Review: Captain America's Bicentennial Battles by Jack Kirby

It's become a tradition for bloggers to bring out Captain America for July 4th. I am sure the most common post showcases the 1976 Marvel Treasury Special, Captain America's Bicentennial Battles. Even though I was a rabid Marvel collector in the 70s, I never read this special until last week, the digital version Captain America by Jack Kirby: Bicentennial Battles (which also includes Captain America 201-205).

Why didn't I read it? Basically because I was holding me nose up against a lot of Kirby's new work. I was being snooty and elitist. It looked corny. Being overly patriotic wasn't a thing in the 1970s, after the debacle of Richard Nixon. But I was wrong. This Treasury tale is a superb and subversive! The artwork is grand, among the best of Kirby's mid-seventies return to Marvel. It gets crazy from page one, where Cap visits a cool cat named Mister Buda, a mystical being who has undefined powers. He is also good at transcendental meditation, which was a big 70s fad in California, where Kirby lived. I am sure he was inspired by that.

The main thrust of this story is to send Captain America bouncing around in time, visiting different eras of the past that influenced the United States. Mister Buda gives Cap this gift without his permission, the gift of knowledge of the human condition throughout time. His first stop? World War 2, where he drops directly into Nazi headquarters.

In a surprisingly moving scene, Cap is briefly reunited with Bucky in the past. It was so touching that now I regret Marvel reviving Bucky. The inkers for this oversized volume are Barry Smith, John Romita and Herb Trimpe. Smith inked the first part of the story in Nazi land, and you can definitely see his embellishment style here, with his signature touches on Cap's chainmail and the forest as they make their escape. Sadly, Cap is torn away from Bucky after a way too brief encounter.

There are lots of great splash pages in this special, as you would expect from Jack Kirby. I love this one where he shouts "We're all Americans!" before he is torn from a past encounter. The symbol on his palm is the magic imbued by Mister Buda to transport him through time. It looks a bit like an Illuminati symbol.

There is also a lot of humor in this book as well as angst. He takes a trip back in time to 1776 where he meets Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross, who take one look at Cap and start making sketches. It turns out the first USA flag was inspired by Cap's costume, which freaks him out to no end.

Another humorous scene involves a trip to the 1930s where he encounters a boy selling newspapers in Brooklyn. Some mafia gangsters try to steal a paper and Cap - who, like Kirby, hates bullies - yanks them out of the car violently. The mobsters start shooting, and Cap protects the boy and fights back. You wonder what Kirby is going for here. Is this an homage to the Newsboy Legion, the terrific series he did for DC Comics and which he recently revived in Jimmy Olsen? No. It turns out the boy selling newspapers is Kirby himself! "When I get to be a big-shot artist, I'm gonna plaster Lefty's mug all over the comic pages!"

Among the craziness and humor there is a message. This isn't about all the best patriotic moments in America. At one point, Cap gets tired of bouncing around the past and asks for it to stop. I was kind of shocked to see Mister Buda accuse Cap of being too shallow to learn about the history of the USA. It's shocking because this is a character Kirby co-created to be a patriotic symbol. He is not reluctant to shake this character up and do wild crazy things with him. I thought only the young guys like Starlin or Englehart were the subversives at Marvel in the 1970s. I was wrong. Kirby was one of them, too, perhaps an even greater one.

Cap drops in on an American Indian band of fighters led by Geronimo, on the run from a American Calvary. He tries to help them out by talking sense into the Calvary men, to no avail. This wonderful massive double page spread is the result. He doesn't stop ever tragedy from happening. All he can do is bear witness to them. He also encounters a slave trying to escape his masters and a future war on the moon.

I came away from reading this volume utterly delighted. Jack Kirby did the crazy trippy 2001 A Space Odyssey adaption earlier in another Treasury edition format. The Bicentennial Battles Treasury is Captain America's Odyssey. Nuff Said!

Thing Tuesday: Waking up with Ben Grimm

Having a hard time waking up after the New Year?  You're not alone.

The Thing smashing his alarm clock, of which he has over a dozen.  This is from the Marvel Fanfare special by Barry Smith.

The original art to this splash page!  Nuff Said.

Barry Smith Conan the Barbarian in Marvel Slurpee Cup

I'm going to give this Slurpee cup parade a bit of a rest, but before I do, here's one of the grandest cups, featuring Marvel's version of Conan the Barbarian!



This grand image of Conan by Barry Smith adorns this Slurpee cup.  God, I love the logo too, the classic one used on Conan's regular color comic.  From the Back Issue #34 article about the making of the Slurpee cups, I think it was Paty Cockrum who said they avoided using Barry Smith's artwork because it was too detailed.  I think it looks smashing, but when you compare it to the source of the artwork below, you will see what Paty meant.

Where did the image come from?  One of my favorite all-time Conan covers, from King Size Annual #1, see this article for more about this fantastic King-Size extravaganza!  It is one of Smith's highly detailed pen and ink drawings that blew me away when I first saw it and made me get into the world of Conan.

The back of the cup is very interesting.  Rather recapping an origin tale, Conan instead uses this avenue to spout his unique outlook on life:

Men call me a Barbarian, but I saw that Barbarism is the natural state of mankind!  I've been everything from a slave to a king, but I've always been a man...always Conan!

Pretty cool, eh, that Conan, besides fighting, drinking and bedding wenches he is a philosopher to boot!  The headshot of Conan there, I am sure I could place that too if I had time.  Makes me think Conan #24 with Red Sonja or perhaps the Tower of the Elephant.  What do you think?  Nuff Said!

Silver Surfer Saturday: Barry Smith

Here's a little gem from the early career of Barry Smith...

Back when Smith's style was heavily influenced by Jack Kirby, this illustration of the Silver Surfer in space has all the hallmarks of the King's style.  No idea what year this was from, but it's clearly pre-Conan!  Nuff Said.

Barry Windsor Smith's Epic Illustrated Covers

Barry Windsor-Smith first bid Marvel adieu in the 1970s after he left the Conan series.  But he returned from time to time, working on special projects, such as his contributions to Epic Illustrated.

This particular cover for the August 1981 issue, featuring a warrior about to enter a walled city, shows that Smith still retained his mastery over all things sword and sorcery.

The February 1983 cover depicts an "epic" crash landing in a lush pond and surrounding forest. 

Epic Illustrated was the Marvel Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by the late legendary Archie Goodwin.  While Epic featured occasional stories of Marvel characters like Galactus and the Silver Surfer, it featured independent work by creators.  It was a first for Marvel, to publish stories where creators retained the ownership and copyright.  This paved the way for Goodwin to start the Epic line of comics, where an incredible array of creator-owned comics were published--Dreadstar, Coyote, Moonshadow, Groo, and many others.  Nuff Said!

Strange Saturday: Barry Smith Draws Doc Strange Spinning Out of Control

Every once in a while, I wake up in the morning and a classic comic book pops in my head.  Most often on Saturdays, it’s a Doctor Strange story.  Today my mind travelled back to 1972, Marvel Premiere #3: Barry Smith and Stan Lee on the good Doctor Strange.

As you can tell by the terrific splash page, Smith plotted the full story with Stan providing the words and captions.  What we like to call Marvel Style!  Except I always think that classic Marvel style was when Stan at least gave a page of notes or at least a conversation with the artist.  You have to admire how well it worked at the time.  It was only possible due to the fact that Kirby, Romita, Buscema, Colan, Smith, etc., were all great storytellers.  I can’t possibly imagine any of Marvel’s current creators working this way.

Barry Smith knocked himself out on the artwork for this story.  Look at this panel where Doc is walking through the streets of New York City, as the rain starts to fall.  He’s brooding on this and that.  Who could capture this feeling, or draw those raindrops, as well as Smith could?

This is the other panel that always stuck in my mind—the one where Doc smashes open his window and discovers that the world outside has changed.  He’s trapped in his astral form while his body remains in a coma.  It’s unreal, like a dream.  Gee, which classic villain could cause this situation?  Nightmare, of course.

This comic has been reprinted a few times.  The scans you see here were taken from a Marvel Milestones reprint.  Nuff said!

Thing Tuesdays: Barry Smith and Marvel Fanfare 15

In 1984, we were allowed to see just how much Barry Smith adores the Thing in Marvel Fanfare 15:

Smith wrote and drew a 20 page story, in which the Thing wakes up on April Fools Day, encountering one prank after another, like this one:

Fake Whiskers, planted by Ben’s teammate, Johnny Storm.  I love that line: “Maybe I’m reverteratin’!”  The story ends with the threat of an exploding cigar, which Al Milgrom kind of telegraphs in the upper left corner box.

Pick up Marvel Fanfare back issues at a con if you get a chance, they have some real gems!  Nuff said.

Savage Tales #2: Conan, Red Nails, all for seventy-five cents!

I described about how I fell in love with the world of Conan the Cimmerian after buying that King-Size Annual.  I was surprised, when I started reading the regular Conan series, that Barry Smith no longer drew it.  The art was handled by John Buscema, who I also liked, but I wanted Barry Smith.  Would he ever return to Conan?  I only had a to wait a few months in 1973 to see this Marvel house ad…

Whoa, big news!  I had heard fables and whispers about Savage Tales #1, which appeared two years earlier.  Apparently few people were able to buy it.  Savage Tales #2 was a very big deal indeed, as we read on the Bullpen Bulletins page…

If this did not stoke the fires enough to get us excited, there was Roy Thomas’ special editorial in Conan the Barbarian #30…

Note that in the editorial, Roy makes reference to a common occurrence in comics.  Whenever a popular artist leaves a series, no matter how good the replacement is, the readers always hate him and demand the previous guy come back.  John Buscema turned out to be very good indeed on Conan and drove sales to record heights.

I was on the lookout for Savage Tales #2 for at least a month, and then I saw this cover in the magazine section of The Book Cache in Anchorage, Alaska:

Now there’s a remarkable thing about this cover.  It’s painted by John Buscema!  I think this may be the only painting he did for the Marvel magazines.  I thought I had read somewhere that John Romita had done a cover rough sketch and Buscema did the rest.  Now open up the cover and see the table of contents page…

This was done in the style of many Marvel magazines, with a nice illustration accompanying the contents listing.  The drawing of Conan on a moonlit night is wonderful, drawn by Pablo Marcos, who I already knew about from Tales of the Zombie.  Now let’s flip forward a few pages to see if Barry Smith is really in this issue…

Oh.  My.  God.  Not only is Barry back, he’s better than ever.  The composition on this splash page is spectacular.  Smith’s detailed line work can be appreciated in full glory, without the four-color process muddying it up in any way.  I’ve seen Red Nails colored for both the Marvel Treasury and Dark Horse collected editions, but the color just seems to me to mess it up.  Red Nails must be appreciated in black and white, just like Citizen Kane or Manhattan.  The Red Nails logo and lettering are amazing.  Now as far as the story itself…

Better than most movie-blockbusters at the time.  The longer format of the magazine allowed Thomas and Smith to slow down the pacing and make the action more intense.  There’s a scene where Conan and Valeria are chased by a dragon.  Valeria stumbles and twists her ankle.  Conan carries her and runs, then when the dragon is almost upon them, hurls Valeria away, turns around and slices into that creature’s head.  Wow!  Each page of this story was worth drooling over.  The story had a kinky turn when Conan and Valeria stumble into a castle, where a witch has plans to make them human sacrifices.  And it was only part 1.  Part 2 would appear in Savage Tales #3.

When Red Nails took a break, there’s was still plenty more to read.  There was this Robert E. Howard poem, illustrated by Barry Smith.  These were reproduced from Smith’s pencils:

I don’t think I appreciated poetry until I read this.  You can judge it as a good or bad poem, but somehow Smith made poetry look cool.  I remember from this point on, wanting to explore more poetry from people like TS Elliott and Gary Snyder.  Robert E. Howard must have a been a man who suffered from depression, as he committed suicide shortly after his mother died.  The words in this poem sound very bleak, I think there is some indication here of his mental outlook.

If Barry Smith wasn’t enough to set this issue on fire, there was an additional story featuring King Kull, drawn by Berni Wrightson!  It was a reprint, but I had missed it the first time it appeared in Creatures on the Loose #10.  Creatures on the Loose used to be called Tower of Shadows.  Wrightson originally drew a cover for the original title, but it had to be replaced when the title was changed.  Thomas reprinted the cover here.  It’s early Wrightson, but early Wrightson is better than most people today.  Later, Wrightson would join Barry Smith at “The Studio” where they would share space for their drawings/paintings.

Now let’s go to the end of Savage Tales #2, for the cherry on top of the cake…

Even the next issue teaser page was incredible!  I cannot get over how good this looks.  Perhaps it was an illustration that Smith did for something else and it was used here.  You can see here Marvel’s aggressive scheduling in effect, promising that the next issue would be available the end of September 1973.  Savage Tales #3 would not appear on newsstands until late February 1974.  The delay was well worth it, Red Nails was completed by Smith and turned out to be a masterpiece.

I cannot tell you how many times I read this issue as a kid!  So much entertainment, well worth the “six bits” I spent.  I have bought many different collections with Red Nails in it, but no edition is better than the original Savage Tales magazine.  Nuff said.

Barry Smith's King-Size Conan Annual Cover

I never thought I would ever read a comic about a barbarian in a million years.  I saw Conan on the newsstands and passed it by every time…until one day in 1973, I saw this incredible cover to King-Size Conan Annual #1.

Now that’s a cover that makes a barbarian look super mofo cool.  Conan’s glaring at the reader as if they were his enemy, daring them to take him on.  He’s got gobs of tiny nicks and cuts over his body, beads of sweat, and he is carrying an axe and a bloodied sword as well!  The detailed line work is amazing.  I love the swirling (fog or magic?) around his ankles, the cobblestone streets.  And that signature by Barry Smith!  I had never seen any artist sign his work so creatively.

Here’s another look at the cover with a different color scheme:

I still prefer the original King-Size cover.  It got me to buy that annual and run home to read the stories: Lair of the Beast-Men and Tower of the Elephant!  The latter tale had a shattering ending that left me completely hooked into Conan.  I bought everything from that point on: Conan’s regular title, Savage Tales, Savage Sword of Conan, and, of course, Giant-Size Conan.

But what was this “Academy Award” that Conan had won?  Rascally Roy explains it all in The Hyborian Page!

The Academy of Comic Book Arts existed in the early 1970s.  They did many things for the good of comic book professionals, but they also handed out awards, which Conan won, in 1970 and 1971.  What I really dig about this editorial page is Roy Thomas’ style of explaining all these things to the reader, a bit less egotistical than Stan Lee used to, but it really got me excited.  The map down below definitely peaked my interest in Conan’s world, and that red-head in the panels (Red Sonja) definitely made me want to buy more Conan comics.

Bravo, Barry Smith and Roy Thomas!  Nuff said.