's front page material.
Ow! Your watch is loud.

So, Smallville, let's go.
It's your turn to buy me lunch.
I'll have...where'd you go?

You're a fiend, Luthor!
Superman will stop you cold.
What's with the green rock?



My own comic book?
Cancelled. Never was written
By Grant Morrison.

How come Supergirl
Has her own comic? I don't.
Need a belly shirt.

Here's that story, boss.
No thanks to Clark; he's AWOL.
He missed Superman.

Hatcher? Kate Bosworth?
Margot Kidder? Who the hell
Hired them as me?

Superman can't see
That I love him, but he saw
My pink underwear.



"I am Curious
(Black)"? So, what the hell was Bob
Kanigher smoking?

I told you, Jimmy
The man's got a heart of gold.
But don't call him chief.

Final Crisis? Hah!
The only crisis 'round here
Is my missed deadline.



Maybe Superman
Will ask me to marry him
If I kill Lana.

Can you read my mind?
Do you know what I'm thinking...
Hey! Don't you let go!

Look, up in the sky!
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...
Hey, where did Clark go?

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 35

Marvel house ad, printed in Fantastic Four #98 (May 1970)

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 34

Panel from Fantastic Four #26 (May 1964), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by George Roussos (aka George Bell), letters by Art Simek

Sing a Song of Superman

Bemused? Befuddled? Bedaffled? My prescription is to check in with the good Dr. K for a Rx of context, folks!

Reading tonight: Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner

What am I up to tonight, you ask? (I'm glad you did!) I'm off to see my good pal Janni Lee Simner for a reading and signing of her newest YA novel Bones of Faerie, which is, despite my first impression, not the saga of the irascible Southern doctor who barks out "He's dead, Tinkerbell!" or "I'm a doctor, not a tulip pollinator!" No (cool as that would be), it's the story of an apocalyptic world ravaged by a brutal war between humanity and the fay world. (Those little buggers don't fight fair, let me tell you! I never did get back my Frisbee after shooting it in the wrong direction in their woods.)

Jane Yolen's given it heck of a blurb:

“This book has one of the best first chapters I know—and the rest of the book more than lives up to its promise. Pure, stunning, it is impossible to put down or forget.”

And you know Jane Yolen knows her stuff! You can read that first chapter right here. See? You can't put it down.

Janni will be reading and signing tonight at Barnes and Noble (Greenwich Village), 396 Avenue of the Americas (that's Sith Avenue to you and me), at 8th Street in Manhattan. (Plus, there is a Pizzeria Uno across the street! Yum yum.) Drop in to say hi to Janni and pick up a copy of the book! If you see me in the audience, I'll be happy to shake your hoof!

If you can't make it to the signing but still wanna read the book, well, in the words of Miss Stefan, iwhat you waiting for? Click on the Amazon link to the right and order yourself up a copy. Me, I'm trying to find my fairy wings to wear tonight, because it's always important to look your best when you're representin' the Clan Faerie. Isn't that right, Bones of Faerie?

Busy reading classic literature!

Back tomorrow!

(You can read classic lit about cows, too!):

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 33

Cakes.com advertisement for Fantastic Four cakes, based on the movie starring Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm (printed in Fantastic Four #528 (August 2005)

Mystery Science Monday: Gumby in "Robot Rumpus"

"Robot Rumpus," a Gumby cartoon (1956), this riffed version from Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode #912 (1998), featuring Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 32

Panels from The Thing #2 (August 1983), script and inks by John Byrne, pencils by Ron Wilson, colors by Bob Sharen, letters by Rich Parker

Ten of a Kind: Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?!?

(More Ten of a Kind here.)

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 31

Panel from What If? v. 2 #109 (June 1998), script by Bill Rosemann, pencils by Anthony Castrillo, inks by Ray McCarthy, colors by Felix Serrano, letters by Chris Eliopoulos

Saturday Morning Cartoon: Football: Now and Then

Football: Now and Then (Walt Disney, 1953), directed by Jack Kinney

FFotomontage: The Next Generation

Hey, kids, look what I found! Only two days after posting a potpourri of photomontage collages from Jack "King" Kirby's Fantastic Four, I was re-reading the twelve-issue 2001 retro-style miniseries Fantastic Four: The World's Greatest Comics Magazine. The series is a great romp that I oughta get around to reviewing one of these days, since I consider it one of the most fun comics ever! A veritable modern Bullpen of Marvel artists joined together to create a mega-cosmic FF story in the style of Lee and Kirby, creating a retcon adventure that fits between Fantastic Four #100 and 101 and involves our Fearlessly Frenzied foursome teaming up with virtually every other hero in the Marvel Universe of 1970, from Spider-Man to Captain Mar-Vell, up against a crazed Doc Doom wielding the Cosmic Cube against Galactus. It's Lee-tastic and Kirby-riffic!

I'd re-read the series to see if I could find a buncha good Ben Grimm images (and boy howdy, did I!) but the big surprise was the final page of issue #8 (pencilled by Rick Veitch and inked by Terry Beatty), which is a homage not only to the style of Kirby but also to his fantastic photomontages, as cosmic-powered Doom leaps into the Negative Zone. So, here's a special bonus Friday FFotomontage, in the style and spirit of Kirby but with the dreamtastic drama of Roarin' Rick!:


Page from Fantastic Four: The World's Greatest Comics Magazine #8 (September 2001), co-plotted by Erik Larsen & Eric Stephenson, script by Kurt Busiek, layouts by Erik Larsen, pencils by Rick Veitch, inks by Terry Beatty, colors by Eric Stephenson, letters by Richard Starkings & Comicraft

(Click on image to Rarebit Fiend-size)

And, via the kind suggestion of Matthew Alan Smith over at Holy Calamity: The TeamSmithy blog, see Veitch's original photocollage for this page at RickVeitch.com!

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 30

Marvel/Hostess Snack Cake advertisement: The Thing in "A Lesson to Be Learned" (appearing in Marvel comics cover-dated November 1981), script by Alan Kupperberg (?), art by Richard Howell (?), letters by Irving Watanabe

If I Ran Marvel Comics (And the BBC, too)

Back issues:

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 29

Panel from Fantastic Four #30 (September 1964), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Chic Stone, letters by Artie Simek

The Fantastic Photo World of Jack Kirby

It's the mid-sixties! (Well, not now it isn't, but bear with me here; I'm tryin' to make a point!) It's a time of change and turmoil. Malcolm X is assassinated; the Vietnam War rages on despite protests, the Beatles claim to be more popular than Jesus, Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde is released, the first man to walk in space...uh, walks in space, the Warner Brothers cartoon division is closed, Winston Churchill passes away, Star Trek premieres, Hurricane Betsy devastates New Orleans, Cassius Clay wallops Sonny Liston. And, perhaps most shocking and earth-shattering in this world of tumult and transformation...the motion picture The Sound of Music debuts.

Meanwhile, comic books are 12¢. Whatta bargain! 'Specially if you're zipping down to Pop's Sodium Shop to finger through the spinner rack and tug out copies of Marvel's flagship title, Fantastic Four. This is the period where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby stretched the boundaries of superhero comics just like Mister Fantastic stuck in a taffy pull—even more so than when they reinvented the whole genre back in the early sixties. Stan's scripts became more frantic, funny and frenzied; Jack's artwork became bigger, bolder, more energetic and powerful than every before: a perfect storm of widescreen entertainment that could be rolled up and stuck in yours back pocket. Each and every month in the pages of FF, Messrs. K. and L. assured the public their production would be second to none. We got such huger-than-life characters like The Silver Surfer and Galactus, Psycho-Man, Black Panther, and the Uncanny Inhumans (featuring Kirby's most gorgeous creation to date, the lovely Lockjaw Crystal). Also, Wyatt Wingfoot.

As Jack experimented with larger panels, huge multi-spread splash pages, dynamic fight scenes and introspective character portraits, he also brought a radical new technique for the first time to Fantastic Four: his famous (some might say infamous) photomontages. In these innovative panels and pages, Kirby would Photostat his artwork over a photograph (sometimes in black and white, sometimes colorized or tinted) to create a collage unlike anything else seen in Marvel comics. At their best the photomontages approached a realistic 3D; even when they visually failed (usually due to the relatively poor printing processes of the period) they were still bold visual experiments. Let's hop in Doctor Doom's Time Machine (just kick those Arby's wrappers out onto the floor...Victor kinda lives outta his Time Machine), set the controls for 1964 and beyond, and tune into wonders of the fourth-dimensional mind of The King, Jack Kirby:



Fantastic Four #29 (August 1964)
Click on any image to King-size



Fantastic Four #32 (November 1964)



Fantastic Four #33 cover (December 1964)



Fantastic Four #33 (December 1964)



Fantastic Four #37 (April 1965)

My favorite part of that last one? Stan's earnest explanation of why the photo might seem a little muddy in reproduction:


Give yourself a No-Prize, Mister Lee!



Fantastic Four #39 (June 1965)



Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965; takes place chronologically between issues #43-44)



Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966)



Fantastic Four #51 (June 1966)



Fantastic Four #55 (October 1966)


That last one is a bit murky, perhaps showing off the limitations of the comic book printing and range of colors at the time. But the experiment isn't over, not by a long shot. Maybe it's no coincidence that my two favorite Kirby photomontages are these later two which brought the technique into the double-page spread widescreen format at the same time it more fully integrated the FF characters into the surroundings than ever before:

Fantastic Four #62 (May 1967)



Fantastic Four Annual #6 (1968)


Whoa. That last one shoulda come in a black light version.

Kirby would continue the visual photomontages in his later work, most notably in various issues of his Fourth World books over at DC. It's a pity he did his work before the age of Photoshop, before the dawn of much-improved printing procedures, wider ranges of printed color, and deluxe paper—but then again, knowing how innovative the man was, he'd probably now be amazing us with a technique light-years beyond anything we'd seen. If Stan's scripts filled us with a sense of action and adventure, then Jack's artwork gave us its energy and power...and in his photomontages, awe and wonder over the vastness of unexplored space, undersea, or the Negative Zone.

So, in short? Jack Kirby: Genius. But, you knew that already, right?

Also, see Rick Veitch's homage to the Kirby photocollages here!

365 Days with Ben Grimm: Day 28

Panel from Marvel Two-in-One #62 (April 1980), script by Mark Gruenwald, pencils by Jerry Bingham, inks by Gene Day, colors by George Roussos, letters by Joe Rosen