By the mid-60s Jack Kirby's output reached a feverous pitch. Stan Lee demanded more and more from Kirby in order to distill Kirby's powerful style as Marvel's house style. To get more out of Kirby and train Marvel's other artist, Stan Lee had Kirby do quick pencil layouts for artists such as Dick Ayers and John Romita, among others, to finish Kirby's designs with their pencils and thus, learn his style. In most cases, as Kirby laid out the page he plotted the stories leaving his notes in the margins.
What if Kirby has several examples of these combined efforts. But one caught the attention of WiK member, Pete Von Sholly, who speculates that Dick Ayers changed Kirby's underlying layout design – not necessary for the best. Below is his analysis:
Here panel in context of the full page:
To see this page in more detail click on the page.
Angle of the punch and leg
Pete and I also discussed how the original angle of the leg was in line with Cap's arms and shield, thus increasing the visual direction towards Batroc and amplifying the force of the punch.
It's not inconceivable that JACK changed that leg--
Looking over other pages Jack has done--he did occasionally erase things. I know legend has it that Jack was infallible and never touched an eraser but the reality is--he did sometimes change things if it looked screwy to him. This may be such a case. The construction and placement of the new leg looks like Jack's work to me.
Who wrote the history?
Almost everyone who writes about Kirby's early to mid 60s "layouts" says the same thing about them.
The story goes Lee had Kirby doing layouts to teach artists how to draw in the dynamic Kirby style.
Having seen most of the surviving stats of Kirby's "layouts" from that era it's my opinion what Lee really wanted was more plots and characters created by Kirby. What are called Kirby layouts are most often drawings which are barely more than vague indications. If Lee wanted more Kirby art it makes little sense that in 1965 Lee often had Kirby doing as many as 40 pages of layouts a month.
Much of what is accepted as the official history of the Marvel era is a "history" based on Lee's descriptions from old interviews, and his Origins books. Another example are characterizations of "The Marvel Method" as an example of Lee's generosity. Artists working without a script, and expected to plot stories and create characters for which they were not paid, is commonly described as Lee "giving the artists freedom." I would just ask people to take a moment and think about that for a second. If Kirby had been paid even one dollar a page for his plots inj the early 60's that would have amounted to over $100 a month, a considerable sum in those days.
Re: Who wrote the history?
Thanks Patrick for adding this comment. I don't want to spread inaccuracies.
When you mentioned that Lee wanted more characters in the plots do you mean new or existing characters from previous Kirby designs? If it was to create characters in his plots I assume Kirby would need to provide tighter character sketches if he was designing them.
Pitch Pages
Tom, Kirby always presented new characters in the form of pitch pages. This goes back to "Super Sherlock Holmes" in the 40's continuing with things like "Night Fighter" in the 50s, and the many pitch pages Kirby created for The New Gods, and his later creations in the 70's like Atlas, Omac, etc. Two of Kirby Marvel era pitch pages have been published in TJKC. One is for "The Plunderer" and the other for "The Boomerang." Jack's daughter Susan remembers her dad working on a presentation drawing of The Invisible Girl, and telling her he would name the character Susan after her. Jim Shooter mentioned in his blog recently that he held Kirby's Spiderman pitch page in his hands while at the Marvel offices in 1970. Jim Shooter says it showed Kirby's "Fly-like" version of Spider-Man and contained some background notes on the character. I think there is a good chance many of Kirby's pitch pages for Marvel in the 60s were reworked as covers or pin-ups.
It's hard to prove anything about that era. Consider only that when we read something like, "Stan came up with the Marvel Method as a favor to the artists so they wouldn't be kept waiting for a new script." That bit of "history" is something straight from Lee. In December 2010 Lee testified he was paid a freelance page rate for writing on top of his salary as editor. So Lee was taking the full page rate for writing, and describing the Marvel Method as doing Kirby a favor.
It's quite a panel
Pete and I talked about this the other day, too. The leg got moved, but to what end? It doesn't seem that it was an improvement. Pete also mentioned that the arc of the punch's speed line wasn't inked on the far right of the panel, which would have been better - that could have been ameliorated by some work from the colorist, but nope, that wasn't the case when I dug up the printed page from the archives. The whole background is white.
But isn't the "elephant in the room" really just the weirdness of Cap's torso? I can understand his head not appearing, covered by the shield or the word balloon, but I think the translation of Kirby's dynamic breakdown into pencil and ink lost something as far as anatomy. Shoulders, waist, thorax, upon analysis, they don't make any sense. Doesn't it almost look like Ayers and Tartag put Cap's belt up around his ribcage?
Fun!
Just thought I'd take a few minutes and use color to show what I think what might be more like what Jack was intending. Flesh indicates maybe a little of Cap's face would show.
caps torso
you got it right on all counts Rand.
As printed
(First publication, 1966)
It's pretty messy either way--
--I think the printed version may be more accurate than yours and it wasn't atypical of Jack to put the wrong foot on the end of a leg. In terms of basic dynamics and balance--a person would thrust their opposing leg forward when landing a blow so it makes more sense for Cap's right foot to be in our face--not his left. The belt solution that Ayers employed is what looks the funkiest about it.
Yeah, the belt should more or
Yeah, the belt should more or less parallel the speed lines of the punch, rather than going up at a 45 degree angle.
It's quite a panel
More messy with the very high belt and no red and white stripes, as far as I'm concerned. I'm sorry if I gave any impression I was making changes to or criticizing whether the right foot or left foot was on the correct leg. That wasn't what I intended. I did add a red blotch at the bottom because I thought I saw where Kirby indicated that foot in the pencils which Ayers didn't use, much like the Batroc foot that started this thread. But that's a minor point compared to the high belt and lack of stripes.
Interesting to compare it to
Interesting to compare it to the pose in panel 3 of p. 10 here:
http://kirbysgoldenagecaptain.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/captain-america-2...
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