My Collection - JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR [1994 Series]

Jack Kirby Collector [1994 series]
43 issues [1994 - 2005]
1 - 43

Not surprisingly, the bulk of anything I have to write about this on-going fanzine will appear on another weblog. It's been a constant delight for the last decade, and hopefully will continue to be fore quite a while longer. I think I first heard about it about a year after it started, back when it was mail-order only, and sent away for a complete set of back-issues and a subscription. A few issues after that it up-graded to a more deluxe format, with more pages and colour covers, and distribution to comic book stores, so after my sub ran out I started picking it up locally (where it would usually arrive earlier than my sub copies and was cheaper, given the extra to mail it to Canada). Of course it's kept evolving since then, and since #31 has been tabloid sized to show off Kirby's art that extra amount (although I wish they'd use the tabloid size more, especially the centerfold, which you'd think they'd use to show a page of Kirby at fully the size he drew it).

Hard to pick out any favourites, since it's all so good. The best part of the magazine is of course the Kirby artwork, especially the stuff they're able to reproduce from high quality copies of the pencils or from original art with Kirby's margin notes attached. And when the pages are from otherwise unpublished stories (such as 1970s stuff like the unused Dingbats, In the Days of the Mob and True Divorce / Soul Love stuff at DC) that's an extra treat. Unfortunately, copyright reasons prevent them from running too many complete stories from those, so you often have to hunt between issues to get most of the pages from some stories. For the past few issues they've been running some very nicely restored versions of some 1950s S&K stories complete, which has been a welcome addition.