The first new Jack Kirby comic I ever bought new

Here's something that may be a bit surprising. I've only bought a brand-new Jack Kirby comic ONCE in my entire life. I mean a comic that was drawn by Kirby, not just a cover or a few interior pages. And when I say brand-new I mean a comic that had been released that month or so (not obtained later as a back issue) and consisting of new material (not a reprint of older material). That one & only new Kirby comic that I ever bought was ... SUPER POWERS Vol. Two #1 (Sept. 1985).

     The reason that I didn't buy a new Jack Kirby comic until 1985 is a matter of bad timing. I was born in late 1970 and began buying comic books in 1977 when I was 6 years old. The first comic book that I ever remember owning was JLA #143 (June 1977). The first Marvel comic book that I ever remember owning was WHAT IF #5 (Oct. 1977).  

     In 1978 I began buying comics more regularly.and during that year I developed a preference for Marvel. I bought both AVENGERS #170 (April 1978) and KARATE KID #14 (May 1978; guest-starring Robin) new at the local drugstore around the same time. One was Marvel, the other DC. Both had a silver woman as the central figure on the cover, but I thought the Avengers cover was more impressive. Marvel's characters seemed a little more rebellious because of their in-fighting and this appealed to me as a pre-teen.  (I've written more extensively about my early comics purchases at this blog entry last year.)

     The same month that AVENGERS #170 came out, the first issues of two new Kirby series for Marvel were released: DEVIL DINOSAUR and MACHINE MAN. Both series ran 9 issues, ending with issues cover-dated Dec. 1978. They went on sale that September, two months before I turned 8 years old. At that time I was buying Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, etc. The earliest issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA that I remember buying new was #229 (Jan. 1979).

     Grocery stores at that time often had bagged comics with slightly different price symbols on their covers than their newsstand counterparts. These issues would pop up some months after the issues came out on newsstands and was my only way to buy back issues before discovering a local comics shop in 1980.  I know that I bought MACHINE MAN #5 (and probably #6, perhaps also #2) in these 3 for a dollar bags.  That would have been the earliest semi-new (but not "brand-new") Kirby comic that I ever bought.

     By 1979 (age 8) I had decided that CAPTAIN AMERICA was the series that I would focus on collecting, trying to get back issues of it.  Kirby had written and drawn the series in recent years, his last issue being #214 (Oct. 1977) which came out just prior to my buying comics in earnest.  However I acquired #214 and many other issues of Kirby's then-recent Cap run via trading with friends in the neighborhood who had them or finding them in the 3 for a dollar bags at the grocery stores.  

     Here is where the bad timing part comes in.  By 1979, just as my comics buying was growing, Kirby had left comics for animation.  Therefore any "new" Kirby comics that I bought would be work that he had done in the past.  Fortunately a lot of that work was then being reprinted, both in comics and paperback book form. And, like I say, I had learned of a local comics shop by 1980 and was able to purchase old comics from the 1960s and 1970s there.

     One of the first "brand-new" comics reprinting old Kirby work that I ever bought was AMAZING ADVENTURES #1 (Dec. 1979) which reprinted the first X-Men comic.  This reprint series ran 14 issues and I think that I bought all of them new as they came out with the exception of #9, 13 & 14.  So, at 9 years old, I had read the first 6 issues of the Lee-Kirby X-MEN. I was also buying some of the paperback Pocket Books that reprinted 1960s Marvel comics as well as the Stan Lee-bylined Fireside books reprinting classic Kirby.  By 1980, I had bought some actual 1960s Kirby issues, such as CAPTAIN AMERICA #109 which retold the character's origin.  My first exposure to Kirby's DC work was circa 1980 when my older brother sent me a copy of JIMMY OLSEN #138 (June 1971), written & drawn by Kirby.  I bought The Fantastic Four #236 (Nov. 1981) when it was released, an anniversary issue that contained a 14-page backup story with penciling credited to Kirby, but this was not actually a new Kirby strip.  The panels were reworked storyboards he had drawn earlier for The Fantastic Four TV cartoon series. 

     So, by 1980-81, around the time I turned 10 years old, I was exposed to a lot of Jack Kirby's work and considered him to be one of the most important comic book artists.  Unfortunately Jack was no longer drawing comics.  As a point of comparison, the first brand-new comic that I ever bought that was drawn by Steve Ditko was DAREDEVIL #162 (Jan. 1980) which I bought new when I was 9 years old.  The second brand-new Steve Ditko comic that I ever bought was INCREDIBLE HULK #249 (July 1980), and the third was MACHINE MAN #18 (Dec. 1980).  Ditko was drawing for Marvel when I was a young Marvelite and Jack Kirby wasn't drawing them anymore -- the opposite situation to the experience that a lot of fans had that grew up reading comics a generation earlier.  

     However, Kirby did return to comics in 1981, but again this proved to be bad timing for me.  CAPTAIN VICTORY #1 (Nov. 1981) hit comics shop shelves in July 1981. This was a new series for independent comics publisher Pacific Comics that was available only in the direct-sale (comics shop) market.  I was 10 years old at the time and my preference for Marvel was in full swing.  It's possible that I saw a copy of Captain Victory at a local comics shop back then, but if so I ignored it.  It came out just a bit too early for me in the development of my comics reading.  (I did eventually buy Captain Victory #3-5 in a local shop's 25-cent discount bins, around 1983 or 1984.)

     It wasn't until mid-1983 (age 12) that I started to get burned out by current Marvel and began taking more of an interest in other publishers and other genres besides superheroes, as well as more of an interest in comics history.  The very first "independent" or "alternative" comic book that I ever bought was MIGHTY CRUSADERS #3 (July 1983, on-sale April 19) from Red Circle Comics.  (I wouldn't learn that Red Circle was actually Archie Comics for another few months.)  The second, third, fourth and fifth "independent" comics that I ever bought were also from Red Circle: THE SHIELD #2 (Aug. 1983, my first comic that Robin Snyder edited), BLACK HOOD #2 (Aug. 1983; my first Alex Toth comic, who made a massive positive impression on me!), THE FLY #3 (Oct. 1983, my 2nd Robin Snyder-edited comic, with impressive new art by Steve Ditko) and MIGHTY CRUSADERS #4 (Nov. 1983).  

     By the end of the year, Archie dropped the direct-sale Red Circle imprint in favor of an Archie Adventure line that was available at drugstores and 7-11's. This worked out even better for me since one of my local comics shops (both of them a few towns away) closed in early 1984 and the other shop didn't carry many independent titles.  One of the first I bought of these Archie Adventure comics was another one edited by Robin Snyder, BLUE RIBBON COMICS #5 (Feb. 1984, on-sale Nov. 1983) which had a "new" Kirby cover and reprinted Simon & Kirby's The Double Life of Private Strong #1 (June 1959). 

     1984 (age 13) was when I stopped buying most of the Marvel titles that I had followed as a pre-teen and began exploring other publishers and genres. In 1983, I first began to buy back issues of 1970s "pre-Marvel" monster comics drawn by Kirby that I had found in a local shop's cheap bins. Such 1970s reprint titles as WEIRD WONDER TALES were my first exposure to Kirby's monster and non-superhero work.  I was now more open to trying something different, but again bad timing was involved.  Pacific Comics stopped publishing comics in 1984.  Both CAPTAIN VICTORY and SILVER STAR ended their runs in issues cover-dated January 1984.

     But I was able to buy some "new" Kirby at that time.  Marvel published TALES OF ASGARD #1 (Feb. 1984), a one-shot reprinting 1960s Thor back-ups by Lee & Kirby, which I bought new off the spinner rack.  I bought ATTACK #48 (Oct. 1984) [Charlton was one of my favorite publishers that year] which reprinted an old Simon & Kirby cover.  SUPERMAN #400 (Oct. 1984) contained a new 1-page pin-up of Superman by Kirby. And SUPER POWERS #1 (July 1984), which I also bought new off the spinner rack, had a new cover by Kirby, and the issue inside credited the plot to Kirby, but was drawn by other artists.  I ended up not buying the rest of the mini-series, perhaps because I didn't want to buy a licensed toy tie-in. (I have never bought a new issue of G.I. JOE or TRANSFORMERS.) 

     I didn't learn until years later that the final issue (#5, Nov. 1984) of this first SUPER POWERS mini-series was written & drawn by Kirby.  If I had bought that issue new off the stands, it would have been the first brand-new Jack Kirby comic that I ever bought.

     In 1985, I began buying comics via Mile High Comics' mail-order service and this enabled me to not only buy back issues of 1970s reprint comics like WHERE MONSTERS DWELL, but also semi-recent indie comics like JON SABLE, TWISTED TALES, and the Jack Kirby-drawn DESTROYER DUCK (Jack's final issue on that series was #5,cover-dated Dec. 1983).

     DC COMICS PRESENTS #84 (Aug. 1985) was penciled by two of my all-time favorite artists, Jack Kirby and Alex Toth, but for some reason I didn't buy it when it came out.  However my nephew DID buy it, shortly before he turned 5 years old, I recall looking at his copy and would have bought one for myself, but perhaps I felt funny buying a comic that a 4 year old had picked out!  So I didn't buy a copy until the 1990s as a back issue.

     OK, so finally we get to the moment that started this post: I bought SUPER POWERS Vol. Two #1 (Sept. 1985) when it was released in June 1985, when I was 14 years old.  By this point I had been reading Kirby comics for eight years, but due to bad timing this was the first time that I ever bought a new Kirby comic off the stands.  Unfortunately I didn't appreciate that fact at the time, and didn't buy any of the subsequent issues.  I liked the comic, enjoyed seeing Kirby's take on the classic DC superheroes, but I wasn't compelled enough to keep buying the series.

     Why?  Well, looking at the comics that I *did* buy brand-new the same month that SUPER POWERS #2 (which I did not buy) went on sale (July 1985), we see a couple interesting things.  Charlton briefly revived their comics line that summer, after having been dormant for a year, and that July saw the release of CHARLTON ACTION FEATURING STATIC #11 (cover-dated Oct. 1985) which was the first creator-owned comic by Steve Ditko that I ever bought.  This comic was a revelation and helped make me even more of a Ditko fan than I already was.  Also released that month was CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS #7, the issue where Supergirl dies. 

     I had ignored and avoided CRISIS previously, just as I had ignored Marvel's SECRET WARS in 1984, even though both mini-series were drawn by artists whose work I loved (George Perez and Mike Zeck respectively). I think I ignored them because I resented the hype surrounding them and refused to get on board for that reason.  I also disliked how Perez and Zeck had been moved off of series I had subscribed to (TEEN TITANS and CAPTAIN AMERICA respectively) in order to work on these much-hyped series instead. So my ignoring them was a way of registering my displeasure.  But CRISIS #7 could not be ignored, so I bought it and was blown away by how good it was, never missing an issue of CRISIS after that.  My spending money as a 14/15 year old was very limited, so I spent it on comics that looked the most interesting to me, and CRISIS made SUPER POWERS seem inconsequential and irrelevant in comparison.

     Jack Kirby largely stopped drawing comics after that, and I stopped buying mainstream superhero comics in 1989 at age 18.  I was out of touch with the comics scene for the first half of the 1990s, but I did buy SATAN'S SIX #1 (Topps Comics, April 1993) when it was published.  I was drawn to the Kirby cover (inked by Todd McFarlane) which carried a blurb saying that it contained 8 pages of new Kirby inside.  It also had 5 pages inked by Ditko.  I liked the Kirby and Ditko pages, but didn't like the rest of the comic and $2.95 was a high cover price in 1993 for only 12 pages that I enjoyed.  I didn't buy another issue of SATAN'S SIX, but I did buy an issue of JACK KIRBY'S SECRET CITY SAGA in 1993 and liked it.  That series was drawn by Ditko, but based on concepts and characters created by Kirby.

     Jack Kirby died the following year, on February 6, 1994. You know how they say that your life flashes before you when you die?  Well, when my sister told me the news of Kirby's death, many of the Kirby comics that I'd read over the years flashed before my mind.  It was hard to believe that the creative dynamo that Kirby was had stopped forever, that there would be no more new Kirby comics ever again.  What I didn't appreciate then (but do now) is that most of my experience with Kirby's work had been in the past tense anyway, obtained after the issues had long since been removed from their spinner racks.  I read his Captain America comics after he had left the series, read and enjoyed The Eternals some ten years too late, discovered his "pre-Marvel" monster comics in my own post-Marvel phase.  

     For the past 30 years or more I've considered Kirby and Ditko my two favorite comics creators, but with Ditko I was able to buy his newest releases hot off the presses from 1980 to 2018 (Ditko passed away in June 2018 and was putting out new comics to the end).  With Kirby it was a different story for me.  And  perhaps it's a testament to the power and vitality of Kirby's work that I was able to enjoy nearly all of it not as something brand-new but as something of lasting value.