It's been the fannish custom -- for more years, now, than I care to remember -- to snort derisively whenever the subbject of Jack "King" Kirby's Marvel "monster comics" of the 1950's comes up in conversation. Words such as "juvenile" (at best) and "cornball" (at the most dismissive and condescending) are lobbed back and forth like so many live guano grenades, by studiedly cynical (and shamelessly self-congratulatory) modern-day funnybook aficionados for whom -- as the saying goes -- "nostalgia" equals "last Tuesday."

Now: before I occasion cries of "schizophrenic much...?", given that I elsewhere noted, on an earlier page, that many of the Marvel "creature feature" offerings to be found in such storytelling venues as (say) TALES TO ASTONISH were "relentlessly drab and moronic 'monster' tales -- with 'shock endings' so pitiful, theey'd be hard-pressed to decently startle a particularly undemanding Girl Scout troop," allow me to make a key distinction here, por favour:

All of those "I Fought Lola: The Creature That Walked Like a Woman and Talked Like a Man" stories penciled by the likes of Don Heck; Dick Ayers; and Werner Roth...?

Complete and Total Crap-ola.

Classic tales such as (f'rinstance) "Fin Fang Foom" and "X: The Thing That Lived," as breathtakingly rendered and explicated by the only creator ever -- in the history of this oft-benighted medium entire -- to merit the appellation of "The King," and to whom every knee must, ultimately, bow in mute, awe-struck supplication...?

... well, now, friends and neighbors: those, by God and by damn, were comic books.

Mind, now: I'm by no means so staggeringly Kirby-drunk that I can't (and won't) readily acquiesce to the obvious. Those "manversus monster" mini-operas were as rigidly ritualistic as anything to be found outside of the constraints of Japanese kabuki theater. Monster Is Unleashed Upon An Unsuspecting Human Populace; Monster Crunches Many, Many Heads Like So Many Tootsie-Pops; Lone Human Displays Astonishing Courage (Bordering On Sheer, Unbridled Lunacy) and Good, Old-Fashioned Yankee Ingenuity, and Banishes/Destroys Said Monster. Badda-boom, badda- bing, and another seven-to-ten pages down for next month's issue of BEWARE, or WHERE MONSTERS DWELL, or what-have -you. Nice work, if you can get it. :-))

Having willingly conceded that much, however: one must (nonetheless) gape and nod in silent, sincere admiration and acknowledgment of the unflagging ingenuity and invention with which The Great Man was able to pipe what was (essentially) the same tune, month in and month out, non- stop, for well over a decade; the matchless level of sheer craft with which he invested works which he must well have known (even then) were, essentially -- even for comics -- "throwaway" works; and (of course) the signal, indisputable fact that said sagas were imbued with vigor and storytelling panache enough to have entertained an entire generation (the comics readership of the '50's)... and endure, in fannish memory, long and well beyond that.

It's much of a muchness, I think, with the example provided us by the story of the stage magician and the novice prestidigitator. The latter, it seems, had been seated in the audience during a performance on the part of the former; and -- after said performance -- approached the elder gent, and announced (in what one assumes was an oily, smug and supercilious tenor): "I can do that last card trick much, much more skillfully than you did just then, you know."

"That may well be so," the aged thaumaturge conceded, as the youth preened in obvious self-satisfaction. "But: can you do that trick 'better' than I twice nightly, for fifty weeks out of every fifty-two? And in front of a paying audience...?"

Oh, yes: it's readily apparent (to even the most partisan of Kirby devotees) that more than a mere handful of talents out there in the field today might easily craft a superior "monster" tale than did The King, under similar constraints and storytelling situ.

Once, certainly. Twice, possibly. Maybe even half-a-dozen times...

... but: six, eight, ten times per month -- every month -- forwell over a decade...?

Dial "1-800-I-DON'T- THINK-SO."

Take the aforementioned example, for instance, of "Fin Fang Foom": a creature conceptualization which has endured, in the Marvel Comics canon, well into the present day.

It is as shining an exemplar of Jack Kirby's manifold storytelling strengths of that period as any to be found, anywhere: supple, sure-footed artistic acumen harnessed in service of nothing deeper or more self-consciously "meaningful" than simple, straightforward entertainment.

Fin Fang Foom (so named because he had big, honkin' fins all over his bad self; sported fangs; and because the ground went FOOM!! whenever he loped about.) (Look, people: you try coming up with half-a-dozen brand, spanking new "monster names" every month, for ten years plus. And just be darned grateful that the "super-hero era" of the Silver Age finally kicked in, before the poor man was reduced to cobbling up preliminary sketches for slavering, daemonic beasties by the name of "Larry." Or "Tinky-Winky." I'm just sayin', is all.) was a Chinese dragon, awakened from his centuries-long slumbers by the usual, "B"-movie admixture of human swagger and incompetence.

Not being much of a "morning monster": he woke up just a weeeeee bit... well... cranky.

Der Foomster promptly set about to subtly indicating the extent of his annoyance over this wholly regrettable state of affairs by embarking on a non-stop campaign of rapine, terror and blood- slaughter the likes of which has not been made manifest to human ken since the last time I had to rouse my eight-year-old in order to arrange for her morning rendezvous with the school bus. Heads were crunched; pork belly futures manipulated; buildings stampeded; and panicky, bleating livestock shamelessly molested.

He was -- in the immortal words of funk balladeer Rick James -- "a super-freak; the kind you don't take home to Mother."

As timeless as ol' FFF's appeal has proven over the ensuing decades, however: my own personal preference for Kirby Kreature Emeritus is for the loony, goony and gibbering thingamawhoozit known simplyas "X."

In this nifty li'l tale, a (*kaff*kaff) comic book artist gives conceptual "birth" to a particularly ingenious thing-that- goes-bump: a shape- shifter, transmogrifying effortlessly into an infinitely more powerful, cunning and relentless opponent each and every time one of the (seemingly inevitable) Lone, Plucky Humans managed to rat-a-tat-tat his hideous hide for him.

This nightmarish notion proves overwhelmingly popular with said artist's juvenile audience... so popular, in fact, that the resourceful and ravenous "X" comes to life, and seeks out its pencil-wielding progenitor in order that the latter might be Conveniently Eaten before being able to cobble up a "counter-monster" (if you will).

I understand that much this same sort of thing, in fact, happened to the creators of Chilly Willy, just a few years prior to the publication of this story. Makes me glad I can't bloody draw a straight line, boy.

In any event: it turns out that both artist and abomination are laboring under a joint misconception. It wasn't the amassed approbation of the comics audience which managed to breathe malefic life into "X"...

... it was something all wonky and Rod Serling-like in the typewriter "X's" creator had first used to craft his original proposal, instead.

Stuff such as this was all so unrelievedly twisted and Dada-esque -- giant, sentient and ambulatory tree roots; immortal Chinese dragons with a "thing" for outsized purple undies; professional artists who actually own (and can form words on) typewriters -- that it practically qualified as the Classic Comics version of William Burrough's NAKED LUNCH.

Still and all: the Kirby "monster stories" of that "I Like Ike"/two-cars- in-every-garage era possess an undeniable storytelling charm that is unique and unto themselves, in all the annals of American mainstream comics history. As plain and unassuming as a burger'n'fries combo platter; as visceral and direct as a quick knee to the groin;what they lacked in lofty, high-falutin' artistic ambitions, they more than adequately compensated for in both their consummate craftsmanship and their single-minded readiness to effectively entertain.

Given much of what passes for "the best of the best" nowadays, by way of comparison... that's not too shabby a storytelling legacy, really.

THE KIRBY LEGACY: The Fantastic Four