Keep on FOOMin with the Hulk

Here's an illustration from one of the early FOOM fanzine issues.  Can you guess the name of the artist?

It's by Jim Steranko!  Featuring the Hulk strutting down the street with a FOOM membership card in hand.  Steranko was doing a take-off on another famous image that originally appeared in 1968.

Robert Crumb drew Keep on Truckin as a one page strip in Zap Comics #1.  You've probably seen this on various truck decals and mud flaps over the years.  According to this Wikipedia article, Crumb never made much money from his creation.  Nuff Said!

FOOM: Artwork by Steranko, Kirby, Buscema, Colan, Starlin and more!

The Bronze Age Babies blog has a great series every Friday where they cover F.O.O.M., Marvel’s fan club from the 1970s.  I thought I would share a few memories of my own.  I signed up for this club right after I saw the ad in Marvel’s Bullpen Bulletins page.  After a while, I had forgotten about joining—and then I received an giant envelope in the mail—with the Hulk’s green head staring at the viewer!  The mailing label was affixed in the white space of the Hulk’s mouth.

I was blown away just by the great design behind even the envelope!  I wonder if Steranko, who was behind the first year of the F.O.O.M. club, came up with it.  I managed to buy a F.O.O.M. kit a number of years ago and took this scan of it, in a near pristine state.



The FOOM membership kit also arrived with this stunning poster by Steranko.  With the Silver Surfer in the forefront, pointing the way for heroes of the Marvel Universe.  You have all the big heroes here: Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, the Thing, etc.  But you also have representatives of some smaller teams: Black Bolt from the Inhumans and Angel from the X-Men.  Angel is wearing his costume designed by Neal Adams in the last few original issues.  If you are wondering why the Black Widow is here, this is probably due to the fact she was sharing space with Daredevil at the time.  It is a bit strange that she is the only female super-hero represented.  A great poster that I threw away or gave away at some foolish point, but I was lucky enough to get it a few years ago.

Jack Kirby's Back: FOOM 11 and Captain America 193 covers

In 1975, the word was given: Jack’s Back.  We read it first in Stan’s Soapbox on the Bullpen Bulletins page, then it re-echoed through fanzines like the Comic Reader.  Fans that also read the Distinguished Competition (DC Comics for you young uns), knew that Jack was leaving, as evidenced by his decreasing role over there.  Marvel die-hards who also subscribed to FOOM got an advance preview of what was to come…



Jack Kirby, super-hero warrior of the pencil, was returning back to the bosom of Marvel.  This issue detailed Kirby’s plans for Captain America as well as a special adaption of 2001 A Space Odyssey.  And they hinted at a future collaboration with Stan Lee on the Silver Surfer.

I had a mixed reaction hearing this news.  I loved Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen, New Gods and Mister Miracle over at DC.  What I knew of Kirby’s Fantastic Four and Thor came from reprints like Marvel’s Greatest Comics—I had started reading Marvel at precisely the time Kirby jumped ship.  While I loved those classic FF stories…as time progressed, I came to admire a slightly deeper level of writing from guys like Steve Englehart, who wrote Captain America from issue 153 to 186 (1972-1975).  Three years of the greatest Captain America arc ever written in my eyes: the racist doppelganger Cap\Bucky of the 1950s, the Secret Empire headed by Richard Nixon, the Nomad arc, topped off by the Red Skull’s return.  Ed Brubaker has been mining this material since he started his Cap run.

Yes, Kirby was back—but wait a minute—that meant Steve Englehart was not coming back! 
Shit!  That was my feeling.  Looking back, it was like a hostage swap.  Marvel got Kirby, DC got Englehart, who worked on Justice League and his famous Batman/Detective run with Marshall Rogers.

This is a weird way to begin a 1970s Kirby tribute.  I still bought his 70s era Marvel comics: Cap, 2001, Eternals, Black Panther, and yes—Devil Dinosaur.  I thought they were bizarre and funky and definitely not as hip as the work produced by Englehart, Don McGregor, and Steve Gerber.  They weren’t as good as his DC Comics work or the old FF run.  I’ve appreciated this material more as time has progressed.  I think Kirby produced some great covers during this period, which I am going to feature here over the next few days. 



Jack Kirby’s cover to Captain America 193 was iconic.  Even better, it was inked by John Romita.  I know a lot of you guys are gonna say that Romita’s inks overpowered Kirby on this cover.  But I think it’s the perfect blend, a great Kirby pose followed with Romita detailing.  I think this cover is just as good as Captain America #100 (the first silver age issue).  You have to love that cover blurb: King Kirby is Back—And Greater Than Ever!




The back cover to FOOM #11 featured Jack Kirby sitting back and dreaming up the covers to Cap 193 and 194.  I don’t know who did this one, if I had to guess, I would say it was Marie Severin.
I am curious if anyone else alive in the 70s had the same reaction to Kirby’s taking over Captain America?  Or did you say, throw that bum Englehart out?  Let me know your thoughts.  Nuff Said!

Update: Comments from my old MT blog...

4 Comments

By RAB on July 19, 2010 3:51 PM

It always irked me that Marvel didn't actually use a Kirby drawing on the cover of FOOM but had John Byrne do a pastiche of his style.

By Richard Guion on July 21, 2010 10:39 AM

I never realized that it was Byrne who did the FOOM cover before now! DUH!

By Alan UK on August 2, 2010 8:18 AM

I remember the Kirby return very well it nearly turned me off Marvel in general and Captain America in particular, just like the equally retrograde move when the execrable Frank Robbins came back to take over Cap.
It seemed like marvel didn't have the self confidence and belief in it's more subtle artistic creations and was going back to Zap! Pow! type material. It would be enlightening to know what the age profile of Kirby readers was compared with Englehart etc. It might have been Marvel was worried about the age profile of the books.
Kirby was clearly a creative man but his ideas were at odds with his artistic execution, the Eternals for example were a story and background rich creation but the cartoonish visual style made them look ludicrous and to me unreadable, compared with the recent Gaiman makeover for instance.
I assumed that Stan Lee had a soft spot for Kirby and wanted him back to recreate the new frontier atmosphere of the early Marvel FF Hulk work being himself slightly uncomfortable with the direction of the new guys like Gerber and Engelhart.
Either way I nearly stopped buying but it actually did me a great favour by getting me to crossover to DC and other publishers and appreciate the work going on there.

By Erik Larsen on September 27, 2010 3:28 PM

Jack Kirby coming to Marvel was the greatest thing ever! By this point it was clear Englehart was gone--he hadn't done the book for a while--and what followed was pretty weak tea so Jack was a godsend. Yes, it was crazy stuff but it was insanely inventive and wildly entertaining! I was hooked hard.

John Buscema and P Craig Russell's Vision cover from FOOM 12

This cover to FOOM #12 (1975) featuring the Vision was a unique John Buscema drawing, inked by P. Craig Russell!

I love any cover that makes inventive use of the logo—and having the Vision intangibly glide through FOOM was simply inspired.  Russell keep Buscema’s lines intact, but you can see his style here and there.  Nuff said.