Kirb Your Enthusiasm (10)

By: Greg Rowland
February 25, 2011

Tenth in a series of posts, each one analyzing a single panel from a Jack Kirby-drawn comic book.

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Kirby-FF-94-small — Click on image for larger version. Click on that image to zoom in.

1. The Secret Origin of Jack Kirby

In a time before time, when Dreams and Reality merged in the Quasi-Meta-Space of the Kosmic Hub, let us witness a gathering of The Kreators!

Thus did The Kreators form the fulcrum of Quasi-Meta-Space! Thus did The Kreators deny the very forces of time and space itself! For most loath were they to see The Tyranny of Reality destroy the wondrous Kosmic Hub.

Yet the Time of Times was fast approaching, and even The Kreators could do little to deny the baleful onslaught of linear temporality! And thus did The Kreators fashion that which was named The Kirby Kradle — a depository of wonders, dreams and impossibilities soon to be lost to the dismal dawning of bleak reality!

This Pop-Platonic edifice of pure Kosmic Konsciousness found physical form on Earth in the early 20th Century, in a human host whom men came to call Jack Kirby! Lo, the Kirby prophecy was upon us!

Kirby’s Kosmic Kreations hid in plain sight, in the humble form of comic books! This was The Test! Those fearless few that found themselves obsessed, enthralled and imbued with Kirby Konsciousness were blessed indeed. For it is they, the Keepers of Kosmic Konsciousness who shall fashion the nexus of a new Kirby Kradle! And so, even as men in old-fashioned trilby hats point helplessly at the sky, the Day of The Kirby Krackle will be upon us!

Thus shall The Kreators erupt to Meta-Life once more, breaking the tyrannical boundaries between dreams and reality, sowing the seeds of Kirby’s Kosmic Konsciousness throughout the galaxy, and far, far beyond….

2. This panel, from Fantastic Four #94 (January 1970). That face. That wonderful face. That nutty suit, so wonderfully wrong in so many ways. Yet a joy so overwhelmingly energetic, wherein the familiar trope of “Clobberin’ Time” becomes an image of impossible surprise and joy. A reaction so sudden, so unbridled, that Crystal and Johnny seem almost to fear Ben’s response as a potential moment of chaos and orange-rock hysteria.

But instead these are the outstretched arms of the proud Yiddish Uncle. The Thing has just been told that Reed and Sue’s baby’s middle-name will be ‘Benjamin.’ This is therefore the expansive joy of the American Jew/Orange Rock Monster who has found social acceptance on a deeply personal level.

Kirby was ten years old when the outstretched arms of The Jazz Singer announced one of the high points in the history of Jewish-American techno-schmaltz, and, like Ben’s, Jolson’s hands plead as much as they greet. So this panel represents The Thing’s desire, above everything else, to be loved and accepted, rocks and all. Benjy and Kirby, inseparable in many ways, remind us that the sign of The Outsider’s Outstretched Arms should always be greeted with warmth, delight and an unconditional acceptance. Unless it’s Doctor Doom or someone like that.

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ALSO ON HILOBROW: Joe Alterio’s Cablegate Comix | HiLobrow posts about comics and cartoonists | HiLobrow posts about science fiction | The New Gods generation

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Kirb Your Enthusiasm (10)

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