Super Powers

… Where are they when you need one?
In a previous comment, I was saying that Jack's later work was only good for Colletta to ink but I was wrong.
A good finisher like Giacoia would have been a better choice.
At this stage of the King's career, it was probably the right moment for an inker to "help" Jack.

Jack didn't need help earlier but he certainly deserved a good helping one with Super Powers!

isnt that inset panel and odd thing for Kirby to use..? well.. Later Kirby I should say... I could EASILY see him using it in early Simon & Kirby work.

During the first Super Powers series Kirby was still producing some great pages, by the time of the second SP series the art is really getting labored looking, shaky, and Kirby is often either exhausted, or otherwise not engaged.
That being said I've never seen a page as it was inked that looks better than the pencils.
I think the major reason for this is, as wobbly as some of the drawing got, it still had an internal logic to itself.
Trying to fix things totally didn't work, because it threw off the balance of the drawing. It's like if you had an old house which was out of square, and you went to Home Depot and brought home a new door. That door is NOT going to fit the opening, and the style of it won't look right either.
Personally I think if Kirby had the opportunity to take his time on something he was very interested in doing he could still have produced very good work, even with his bad drawing hand.
Then again I have no problem with stuff like this:
http://a.imageshack.us/img338/8308/urabe.jpg
That's Tezuka. I'm really confident if DC had signed Tezuka to draw Superman, DC fans would have had a fit.
On the other hand for US mainstream commercial tastes Kirby could have been asked to supply simple layouts which could have been finished by penciler/inkers as was common at that time.

There are 36 pages of Kirby's penciled Super Powers pages here:
http://comics.ha.com/common/search_results.php?Nty=1&Ntk=SI_Titles&Ne=10...
If a person is registered and logged in the pages can be seen in the same way the Zoom feature works at What if.
While it's easy to imagine a fan of The Flash or Batman cringing at Kirby's depiction of those heroes I think it's interesting how strong the pages are design wise, and the things Kirby seems interested in are still well drawn even if it's with a bad hand.
http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=110084&lotNo=14563#Photo
http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=7023&lotNo=93164#Photo
Is Kirby at his peak here? Obviously not, but he's still a great designer, still producing clean detailed pencils, and I can live with the dashed off cartoonized Robin, Flash, and Batman.

would be nice to see DC put together the pencilled pages for a "graphite edition" a la cap'n vic and silver star...dontcha think?

i grew up with the super powers toys, and although i wuz never a huge DC fan, i remember these issues quite well. The image of Martian Manhunter punching in the half-splash I always thought wuz great, and SP wuz my first INTRO to darkseid and many of the other DC and 4th world chars.

(imo) its interesting that they decided to use steppenwolf and mantis in this series. I still have the darkseid toy in my garage. His (red) eyes lit up thru a whole in the top of his dome (head, 'natch) and his arms would move up and down if you squeezed his legs (together). i think steppenwold wuz special order (like had to get yer mama to cut out 5 proofs of purchases + $5 for s/h).

ok, but now, i see the inks as being weak, relative to royer, but hard for me to disentangle that from my nostalgia.
and i think theakston inks nicely encapsulate kirby's efforts during this final period of his published legacy.