I started doing daily copies of Jack Kirby’s work to learn how his art worked. Not stories, characters or powers, but how he set up panels, used sequences, space and 2d and 3-d composition.Daily Kirby taught me some of Jacks thought process.
The Cartoon Art Museum asked me to teach a class in comics for adults. Seeing a student’s brain light up as they grasp knowledge they never thought they could master, is rewarding. So of course I said yes.
I had fifty years of obsessing about comics to compress into five weeks. I was going to stuff it all into their heads. I broke the classes down into Structure, Plot ,Pattern Languages, Light and Time and Color.
It’s just a little riff of excellence as Jack Kirby cruises through his work this day. Places the talk at the top, juggle six people establish a couple of characters, set the crowd scene throw in some babes, balance it all nicely so you focus on one hunk, hero kind of guy. In it’s mastery it blows away all your nagging little concerns, it does it’s job really well and we get the next frame and go on with our story. 5 minutes of Jack’s time, maybe. Stop, enjoy, and look, you don’t get comics like this any more.
It’s hard saying drawing doesn’t matter in comics, so it’s hard to ignore how Jack’s work gets destroyed. The last page of Forever People 1 is one of those pages that makes you want to cry that Mike Royer wasn’t inking it. But lets look at Jack’s layouts.