Jack Kirby's Krazy Kosmic Kollages
When you think of Jack Kirby, you think of new gods, tales of Asgard, patriotic heroes punching nazis, double page spreads and maybe even devilish dinosaurs.
You may, or may not, think of his collage artwork.
A collage is a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photos and pieces of paper or fabric onto a backing. Back when a bunch of my friends were going to art school, they would call it Mixed Media to make it sound cool.
Even though artists have been creating collages for years, Pablo Picasso and George Braque brought the art form to the forefront of the art world in the early 20th century.
I don't know who was the first to bring collage into the world of comics (maybe it was Will Eisner on The Spirit), but Jack Kirby started to experiment with the technique in 1964 in the pages of the Fantastic Four. He would use collage to create fantastical scenes of otherworldly dimensions.
Even though the printing processes for comics in those days were crude, Kirby created amazing effects. His penciled characters jumped off the page juxtaposed with the hyper reality created by his collage work.
Jack Kirby would continue to make collages throughout his life. According to his assistant from the early 70's, Kirby would request visitors to his home to bring photo magazines so he could mine them for his collage pieces.
Kirby was a creative powerhouse, working 80 hours per week, penciling endless pages. He was a speed demon with a pencil, too. There are stories where Kirby would pencil five or six pages in a day (your average comic book penciler is lucky to get one page done today). So creating a collage for a comic page, for him, would slow the process down.
However, for Jack Kirby, collage seemed to be a relaxation; a happy distraction from the penciled pages. Kirby was always shaping new worlds of imagination, and his crazy, cosmic collages were just another medium for his talent.
JR
(has a court order preventing him from trying to make mixed media)