Expert: Chris Brown - 7/15/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hello

I have for years been trying to find a comic I first read in the 1970s - probably 1971 or 1972 (not 100% sure ) - the comic was out during the summer (e.g., August).

This was an anthology science fiction comic, likely a reprint of something from the 50s or 60s.  I believe that Jack Kirby was the artist, primarily because I remember one panel from the story, in which the narrator describes his futuristic society producing cyborgs (on an assembly line).

I remember the cyborgs being green and looking almost exactly like the Mad Thinker's android from Fantastic Four 70-71, which Mr. Kirby drew.

I'm thinking that Mr. Kirby may have gotten the idea for the android's appearance from the earlier work he did with the cyborgs, hence my belief that the original anthology story was a Kirby production.

Any assistance in helping me track down that comic would be appreciated - even if it is only what anthology Kirby stories were reprinted in the early 1970s or where I can find out more.

I've been searching for years as I've said..thanks.


ANSWER: Hi Carl

Going on your hypothesis that the story you remember was by Kirby, it most likely was a Marvel reprint.  It could possibly be a DC comic or also a Harvey comic, but Kirby's stories for these publishers were much less likely to be of the monster variety.

Marvel put out a number of reprint horror/fantasy titles in the early 70s.  If you haven't already, you might do better trying to track down the original comic with the story.  Then you can find out where it was reprinted.

Marvel had four main comic titles producing fantasy stories in the late 50s to early 60s.  A majority of these feature a Kirby monster-type story inside, often with a corresponding Kirby front cover.  These covers are accessible online.

The titles and issues I would recommend you review are

Journey into Mystery 52-82
Strange Tales 70-99
Tales of Suspense 1-38
Tales to Astonish 1-34

Strange Tales 99 has a story titled "Mister Morgan's Monster," featured on the cover, that sounds like a possibility.  Tales to Astonish 34 also has a story, "A Monster at My Window," that looks somewhat like the Mad Thinker's android.

Some websites where you can review these covers are

www.comics.org
--click on the "Gallery" hypertext to see several covers at once.
--this site seems to be on maintenance status pretty frequently, so don't be surprised if you are unable to access it.  Just check back in a couple days.

www.atlastales.com

Note that you won't necessarily see the same cover image as the 70s comic had.  Marvel would usually have one of their artists draw a new cover in the 70s even though everything else in the comic was a reprint.

Gotta run to work.  Send me a reply if you have any luck, and I can try to put together a list of the many titles put out in the 70s that had reprints of Kirby monster stories.

p.s. One other possible title to check is Black Magic, a comic published in the pre-code 1950s by Headline Publishers.  DC reprinted many of these stories in the 70s in a comic that was also called Black Magic.




---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I need to stress that the story - insofar as I remember it - was a scifi outer space story and *not* a monster story

it seems like it was a description of the world of the future, in which (green, thinker-android-like) cyborgs were being mass produced on an assembly line

so to stress - a scifi outer-space futuristic story

Answer
Hi Carl

Okay, well then, you may have been on the best track looking at all the 70s reprint issues out there.  Kirby really did not draw a lot of non-monster, non-superhero science fiction comic stories.  Many of them would still have appeared in the issues I mentioned earlier (the pre-superhero "monster" issues), but unfortunately they would usually not be pictured on the cover.

Here are the titles you may want to look at to try to find the issue you are looking for:

Beware
Chamber of Chills
Chamber of Darkness
Creatures on the Loose
Crypt of Shadows
Dead of Night
Fear
Giant Size Chillers
Journey into Mystery (2nd series)
Tomb of Darkness
Tower of Shadows
Uncanny Tales (2nd series)
Vault of Evil
Weird Wonder Tales
Where Creatures Roam
Where Monsters Dwell

These are all the Marvel titles.  In addition, Marvel was not against throwing a filler reprint into another title when it had a few pages that needed filling, so something could pop up in horror titles like Dracula, Man-Thing, Werewolf, Frankenstein, Giant-Size issues, etc.  The late-60s reprint title Fantasy Masterpieces also reprinted a lot of these types of stories.  You could buy an Overstreet Price Guide, if you don't already have one, to see which issues of the above comics have Kirby artwork.  It would not need to be the most recent edition--you could buy one from a couple years ago pretty cheaply online.

These comics are probably pretty well indexed on the site I mentioned earlier as well, so you could narrow down the search if you spend a few hours looking there:

www.comics.org

If not Marvel, you are probably just looking at DC or Harvey.  I mentioned DC's Black Magic already.  That title would tend more toward horror than sci-fi though.  And while Kirby did 15 or 20 fantasy and sci-fi stories for DC in the late 50s, DC was not systematically reprinting its non-superhero material in the 70s as was happening over at Marvel.

Likewise, while Kirby did several fantasy and sci-fi stories for Harvey in the late 50s, these were not reprinted in the early 70s either.  So it seems like if the story you are looking for is by Kirby, looking through the Marvel titles is your best bet.

Good luck!

Chris