The Audio File: King Kirby

In many ways, comic books and audio dramas aren't as different as they might seem. Sure, comic books are very much a visual medium, whereas audio dramas are auditory oriented. However, both mediums are very much team efforts. Oh, you can make a comic or an audio drama all on your own. However, more often than not you get by with a little help from your friends. Sometimes that means that the real hard works, and the real movers and shakers, might not get as much credit or attention as they deserve. This ties into the audio drama we'll be reviewing today. We're taking a look at King Kirby.

You may not have heard of Jack Kirby, but you're probably familiar with his work. Pretty much every major Marvel Comics character ever, besides Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, was first dreamed up Jack Kirby. But before he was the king of comics, he was just a kid from Brooklyn with big dreams. King Kirby follows the life and career of Jack Kirby, from his humble beginnings, to time serving in World War II, to his time at Marvel, and everything that followed.

I first became aware of this audio drama when I was perusing the r/audiodrama subreddit. They have a weekly thread about newly released audio dramas, complete with brief descriptions of each show. King Kirby looked promising, and now here we are.

King Kirby started life as a stage play, created by Crystal Skillman and Fred Van Lente, for a theatre festival. It did fairly well, and it even became a New York Times Critic's Choice Pick, but the team wanted to bring it to a wider audience. The play was funded via Kickstarter, and as a reward to the backers, the team recorded a reading of the play at Midtown Comics in Manhattan. So, they had the initial audio sitting around for a while before they got the idea to make it into an audio drama. So, Crystal and Fred hired Bobby Cronin to compose some music for the podcast. And thus, an audio drama was born.

I suppose it's rather fitting that things worked out this way. Fred Van Lente has world on several comics including The Incredible Hercules and Action Philosophers. Crystal Skillman has written plays such as Rain and Zoe Save the World, Open, and Cut. By the way, that's three plays; Open and Cut are two separate plays. I got confused on this point when I was researching for this review, so I'm just putting that as a point of clarification. Also, the Marvel Comics version of Hercules is yet another Jack Kirby creation. He premiered in The Mighty Thor, also a Kirby creation.

Anyway, it was only natural that Fred and Crystal, who are a married couple, would combine their skill to make an excellent audio drama. This does provide an amusing parallel to the life of Jack Kirby, who famously never made any creative decisions without input from his wife Roz.

Speaking of which, let's talk about the man himself. Jack Kirby came from humble working-class origins in Brooklyn. Yet he always dreamed big and loved to draw. His favorite was always stuff with spaceship and larger than life heroes. He didn't go to college, but that was hardly unusual for the time he lived. One new thing I learned from this audio drama is that one of Kirby's earliest jobs was in animation. He helped to animated Popeye the Sailor Man cartoons. Specifically, he was the guy who draw the transition frames. They're the frames that are necessary to make the characters move around. Unsurprisingly, this is fairly tedious work, and he quickly grew to despite Popeye. It was never outright stated, but we should probably assume his opinion of spinach was also severely soured by the experience. I knew that Kirby did animation work on The Super Friends at Hanna-Barbera later in his life, but I wasn't aware I did work on Popeye.

Another thing I found interesting is that this audio drama really empathized Kirby's relationship with Joe Simon. Usually, it's Kirby's relationship with Stan Lee that gets emphasized. Now, we do eventually get to that, but not til episode four. For reference, the podcast in only four episodes long. It was with Simon that Kirby created the first of his many great superheroes: Captain America. That first iconic cover of Captain America socking Hitler came out in March of 1941, a good nine months before America officially entered World War II. Of course, once America entered the war, Kirby did not hesitate to enlist. But before he did, he left a mass backlog of comics just so that things wouldn't fall behind in his absence. Seriously, the man was a comic book drawing machine. Kirby fought the forces of evil both in the pages of comic books and on the battlefield. It is safe to say that the man lived a life.

Of course, once the war is over, it is time for the Marvel Age to begin. When we first meet Stan Lee, he's a sweet, if slightly quirky, teenager. By the fourth episode, however, he's metamorphosed into a far more familiar, if rather sleazy, form. I would say that, overall, King Kirby's depiction of Stan Lee was reasonably fair. The famous Marvel Method was where Stan came out with an outline, sometimes merely an idea, for a story and had Jack draw art based around that. After that, Stan came up with the dialogue and filled-in the word balloons. In practice, however, this meant Kirby did most of the heavy lifting in terms of storytelling. Many times, Kirby would even write suggested dialogue on the sides of the page. There were also times when the "outline" was pretty much just a single sentence. The famous Galactus trilogy of The Fantastic Four came from Stan going "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if the Fantastic Four fought God?" As such, Kirby wrote the whole thing, plot and dialogue, all by himself. An unofficial part of the Marvel Method was that Stan always wrote his name first and biggest on the cover.

Jack Kirby made Marvel Comics as in the characters, but Stan Lee made Marvel Comics the company. Stan's real strength wasn't in his storytelling, but in his ability as a businessman. Well, that's not completely true; he was a slick talker, and he was very good had crafting a public persona. He was also young, hip, and photogenic. Kirby, by contrast, looked like a longshoreman. This often caused the media to assume that Kirby was dumber than he actually was. That really was unfair of them; as I said, Kirby only had a high school education, but he wasn't stupid. In fact, he was quite intelligent and well-read on numerous subjects such as history, mythology, religion, and science. Stan did try to correct the media on this point, but many argue he didn't do it as much as he could and/or should have.

Stan also took the lion's share of the money earned from the comics, while Kirby and the other artists only got pennies by comparison. Unsparingly, Kirby eventually reached his breaking point and went to work for the Distinguished Competition. Of course, much as Kirby would hate to admit it, he needed someone like Stan to convince editors that his ideas could work. The fact that most of Kirby's work at DC Comics got canceled after only a few issues does lend support to this. The main exception being Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth. Kirby's work at DC does, I think, show that he was the main creative driver at Marvel. I've read his DC work, and I can easily see it being published at Marvel.

Anyway, getting back on track, episode four really climaxes with Kirby deciding to leave Marvel after Stan Lee screws him over. We do get glimpses into Kirby's post-Marvel life, but they're fairly brief, as the show needed to wrap things up. As previously mentioned, the original stage play was part of a theatre festival. The festival rules stated that all entries must be no longer than seventy-five minutes. This necessitated that certain aspects of the story being condensed for the sake of time. And to be fair, it is possible that a lot of Kirby's post-Marvel life wouldn't translate very well onto stage.

That having been said, I still found the ending to be a bit rushed. I also think there was still plenty of interesting material that could be mined. You can talk in-depth about Kirby jumping ship to DC Comics, and how he eventually had to come back to Marvel. You can talk about the time he worked at Hanna-Barbera, or the time he cameoed on The Incredible Hulk television show. Yeah, Stan Lee wasn't the first to make cameos in Marvel adaptions. Specifically, Kirby played a police sketch artist, who drew a picture of Hulk in the style of the comics. You could talk about his participation in the Iranian Hostage Crisis. And you can talk about how, towards the end of his life, he kick-started the creator-owned comics movement with his work at Pacific Comics.

I don't want to sound overly negative here. It was clear to me, from that very first episode, that a lot of love and dedication went into King Kirby. They referenced more than just the typical well-known Marvel stuff Kirby worked on. For example, at one point they mention Tiger 21. He was an idea Kirby worked on, but never got around to publishing. Not too many people, outside of hardcore Kirby fans, tend to know that one. I only knew that because I read the comic Kirby: Genesis. Excellent comic; a true love letter to the works of Jack Kirby. I will have to review it sometime. There was also brief mention of New Gods, and how it didn't sell as well as Kirby hoped. I always thought that was a damn shame, because New Gods is excellent. The point is, Fred and Crystal clearly knew their Kirby history.

An audio drama is nothing without a talented team of voice actors. I once looked up a news clip of Jack Kirby from the 1980s out of curiosity. I don't know what I was expecting. I guess I maybe expected him to have a deep authoritative voice. Instead, he just sounded like a regular guy. In fact, he kind of reminded me of Martin Crain from Frasier. I really felt that Steven Rattazzi captured Kirby's personality. He doesn't try to do an impression of Kirby, but he was reasonably close. He captures the essence of who Kirby was as a person. Likewise, Nat Cassidy doesn't sound quite like Stan Lee, but he was at least ballpark correct. He really nailed the sleazy businessman depiction the play was going for. And sounding a little off kind of worked out. It, if unintentionally, hints that Stan's publish persona is a sham, and not reflective of who he truly is.

Amy Lee Pearsall voices Roz Kirby with almost stereotypically Jewish New Yorker accent. But again, she really captures Roz's stand-willed and independent personality. And hey, for all I know, Roz Kirby really did sound like that. Really, all the actors did an excellent job bringing the characters to life. I also really appreciated that the team added music and sound effects to the audio drama. I always appreciate those who go the extra mile to create a truly immersive audio experience.

I concede that a play has to end somewhere. Ending the audio drama where it does ties into the themes and framing device. I should have mentioned this earlier, but the show begins with a framing device of an auction of Kirby's original drawings. The sounds of the auction fade away and we get a monologue from Kirby himself, presumable from beyond the grave. He muses on the nature of legacy, and about his life, and what it all means in the end. By the end of the last episode, we return to the auction and Kirby's musings. As Roz notes, Kirby is everywhere. His art is on lunch boxes, backpacks, and of course on the newsstands. And yet he is also nowhere, because he receives no credit, and hardly any payment.

Sadly, it really wasn't until relatively recent times that Jack Kirby received the recognition that he rightful deserves. Well, outside of diehard comics fans, that is. Jack Kirby was officially declared a Disney Legend, alongside Stan Lee, in 2017. Fittingly enough, this would have been Kirby's 100th birthday. People have also slowly begun to reassess both the founding myth of Marvel Comics, and of Stan Lee's more questionable business practices. This is especially true now that Stan Lee is dead, and isn't around to defend himself.

I always founded it sad that Jack Kirby never lived to see the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And yet the legacy of Jack Kirby, and his work, surrounds us. So, here's to Jack Kirby. One of the few people who can truly be called a Renaissance Man, and one who will hopefully get more of the credit he deserves someday.

And here's to everyone who worked to make King Kirby possible. It was an absolute joy to listen to from start to finish, and I loved every minute of it. Give it a listen today, you'll be very glad that you did.

Well, I think that should do it from me for now. I will see you guys next time.