Kirb Your Enthusiasm (23)

By: Josh Kramer
March 8, 2011

Twenty-third in a series of posts, each one analyzing a single panel from a Jack Kirby-drawn comic book.

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kirby-forever-550 — Click on image for larger version. Click on that image to zoom in.

I’ve been learning how to draw faces. Or, I guess I should say, relearning how to draw faces. The comics that made me really want to draw comics myself are mostly by masters of subtly conveying emotions: Chris Ware, Seth, Charles Burns. Perhaps that’s why, as a novice cartoonist, I never really learned to draw emotionally expressive faces — to the point where my characters are called “not believable” and “boring” in critiques.

So now, as I prepare to draw my next long story, I sit and look in the mirror (usually in front of the refrigerator, which is about the only thing my magnetic pocket mirror will stick to). I put on an hour’s worth of music and draw my face over and over again in different positions. I’ve found that it’s easier to hold the pose and make it believable if I cry out with the appropriate cackle, grunt, whimper, or whinny. It usually takes about fifteen minutes to produce any faces that I like, but I think — I hope — that I’m gradually becoming unstuck. The theory is that if I can draw the extremes of human facial expression, I’ll be able to pull back and allow my characters to emote normally.

As I continue to study comics, it’s no longer only the emotionally restrained comics that do it for me — I also enjoy the over-the-top comics against which my favorite cartoonists, in their emotional restraint, were reacting. For example, the close-up of Darkseid’s ugly mug, shown above, caught my attention as I read through Jack Kirby’s The Forever People #4 (August 1971). A classic Kirby face, effectively rendered in ink by Vince Colletta, it’s both frightening and evocative — even without eyes! Also, the fact that Darkseid almost never smiles makes it all the more terrifying when he does so here.

Forget the corny writing. Forget that the joke at which Darkseid is supposedly laughing so hard doesn’t make much sense. Just look at that craggy smile and imagine a 53-year-old Jack Kirby cracking it back at himself in the mirror.

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ALSO ON HILOBROW: Joe Alterio’s Cablegate Comix | HiLobrow posts about comics and cartoonists | HiLobrow posts about science fiction | The New Gods generation

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What do you think?

Joshua Glenn says:

March 8, 2011 at 11:29 am

As someone who grew up on Kirby, only to have my mind blown in my 20s by “literary” or “alternative” comics from Fantagraphics, it thrills me to publish in this series an item by a writer who grew up on “literary” or “alternative” comics from Fantagraphics, only to have his mind blown in his 20s by Kirby. That Josh Kramer is also a fledgling cartoonist immersed in the details of the craft is icing on the cake. Well done!
Greg says:

March 8, 2011 at 7:32 pm

Always keep Kirby with you. More impotant than wearing pants. if you have to rush out somewhere in a hurry, and you have to choose between pants and Kirby, your choice should always be Kirby. I speak from (repeated) experience, often up to three times a month. I am glad the wisdom of my experience upon a fine young man such as yourself. The birth of my first son was a traumatic event. My wife was given gas and pills. But I had wisely brought ‘The Coming of Galactus’ with me. It helped me through. I though my wife would have benefited from some selected panels at a difficult
time, but she was somewhat unreceptive. Turned out well in the end and Sam, my now 12 year-old son, is both apalled and charmed that his birth was accompanied by such visions of the cosmic sublime.
Josh Glenn says:

March 8, 2011 at 8:41 pm

Greg — when my (now 13-year-old) son Sam was being born, my wife was miffed with me because I’d gone downstairs to stretch my legs and found a Jack Chick religious comic in the lobby, and was excitedly reading it and telling her about how I’d been allowed to read Jack Chick tracts in church, etc., etc.

What I’m trying to say: You and I are brothers from a different mother.

PS: Ha ha, you said “more impotent than wearing pants”
Greg says:

March 9, 2011 at 2:43 am

That’s not a typo or parapraxis. It is a meaningful yet enigmatic aphorism.
Josh says:

March 9, 2011 at 10:15 am

Thanks guys. Clearly Kirby means a lot of things to a lot of different people.
greg says:

March 9, 2011 at 10:42 am

wow a lot of typos in that post. sorry — although I defend’ impotent;. Perhaps it’s best that this KIrby Season is shutting down, the Krackle is surrounding me, engulfing me, transforming atomic my structure to graphite atoms so that I might one day become a Kirby Proto-Pencil of Para-Presence and Praxi-Potency…
Matt says:

March 10, 2022 at 8:27 pm

“Forget the corny writing. Forget that the joke at which Darkseid is supposedly laughing so hard doesn’t make much sense.”

oh please. you don’t deliberately show a panel out of context and then say things like this.

kirby deserves respect as a writer. the full scene this panel comes from is exemplary of his skill and talent as a writer. why is that so hard for so many comic book readers to see?

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Kirb Your Enthusiasm (23)

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