Tag: Captain Victory

Kirby Kurtain Kall

Though August is over and it’s now Sept. 1st, I have an estab­lished tra­di­tion of tak­ing all my Kir­by Trib­ute Month images and putting them togeth­er into one big poster image. This year is no different.

Though I drew them all and know each image well by this point, I get a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive when I com­bine them after the fact like this, apprais­ing the work I did from an over­all view.

This is now the fourth year that I’ve done Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, and it’s inter­est­ing to see how much more detailed and involved these small illus­tra­tions have become each year. That’s noth­ing to do with the prompts them­selves (though those can cre­ate their own chal­lenges). It’s more to do with feel­ing the need to move beyond just straight por­traits, to come up with some­thing that feels like there’s a sto­ry to it.

That’s about all there is to say. I always learn some­thing when I do these, so hope­ful­ly you’ve enjoyed this year’s journey.

“Thunderbolt and Lightning, Very Very Frightening!”

It’s now Day 27 of this year’s Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month. The prompt for today is Goldie Gold (from the car­toon Goldie Gold and Action Jack). But (as always seems to hap­pen at least once dur­ing these Kir­by Trib­ute Months), I’ve elect­ed to go off the reser­va­tion today. Instead, I’ve drawn the Light­ning Lady, from Jack Kir­by’s Cap­tain Vic­to­ry, pub­lished through Pacif­ic Comics. I thought she’d be a good fit along­side the oth­ers on this list of Kir­by women, and I did­n’t want to miss this opportunity!

Cap­tain Vic­to­ry was a big deal when it was announced. Jack Kir­by was doing a new com­ic, and he was­n’t doing it for Mar­vel or DC! He was doing it for a brand new pub­lish­er called Pacif­ic Comics. Not only that, but he would own all the rights to this new com­ic and all the char­ac­ters! And hav­ing Jack on-board meant that oth­er top comics cre­ators were also inter­est­ed in doing things through Pacific.

I’m hav­ing a hard time find­ing this now, but I recall read­ing some­where that Cap­tain Vic­to­ry was inspired by Jack­’s reac­tion to see­ing films like E.T. and Close Encoun­ters, which he thought were far too opti­mistic about first con­tact. Instead, he thought our first alien encoun­ters might be more like what has often hap­pened his­tor­i­cal­ly when an advanced civ­i­liza­tion meets a more prim­i­tive one. Spoil­er: it often does­n’t go well for the less-advanced civ­i­liza­tion, even when it’s unin­ten­tion­al. That was the idea Jack was work­ing with.

The first six issues of Cap­tain Vic­to­ry dealt with Capt. Vic­to­ry and the Ranger crew of the Galac­tic Dread­nought Tiger chas­ing down the Insec­ton horde. Unfor­tu­nate­ly in the course of the chase, the horde finds a new world to invade and infest: Earth. Cap­tain Vic­to­ry and crew track them there.

The leader and queen of the Insec­tons is the Light­ning Lady, com­mand­ing their inva­sion. Per her name, one of her more vis­i­bly impres­sive pow­ers is gen­er­at­ing pow­er­ful bolts of elec­tric­i­ty. She’s one of Kir­by’s more strik­ing late peri­od char­ac­ter designs, and I could­n’t pass up the oppor­tu­ni­ty to include her among this list of Kir­by women!

I hope you enjoyed my take on the Light­ning Lady! Please feel free to come back again tomor­row to see who’s next, as I return to the prompt list.

On to Victory!

We’re get­ting close to the end! Day 30 of our month-long online Jack Kir­by Art Trib­ute. Suggested/sponsored by Howard Simp­son, you can find the work online on your favorite social media plat­forms by the hash­tag #Kir­b­yArt­Trib­ut­es.

I’m going off-menu again today. The prompt sug­gests doing a “Kir­by Col­lage,” of the type Jack was known for doing in his spare time, some­times even find­ing ways to use them in his comics. But I could­n’t think of a way to do that and have it fit in the­mat­i­cal­ly with the rest of what I’m doing. So instead, I chose to draw Cap­tain Victory.

This was the title that launched a brand new com­ic com­pa­ny in the ear­ly ’80s, Pacif­ic Comics. As men­tioned yes­ter­day, the fact that Jack Kir­by was doing a com­ic for a new start­up pub­lish­er and not for Mar­vel or DC again, was a Big Deal. It was thought that the “Big Two” were real­ly the only game in town, so it can’t be over­stat­ed that this was big news.

One of the rea­sons Kir­by was will­ing to do this was con­tained right there in the indi­cia in the front of the book: “™ & © Jack Kir­by.” This was­n’t some­thing he was ever like­ly to get from Mar­vel or DC, and I’m sure the var­i­ous frus­tra­tions he’d had with both pub­lish­ers at dif­fer­ent points over the years were also part of his inter­est in going inde­pen­dent again (like he and Joe Simon had tried once before with Mainline).

The sto­ry of Cap­tain Vic­to­ry and his Galac­tic Rangers was inspired at least in part by Jack watch­ing E.T. and think­ing that “first con­tact” was not like­ly to be so benign. In fact, con­sid­er­ing some of the things that hap­pened when explor­ers came from Europe to the “New World,” Jack thought more like­ly it could go hor­ri­bly wrong..for us! And that was the seed of the story.

Front and cen­ter you’ve got Cap­tain Vic­to­ry. Behind him to the left is Major Klavus, and to the right is Tarin.

Hope you like it. One more to go!