Jacob Kurtzberg: Blown Up

"Kirby: Genesis" #0 from Dynamite Entertainment

If you were an artist and/or storyteller of any kind, how would you want to be celebrated after you were gone? Would you choose: have my scattered non-commercial / concept / unfinished art pored over and recombined into a new story I never conceived? Harsh? Yes, but the question stands. What would you want? I really don't think it's this.

As I understand it, Dynamite Entertainment (@DynamiteComics) somehow acquired the rights to produce comics with any and all of Jack Kirby's characters which are otherwise not associated or attached to any company or in use. And somebody said: 'Well then... Why not have them all fight / meet / talk like a crossover 'event'?

Considering the extremely thin and extremely various sources he has to play with, Kurt Busiek (@KurtBusiek) is doing a bang-up job of weaving a story that must intrigue any reader. The sheer number of characters being brought out of the woodwork and the curiosity about how the hell they will all fit together might be enough to make some people read the series. This issue is merely a preview, so it is meant to be a tasting but holy moley, there's a ton of characters I've never heard of who appear to have nothing to do with each other running around not talking to one another in this comic! The implication is that all these old Kirby creations are various aliens from various planets and they will be suddenly drawn to Earth where they will meet all the other kooky Kirby characters as well as a few choice humans...

The comic's BEST IDEA? Busiek's newly created main character is a man, portrayed first as a young boy, then as a college student, named Kirby. Meanwhile there is also a character named Sergeant Jake Cortez who looks just like a young Jack Kirby, cigar and all. The result is Kirby talking to Kirby which, unfortunately, sounds far cooler than it actually is.

The comic's WORST IDEA? Mixing the industry giant Alex Ross' painted art with relative newcomer Jack Herbert's pen and ink art on the same page. It's not so terribly awkward in this issue, but the last pages of issue #0 are preview material for the work to come and there? Paint right next to pen and ink. Looks like a disaster.

It's all over the place in this issue. We are introduced to the characters... and I can't tell you anything about them because there were so many of them and they were all in completely different settings. Hell, a few of them are from different genres. And, as a result, they flew past like colorful plastic horses on a theme park ride.

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?
"Kirby Genesis" #0 is a hot mess. A very pretty-looking, carefully structured, rush of concepts and characters and images that weren't created to work together. It's good... for what it is. But that's a sentence I shouldn't have to write.

I fear that no amount of slow burn plotting, no amount of sharp characterization, no amount of tight-scripting could make this series work with the premise it has chosen. Nothing good can live down the road they are traveling down, at least in my imagination.

Mind you, Busiek is trying damn hard, and almost half-way succeeding with a book and a concept that should never work. Maybe later issues would prove me wrong, but I'm afraid that flipping through issue #1, after having read this issue, was more than enough for me.

~ @JonGorga

San Diego 2o1o Final News Round-Up!

So it's been over a week since the end of the San Diego Comic-Con but there were a few things Josh didn't cover in his previous post and that I think should be talked about. They are laid out below:

-"Concrete", Paul Chadwick's unique man-trapped-in-the-body-of-a-monster character returns after an absence of about five years! The unfortunate professor, the gal pal, the assistant (all of whom I cannot remember the names of, but fondly remember the existence of) will return with the series that was one of Dark Horse's first critical successes. The related and almost equally cool announcement is that Chadwick's characters will return in "Dark Horse Presents", the company's original anthology comic which is itself returning to a printed page existence (after several years in webcomics form as MySpace Dark Horse Presents) sometime soon!

-"Kirby: Genesis" is the (I hope, tentative) title of an unusual project from Dynamite Entertainment bringing old Jack Kirby characters and concepts (some of them long since lost from the public eye) back in what will probably be a comic-book mini-series written by Kurt Busiek, designed by Alex Ross, and drawn by some artists yet to be announced. As you may have gathered, the details are fuzzy.

-Although I'd be lying if I said it excited me personally, John Byrne's "Next Men" will be returning with IDW Publishing in December 2o1o after disappearing from shelves, on a cliffhanger ending, for fifteen years!

-"Ultimate Doom" will complete Marvel's trilogy of minis started with "Ultimate Enemy" years ago. They seem to be making a concerted effort to not reveal the 'ultimate' enemy but... they've titled the final mini "Ultimate DOOM". If you're any kind of fan of Marvel Comics I think you know who this'll be.

-I suspect this will mean nothing to many of our readers but: Marvel has acquired CrossGen's old characters. It probably wasn't too hard since Disney bought them years ago and then bought Marvel late last year, putting them both in the same 'house' so to speak. Now Josh mentioned in his post that "it can't be every year that Marvel buys Marvelman and promptly does nothing of note with the property" but in a way we do have a very similar announcement here. Marvel now owns a cadre of little known, but in some cases well-loved, series: "Sigil", "Scion", "Ruse", "Way of the Rat", "El Cazador", and J.M. DeMatteis' "Abadazad". The shared universe in which many of them live having been cut-short in the middle of its first crossover event by bankruptcy in 2oo4. Only in the past few months have we finally seen some actions utilizing the Marvelman family of characters that Marvel announced acquiring at the San Diego Comic-Con LAST year. Hopefully we won't have to wait as long to see an effect from this year's acquisition.

-And connected with the new direction for Spider-Man Josh mentioned there will be:
A. A new series featuring Arana re-branded as a new Spider-Girl.
and
B. A Norman Osborn mini-series.
and
C. A Carnage mini-series.

~ @JonGorga

P.S. ~ And well, of course, on the adaptation movie front there was this HUGE news. Awesome.

That and there's going to be an "A Contract With God" film. Exciting, but sad for me. I wrote an adaptation script for that classic comic by Will Eisner back in college... Probably never going to get that job now!