According to Gawker, the New Yorker recently ran a cartoon that plagiarizes the very famous cover of Tales to Astonish by King of Comics, Jack Kirby. The too-cool-for-school blog asks, "Comic book geeks, your services are at last required. How obscure is this?"
On behalf of geeks everywhere, allow me to say, it’s not at all obscure. It’s one of the more famous images around.
[Above image pulled from Gawker for use in comparison.]
King of the Hill, the Emmy award-winning animated television series created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, gave a sly wink to comic books on their Sunday, March 16 episode "Behind Closed Doors."
The soft-satirical parody of Texas middle America found housewife Peggy Hill questioning her family’s unity. When entering son Bobby’s room, she finds him reading "Unvincible," a comic that bears a striking similarity to Image’s Invincible by Robert Kirman and Cory Walker.
This is not big, breaking news but ComicMix thinks it’s pretty cool that instead of taking the easy mainstream route of spoofing Superman or Spider-Man, the show wore its comic book fan pride by choosing one of the great indie superheroes.
If the entertainment industry was a baseball team, Mark Evanier would be the utility infielder. A quick glance at his resume and you’ll see a career that spans the worlds of comics, television, film and animation, and a creator who’s found success playing a variety of roles in the creative process.
He began his career working with the late, great, comics creator Jack Kirby, and their friendship endured beyond their initial professional association. Evanier’s name can be found on the writing credits of television series such as Welcome Back, Kotter, as well as various animated series, including Dungeons and Dragons, Thundarr the Barbarian and Garfield and Friends. His portfolio of comics work includes a longstanding partnership with Sergio Aragones on Groo the Wanderer and the current, ongoing DC series The Spirit, based on the popular Will Eisner character.
Evanier also acts as administrator for the official online home of Walt Kelly’s Pogo comic strip, and maintains a regularly updated blog about comics, film and the entertainment industry as a whole on his website at www.povonline.com.
I spoke with Evanier about the recent release of Kirby: King of Comics, the biography of Jack Kirby he authored, as well as his work with The Spirit and Pogo. We even found some time to talk a bit about his experience at AnthroCon, and his introduction to the world of "Furries."
COMICMIX: What are you up to today, Mark?
MARK EVANIER: Today I’m working on the foreword for the collection of Jack Kirby’s O.M.A.C. comic that DC’s going to publish. I had to do some proofreading and finalization on a new Crossfire story that’s going to be published, and I’m working on the Garfield cartoon show today. See, if you do enough different things, you don’t do any of them well. But they’ll think you’re versatile.
CMix: Kirby: King of Comics, your biography of Jack Kirby just hit shelves. Can you tell me a little about your relationship with Kirby? How did the biography project come about?
ME: Well, we first met in July of 1969, and a few months later he asked me to become his assistant. I worked for him for a couple of years and then I left and we stayed friends. Then we had a fight, and then we became friends again.
Jack was kind of my brilliant, eccentric uncle for a while there, and early on in our association he gave me a clue that he’d like me to be a historian of his, also. One of the things that intrigued me was that he wasn’t telling me what to write or what not to write. Jack was very committed to the truth. He was kind of obsessive and he always thought that he would come off well in any history if people just wrote the truth.
I always knew that I was going to write stuff about him, I just didn’t know what form it would take or when I’d write it. But then, after he passed away, his widow said to me, "Listen, when are you going to write a book about Jack?" I said, "Oh, do you think this is the time?" She said, "Yes, please do it." I agreed to do it and she helped me a lot and gave me all of Jack’s personal papers and effects and such.
I’ve been working since Jack passed away, which is 14 years now, on a humongous-sized book about his life. It’s still a few years off in the future, so when the Harry N. Abrams Company asked me to do an interim book to tide people over, I took a look at what I was doing and realized the massive book I was writing was getting too mired in minutia to the point where I thought a lot of ordinary civilians wouldn’t be able to make their way through it. So I thought I’d do a sort of simplified version first.
One of the best surprises in the stores this week was Mark Evanier’s long-awaited Kirby: King Of Comics biography of Jack Kirby, which is the latest step in his longtime association with the King. Mark gives us the story behind the book in an excerpt from an interview you can read on Monday here at ComicMix, plus:
— Wizard #200 – confusing? We set you straight!
— Marvel sells out and DC reduces prices
— NY ComicCon’s Guest List grows
— Stan Lee recreates some old magic
— Not to be outdone, there’s a brand new trivia question and another chance to grab an exclusive Graham Crackers Comics variant by e-mailing us at: podcast [at] comicmix.com
Kirby Sez Don’t Ask – Just Press The Button
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The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of King Lear starring Ian McKellen (X-Men, Lord of the Rings, The Shadow) and Sylvester McCoy (the seventh Doctor) has been videotaped and will be broadcast this fall in America on PBS, according to theatermania.com.
Directed by Trevor Nunn (Les Misérables, Nicholas Nickleby, Cats), the production was taped in HD TV and will be broadcast throughout the world. It will also be available on DVD.
The production debuted last April at The Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and travelled throughout the world, ending its tour on London’s West End. McCoy played The Fool, McKellen the King.
In the kind of coincidence that seems manufactured for this campaign season, Dr. Martin Luther King is in the news during the same week that we celebrate his birth and life. In a speech last week, Senator Hillary Clinton said (among other things), “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act… It took a president to get it done.” The media pounced on this as an attack on Senator Barack Obama and his alleged lack of experience in politics.
Every time I backtrack to some last-century comic book or movie or teevee show that purports to portray Bat Masterson, I come away with a greater appreciation of the historical model as a bigger-than-real figure. Granted that some of Masterson’s real-life exploits and con-games aren’t quite the stuff of sensationalized melodrama, I’ll take the genuine article every time for Puckish wit and adaptability to wildly differing environments.
This day in 1955 brought us the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, the last part of The Lord of the Rings series. Had Tolkien been around for recent transformations, or more accurately, annihilations of books into film, he might have perished merely at the thought of his masterpieces being turned into movies. Rest easy, Mr. Tolkien, as director Peter Jackson was a thankful exception to usual butchery, for the large part maintaining the stories’ integrity in film form. Here’s hoping he can resolve that bitter battle with New Line surrounding the compensation on his first three films so that he can get to direct The Hobbit.
Born in Ecuador forty-five years ago, a talent no one could have imagined would grow up (in New Mexico) to make his mark on the world with timeless phrases such as "I do believe you have my stapler" and "I need T.P. for my bunghole." It’s Mike Judge’s birthday today, the brain behind classics such as Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, Office Space, and the incredibly underrated Idiocracy. Thank you, Mr. Judge, for bravely blazing the path of tastelessness for the rest of us to follow in. Thank you for illuminating adolescence in a way that is relatable, for encouraging office anarchy and for being responsible for the only movie in which Jennifer Aniston was bearable. We salute you!
And while we’re on the subject, go visit Me And My Red Stapler, a favorite comics blog of ours.
On this day in 1947, Stephen Edwin King, a.k.a. "Richard Bachman", "John Swithen", and "that guy who looks like Frankenstein trying to play rhythm guitar for the Rock Bottom Remainders" was born. Presumably, it was under a full moon with howling wolves and eldritch fog in the distance…
King is best known to comics fans today for the Marvel adaptation of his Dark Tower series, but long time readers know him for the adaptations of Lawnmower Man by Walt Simonson and his adaptation of Creepshow with Berni Wrightson, and his contribution to Heroes For Hope and Heroes Against Hunger.
But only the trivia obsessed fan knows about King’s first attempt to break into Marvel. Way back in the 70’s, he pitched a X-Men story about this teenage girl who just discovered her telekinetic abilities, and the story was rejected by editor Marv Wolfman. The teenage girl got written into a stand-alone horror novel named Carrie, and… well, he got pretty well known pretty darn quick. Although, if this is to be believed, not quickly enough:
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