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Kirby had characters violently disagree before the Fantastic Four Chris Tolworthy 28 May 2017 Patrick Ford: There is bickering in the Challengers. However it is between June Robbins and the men. And it's more good natured than what is seen in the early FF. The early issues of the FF contain stuff which is beyond bickering. The characters threaten violence on one another frequently and come off as dead serious about it. Chris Tolworthy: Which fits very well into my fan theory that the FF are literally the Challengers. It is not hard to see how the Challengers could tip over into that. If we take it seriously, there's some fascinating psychology going on with the Challengers idea. Patrick Ford Patrick Ford: Kirby had a team of bickering heroes in 1958. The Three Rocketeers in RACE FOR THE MOON (Harvey) bicker.
Patrick Ford:
Patrick Ford One example:
[Editor's note: every Ben Grimm outburst is about being ugly and losing Sue. Kirby had men fight over women in his romance stories.] Chris Tolworthy: I think I have found the smoking gun! Not only does one Challenger try to kill the other three (while being peaceful toward other people), but it matches Ben Grimm's actions so precisely that it allows Challengers issue 8 to merge seamlessly with Fantastic Four issue 1. I am talking of course about the issue where Rocky gains super powers. Something happens in space that so hurts and upsets him that he lashes out at his friends. He treats others with respect and kindness, but his friends, and those protecting his friends, get a savage treatment. We usually read that as "Rocky turned evil or confused due to weird science" as if losing your memory makes you evil. But that is not how Kirby ever wrote. Kirby always took a situation and said "what is the realistic reaction to this?" If this isn't obvious from his stories, I will paste some Kirby quotes in my next reply. In this story the thing that happens is a radical drug plus something about space, both of which totally mess with his body and mind. So for Rocky to attack the people who caused this (and not attack other people) is a natural response. This is exactly what happens with Ben Grimm. In FF 1, all four suffered pain and body horror, and all three men grew violent toward the others. But Reed ans Johnny could turn it off (and didn't look so bad) so their violence quickly stopped. Ben could not turn his body horror off, so would sometimes lash out in later issues. Not only is this a parallel, but it works very well if he Challengers ARE the Fantastic Four. It is a very small step from this to what Neil Kirby said, that Jack saw the FF as a continuation of the Challengers. Now technically they were different characters. But the names were not important to Kirby: what was important was the type of person and how they would react to situations. In this sense, Rocky is Ben, Ben is Rocky. If that is true then a number of unexplained elements in Fantastic Four 1 are all explained by the previous Challengers stories: why Ben was so violently opposed to the space flight, why the flight affected him differently, why Sue and Johnny came along, why they gained those precise powers, the mechanism for doing so, and much more. Chris Tolworthy: Here are some Kirby quotes, illustrating how he never wrote "this character turns evil", he always asked "how would a person react to this event?" What makes a Kirby story different: http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/22danzig.html "GLENN: Definitely, when people see a Kirby book, they know it's by Kirby, and that may be why the artwork has appreciated so much now. JACK: Yes. There are problems in [the stories], and there are people who are true to their own environment - and they're all real, but very, very interesting. If you analyze them, you'll find that I'm not really fictionalizing. There's a realistic ending, there are realistic circumstances, there are realistic beginnings and consequences - consequences for the heroes. Heroes make mistakes. Super-heroes can iron them out." And to emphasise the point: http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/6/ "I never had stock endings. I didn't believe in stock endings. To make the [reader] happy was not my objective, but to make the [reader] say, 'Yeah, that's what would happen' - that was my objective." And contrast that with a lesser writer (say, Stan Lee): http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/6/ "Stan Lee doesn't think the way I do. Stan Lee doesn't think of people when he thinks of [characters]. I think of [characters] as real people. If I drew a war story it would be two guys caught in the war. The Fantastic Four to me are people who were in a jam - suddenly you find yourself invisible, suddenly you find yourself flexible. Kirby on villains: http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/22danzig.html "GLENN: You always gave the villains - Dr. Doom, or Magneto, or Sub-Mariner, or whoever - they were the ultimate villains and they were evil, but they had their other side; the internal turmoil. You would always see them fighting with themselves; they actually had their own personality. They weren't just evil guys and that's why you'd love 'em. They actually had personality, too. You could identify with them. JACK: I saw my villains not as villains. I knew villains had to come from somewhere and they came from people. My villains were people that developed problems. What was wrong with Dr. Doom? He was a very highly-regarded scientist and what happened was that there was an explosion in his laboratory and it ruined his face. It scarred his face for life and, being the perfectionist that he was, he had to hide that face. And how did he hide that face? In a mask of iron and steel. Doctor Doom became a man with a deep, deep problem, and a man with a deep problem is going to give all the people trouble. (laughter) These are the roots from which villains spring if you dig deep beneath the stereotypes, and I did, y'know?" Kirby says this again and again: he does not say "let's have an evil character", he says "how would a real person react in these circumstances?" http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/6/ "If you look at some of my old pages, notice the expressions on the people - they're very real expressions. I was totally immersed in the characters. I penciled fast, I wrote fast. Nobody could have written it for me because they couldn't have understood the situation or what to do. ROZ KIRBY: He never wrote the story ahead of time, he wrote while he was drawing. KIRBY: In other words, I'd never planned a story - GROTH: That's my next question. When you were doing a story, say, the first Dragon Man story in Fantastic Four that took place on a campus - would you plot that out in your mind? KIRBY: No, no, I'd take it from the beginning, then say, what would he do? Here he is, he's a dragon - this guy is in a mess! He's really a human being, but he's a dragon- what would a human being trapped in those circumstances do? Then I'd come up with an answer. I didn't plan out the entire story. I had to do it panel by panel because I had to think for each individual. Sometime even after I thought it out, the story would come out different because on the way something would happen and this guy would have to make other plans." Chris Tolworthy: One more quote, and it's a beauty. Marvel Comics Incorporated is all about the things they can own: brands, likenesses. They contrive characters and think those characters re what matter. Then they cannot understand why their new characters never sell (with the exception of two gimmick characters who only appeal to insiders: Wolverine, a reaction to all the tall, handsome, do-good heroes, and Deadpool, who makes fun of comicbook culture). Because a good story is not about the character at all, it's about how an ordinary person -a stand in for the reader - could react to an extreme situation. Kirby thought about situations plus ordinary people, not characters. Anyway, the quote: http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/effect/2012/08/06/19867-kirby-interview/ "The idea for the F.F. was my idea. My own anger against radiation. Radiation was the big subject at that time, because we still don't know what radiation can do to people. [...] The element of truth in the Fantastic Four is the radiation– not the characters. And that's what people relate to, and that's what we all fight about today. PITTS: You think people relate more to the radiation aspect than to the characters? KIRBY: No… Now, they relate to the characters because time has passed and the characters are important." So yes, we grow to like these characters, we get used to their faces and relationships, but ONLY because we initially connected to something true and interesting. Kirby understood this. Lesser writers do not. Patrick Ford: Interesting thought Chris. My take on the story where Rocky gains super powers is that he hasn't turned evil, but that he has lost his memory and is blindly reacting to perceived threats. This strikes me as a riff on Frankenstein. The same sort of thing later seen in HULK #1. Chris Tolworthy: I agree that losing his memory is the explanation given by the other Challengers. But I don't think we can say this was Kirby's intention because I don't think he wrote that way. As he said in his interviews, he did not plan stories in terms of any intention, he simply wrote what would actually happen in the most exciting and believable way possible. I think this is a brilliant dramatization of what could happen in space flight and modern drugs: drugs and space flight might seriously mess with a person's body and mind. The person would then act in away that seems crazy to outsiders, bt makes sense to them at the time. As the person recovers we could then say he regained his memory of how to behave. That is a good way to explain it but what is really going on? I liken this story to the kind of thing Kirby would have seen in the war: an idealistic person volunteers for a very dangerous mission, then the person sees horrific things and is badly injured. Eventually the person is stablised and calmed down and we could say they regain their memory of how things should be. Maybe they are diagnosed with madness or cowardice or brainwashing or any other way we choose to understand it. But looking back on the world wars we can now see that the soldiers who went crazy were behaving quite understandably due to being placed in horrific situations. I think we can say the same with Ben Grimm. His violent reaction t his body mutilation could be seen as a form of madness, and when he finally calmed down this was him "remembering" that his friends were decent people and he should accept his place in society. I think it's all case of what would really happen and how people would really react, and how those around them would really try to make sense of it. Patrick Ford: It's true in interviews when Kirby is asked about his intent or subtext he almost invariably will say something like, "I was just trying to make sales." I've always seen that as Kirby not wanting to come off as pretentious by behaving as if his work is anything more than entertainment. I've noticed though that if he isn't asked about intent or subtext directly he will begin talking about it at considerable length. One of the weaknesses of most Kirby interviews is that when Kirby gets on a roll with some really interesting thoughts the interviewer often will change the subject. Chris Tolworthy: Patrick Ford Yes, I found that in the three lengthy interviews I read online. It always looks as if Kirby is going off topic, but when you read it back he never is: he simply discusses the bigger picture each time, whereas the interviewer only sees an unimportant detail. This also leads to the times when he appears to make a mistake, e.g. saying he created Spider-man, or that the Fantastic Four were created by the atomic bomb. Looking back he was right, to all intents and purposes: the Spider-man creation is now well documented, and when discussing the Fantastic Four he wanted to discuss the entire Marvel Universe and the bigger issues: the fact that one used cosmic radiation and the others used nuclear radiation is trivially unimportant, just like the distinction between one kind of atomic bomb and another: the important thing, the essential truth, is that these characters are a result of us messing with radiation that we do not (and certainly DID not) understand. I love watching how Kirby answers questions, and how to steers the conversation to important truths. But as you say, when he gets going he usually gets cut off so they can return to some issue that might be of interest to lawyers but is unimportant to a creative mind. Patrick Ford: To me it reads like Kirby is asked about subtext and waves off the question with his "I was trying to make sales" bit, but the question has remained in his mind and he begins talking about subtext in answer to a seemingly unrelated question. So the "I was trying to make sales" is a stock answer which requires no thought, while the subtext answer is thoughtful commentary which required some formulation. I suppose that is why some people think of Kirby as a "bad interview" in the sense that he would not be good on a series of talk show interviews where an actor goes out to promote his latest movie prepared with a list of brief stock answers. The key to a Kirby interview is to just get him talking and then let him roll. Roz Kirby actually ruined a lot of later interviews by trying to keep Kirby on topic. Patrick Ford: There's one interview where Kirby is picking up speed and really getting on a roll and Roz interrupts to say, "He wants to know about the FF." Which I'm sure was true. Roz probably saw the interviewers eyes glazing over. That's on the interviewer though. It's right at the point where the interviewer loses interest that I might become most interested. Patrick Ford: I've seen many people complain about Kirby's verbal digressions. In most of those cases it's the questions which are boring. Chris Tolworthy: re: doing it for sales: I believe him. But I think he had integrity, so he equated quality with sales. But businesses know that in the short term they get more sales from lying to the audience. I think Kirby just had a much longer term view.

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