Sunday 11 January 2015

Kirby, in the act of drawing

I've only just bumped into this video a couple of days ago and I've just watched through it the once. Jack "King" Kirby is seen executing a now quite well known character drawing, that of Doctor Doom behind the mask. It's interesting for a number of reasons, the weight of line he achieves while ,I believe, not pausing to hone his pencil, probably because he's using a clutch pencil and the scale at which he's working. He's also got a mobile arm but that I mean he doesn't tilt the paper much to orientate his line work, that's something pros pick up after a lot of practice. Clutch pencils are a boon to the pro, I myself didn't cotton on to them for a while, once I did, my productivity increased by about a 1/3 so it's no surprise that's what Kirby should be using.

There's a still of an ink rendering of this drawing at the end of this video, it's quite a small image but it does seem a nice job, even so, it's possible to discern some quite noticeable differences between Mike Royer's sublime ink job of the same drawing, a nice illustration of the importance of inking.



11 comments:

  1. I'm surprised that Jack took over 20 minutes to draw what looks like a 10 minute job. Also, he's havering about Doom originally only having a small scar on his face - that was an idea that occurred to him much later. You can see from the scars around Doom's eyes (through his mask) in the FF tales that Jack was drawing in the '60s that Vic's face was horribly scarred. Still, interesting video.

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    1. I don't think continuity is uppermost in Kirby's mind here, Kirby's a story teller, so it's the narrative he's been asked to illustrate, -Doom unmasked- that's the topic of real importance. If you think about it , there is really only one narrative that makes sense in that context, if he rendered a deformed face it doesn't really say anything about Doom. So he chose to render him with a minor blemish that preserves a recognisable human visage, Doom the man under the mask, not Doom the deformed monster. I don't really take the notion that this drawing is contiguous with Kirby's original concept of Doom seriously, I think it's just convenient for the narrative at hand. However it is interesting to note that the idea got picked up and it seems to've been incorporated into a Doom origin that conforms, relatively, to the established Doom continuity.

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  2. Except that Kirby had stated this before (I think) and certainly after as his original concept for Doom. And even if his face hadn't been disfigured in his laboratory accident, it wouldn't have been helped when he donned his nigh red-hot mask after it had been fashioned in a furnace. I don't have a problem with him drawing Doom this way if he were to say that, with hindsight, it would've been a better idea in order to show how vain Doom was, but when he retroactively alters history and states it as his original intention, then I wonder how many other of his claims in regard to characters' origins is reliable.

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    1. Personally I don't endow the notion that this drawing reflects a particular consistency in Kirby's conception of Doom, with much credence but this is open to question. There is a certain ambiguity in Kirby's Doom origin that would accommodate a relatively intact Doom, at least as far as those events are rendered pictorially. I don't think an un-scarred Doom is a tenable concept for a character in an open narrative, it would just be too daft: Daffy Doom, the nutter who wears of mask cos he's ashamed of his pimple! The narrative indicated by Kirby's Doom unmasked, is a revelation concerning the character of Doom. The thing about revelations in narrative is that you don't learn half way through a story that the guy wearing the mask is not hideously scarred, just vainglorious, it's something revealed at the end. This would coincide with Kirby's circumstance in relation to his association with Doom when he drew this picture, so it seems natural that he would evoke a narrative that reflected that circumstance.

      What you infer from the drawing, I suppose depends on the importance with which you regard narrative continuity and its relevance to any inconsistency raised by the the context of the drawing. Continuity is, after all, a narrative convention, an important, often overlooked convention but not quintessential to narrative. The context itself is quite discreet, he's not rushing to the presses, al la Steve Ditko, with an indy comic: This is the Truth about Dr. Doom - How The Fans Were Cheated of the REAL Story!!!! No, it's a just pic he drew for the guy making a film. I know fans have oo'd and ah'd about it since but you know, that's what fans do.

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  3. I think that completely overlooks the point 'though. Kirby claimed (not only here but elsewhere as well) that his original idea of Doom was that he just had a tiny scar. Yet if you look at FF #5, the flashback to his accident shows that his face and head were completely covered with bandages. So this particular drawing is presented not just as an off the cuff 'what if' that Jack's telling the guy with the camera, but as a confirmation that this was hiss original intention from the start. (The suggestion being that Stan Lee once again thwarted Kirby's plan with his dialogue.) All I'm saying is that Kirby's claim is complete pants because it's clear from the very beginning and all the way through Jack's time drawing the character that he was hideously scarred. So, basically, Jack had what he thought was a better idea for the character long after the fact and retroactively tried to pass it off as how things were meant to be from the beginning. A bit like Bob Kane dating his drawings decades earlier than he actually drew them. Consequently, I think your assessment of Jack's purpose here is a tad too generous and isn't confirmed by other remarks he made elsewhere.

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    1. Ooer! For 'hiss' read 'his'.

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    2. I'm not sure I get the sense that Kirby is making those claims here or if he does, that what he's claiming is not inconsistent with some, probably not all (you'll have to give me a while to look back on that one) of his work on FF. Interestingly, if you study Kirby's Doom origin, the text does make, a quite conspicuous, allusion to Doom's mask not being cooled, whereas it is quite obviously depicted pictorially, as just being quenched. I'm not saying that proves anything but it does seem rather incongruous and it's not until Doom's origin is retold, that the details of Doom's condition is rendered explicitly.

      I just get the sense here, that this was a fitting way to depict Doom in this context and I've never really inferred any alternative continuity or given the subject any serious consideration but perhaps I'm not as familiar as yourself with Kirby's allusions to the issue in other contexts. Perhaps you'd might like to give me some pointers to where you think I might find the relevant material.

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  4. I'm working backwards in that I read an interview somewhere, in which Kirby states that Doom wasn't disfigured, so I therefore interpret his comments on the film in that light. I'll have to see if I can track it down - it's probably in one of the Kirby Collector mags or Comic Interview ones. (Not that it's really important, I suppose, to the price of cheese.) I'll get back to you with it - but I may be some time.

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    1. Don't go to too much trouble on my behalf, if you haven't got the references to hand, I could probably dig around and find something myself.

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  5. I kind of like the idea of Doom having a minor blemish that his vain (and/or insanely perfectionist) mind exaggerated beyond all reason. It is at least some variation on a premise that had already been done to death (e.g., Phantom of the Opera, Batman's villain Two-Face). But I am not convinced that it was part of the original concept for the character.

    Silver Age Marvel was somewhat more sophisticated than Silver Age DC (usually), but they were still pretty simplistic by today's standards. And Marvel may have been aiming at an older audience than DC, but it would have been adolescents, not adults. By the standards of the time, the idea of Doom having been horribly disfigured in his experiment would have seemed like a perfectly logical back story for the character.

    IIRC, they tried to reconcile the two concepts in the 1980's, with a retcon revealing that his face was not badly damaged in the lab accident, but that it was horribly burned when he put on the red-hot mask. But that doesn't quite work, either. The flunky who hands him the mask in that scene is holding it in his bare hands, with no sign of discomfort. And flashback scenes in FF #5 and FF Annual #2 show the explosion, with Doom heavily bandaged afterward. Surely the bystanders who witnessed the explosion, and the police officers and paramedics who would have been summoned to the scene, would have seen the damage to his face. So would the doctors, nurses, and medical assistants who would have treated him at the hospital.

    Plus, I think captions in the early stories described him as horribly disfigured.

    Given the way Marvel stories were plotted (a rough outline, then the story was drawn, then dialog and captions were written), it would have been easy for different ideas to be suggested, and for some to get lost in the shuffle. And it's easy for one's memory to play tricks many years after an event. Kirby may have thought up the "Doom only had a tiny scar" idea years later, but may have really believed that he had it when the character was first created.

    FWIW, there was a similar idea in the 1977 Spider-Man newspaper comic strip, written by Stan Lee and drawn by John Romita. A former fashion model was seeking revenge on her ex-employer, whom she (wrongly) blamed for an accident that had left her face scarred and ruined her career. At the end, she got killed, and when her hair was brushed back so that it no longer covered half her face, it turned out that the scar was not even noticeable. So, did Stan swipe Jack's idea, or vice versa? Or did Stan come up with the idea, and he didn't remember that it was a suggestion that Jack had made 15 years earlier?

    I Googled "Jack Kirby said that Doctor Doom's face was not really scarred," and there were several blogs and other sites with discussions of the topic.

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    1. It's funny really, because since the discussion with Kid Robson on this topic, I view the possibility of Kirby's original intent being a Doom with a trivial scar, with a bit more credence. This is still the firmest assertion from Kirby I can find on the topic and it's not much more than a nod in response to a spontaneous question. I did come across one other source that purported to be based on an interview with Kirby but it didn't quote the man directly, so I view that one with some scepticism. My view is that the controversy is something of a storm in a teacup, fodder to sell the old fanzines and something for the fans to chew over.

      The Spider man reference you give is interesting, I think it supports my instinct over the suitable context for this kind of plot device. That being, as a revelation at the end of a narrative, to cast light on a hitherto hidden aspect of a character.

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