Again, I've been buying up more Kirby Marvel's from his last few weeks before defecting to DC and coming up with his masterpiece, the four FOURTH WORLD titles. This time, it was ASTONISHING TALES #2 (October 1970), and it's a little cracker.
It has Kirby dishing up a classic mini-slice of signature action in the KA-ZAR short, tantalisingly featuring a Ditko character, Kraven The Hunter. But yet again, the evidence, if you're looking for it, of why Kirby had to leave Marvel, is there: in at least two panels, Ka-Zar's face has clearly been redrawn by lesser, but slicker hands (either John Buscema or Johnny Romita, I'd guess). Great inking, too, by the late Sam Grainger, who I must plead ignorance of. All I know is that this issue was as well inked as I've ever seen Kirby. A little bit Chic Stone-esque.
If there was a comic-format of yesteryear I'd love to see return, it's the split-book. Marvel was coming down with them at one point. STRANGE TALES, TALES TO ASTONISH, TALES OF SUSPENSE, AMAZING ADVENTURES, et al. It'd be the perfect format for artists who struggle to produce 22 pages a month, but who are too damn good for the medium to just lose to storyboarding bad animation/movies. Hell, we can all name a couple we've lost that way, or are stuck in the rut of being cover artists, and it's always a shame.
And this is a perfect example of the greatness of the flip-book medium, because the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby KA-ZAR feature shares it's berth with a fantastic Roy Thomas/Wally Wood DOCTOR DOOM story. Some of Rascally Roy's best work: he captures Von Doom's narcissistic lunacy to perfection. Plus, Wood's (comic art's foremost tragic genius) art is unsurprisingly brilliant.