Number 53

Kirby's Krime Komics

This story by Jack Kirby appeared in Frankenstein#7, May-June, 1947. Stories like this were published in various comics of the Prize line as a promo for Headline Comics, which featured crime comics drawn by the Simon and Kirby team.

Kirby had a varied career in comics, but he's best known for his superhero comics, especially in the 1940s and 1960s, with characters like Captain America and The Fantastic Four. But Kirby could draw anything, and he did. He did crime comics, horror comics, action/adventure, mysteries, westerns, even some funny animals. He may be the most versatile artist in the history of comics, with one of the most identifiable styles.

His hallmark was action, and this story has that. Check out the slugfests, which are typical Kirby bashes, bodies in extreme and dynamic motion, with lightning fists, done in all the types of comics he drew.

It's also interesting because Kirby drew himself as a character in the story.

This story was also reprinted in the book, The Complete Jack Kirby March-May 1947, from Greg Theakston of Pure Imagination in 1998. Greg did a wonderful job taking the color out of the stories and reprinting them in black and white. Some of these stories are obscure, and probably wouldn't be seen by Golden Age comics fans unless he'd taken it upon himself to reprint them. If you have a chance to get any of the books in Pure Imagination's The Complete Jack Kirby series, do it. This particular book is one of my favorites from that series.