Friday Night Fights: Happy (Belated) Birthday, Jack!
Once again I let the (August 28th) birthday of the late, great Jack Kirby slip by without a mention...his 90th birthday, no less! What kind of a fan am I? (hangs head in shame)
Under the omniscient gaze of mighty Bahlactus, let me rectify that mistake by serving up one of the King's frenetic fight scenes, where concrete walls and metal machinery crumbled like paper mache! Where acrobatics and body contortions no human could possibly duplicate were commonplace! WHERE FISTS AS BIG AS CANNED HAMS PUMMELED FOES WITH SEISMIC FORCE!
From Captain America #106 (1968), Comic Coverage proudly presents:
One of the hundred zillion things I love about 1960's Marvel Comics was their willingness to portray real-world Communist political figures as clowns, creeps, or outright villains. It didn't happen all the time, mind you, but when it did, it was a beautiful thing.
While clueless left-wing radicals in the United States were wearing t-shirts and hoisting banners of Red China's Chairman Mao Zedong, Jack Kirby made him the mastermind behind Operation Replica ("Take that, Hippies!")! Creating a nearly-identical Life Model Decoy of Steve Rogers, Mao and his minions sent the robotic agent to America to destroy and replace the real Steve (Captain America) Rogers! We now join the Cap vs. Evil Robotic Steve battle already in progress (click on the panels to enlarge)...
"Can I get an AMEN?"
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Disclaimer: Any resemblance between movie producer (and Commie dupe) Cyril Lucas and Republican presidential candidate (and former actor) Fred Thompson is purely coincidental.
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Amen, and Amen.
Posted by: Bahlactus | September 07, 2007 at 05:03 PM
Q: Will anyone trot out footage from his episodes of Wiseguy where he played a KKK archwizard during the campaign?
Posted by: Siskoid | September 07, 2007 at 08:18 PM
I wouldn't put anything past the media jackals. That said, I'm not a Fred guy.
Posted by: Mark Engblom | September 07, 2007 at 09:03 PM
And I'm not an anything.
Being from Canada, the robots have already won.
Posted by: Siskoid | September 08, 2007 at 07:03 AM
So I've heard...but the robots are trying their best here, too.
Posted by: Mark Engblom | September 08, 2007 at 09:10 AM
LOL!! This is friggin' awesome! The title banner ALONE makes this post!! My wife just came running in to see what I was laughing so hard at! The pic of the LMD's face is just too f-'in hilarious!
Posted by: Hube | September 08, 2007 at 08:21 PM
Hey, glad you enjoyed the post, Hube! Yeah, that Life Model Decoy's face was something I just had to use...along with Supervillain Mao and Pseudo Fred Thompson!
Posted by: Mark Engblom | September 08, 2007 at 11:10 PM
Bwaah! That Thompson comparison is hilarious (I saw another one recently that compared him to "The Gentlemen," the rictus-faced demons that stole people's voices on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Arthur Branch can't get no respect, it seems (and, um, good. (:).
Man, Kirby just kicks butt, doesn't he? It's been said a thousand times, but bears repeating: his work is so kinetic and expressive that you don't even have to read the balloons to undertand what's happening, and to thrill to it. Truly the Godfather of superhero artists.
Posted by: cinephile | September 09, 2007 at 07:38 PM
"Man, Kirby just kicks butt, doesn't he?"
All kinds of it...though I have to qualify it a bit by saying I appreciated his 60's stuff more than just about any other period of his career (before or after). His 80's stuff was a bit painful to behold.
Posted by: Mark Engblom | September 10, 2007 at 06:56 AM