Fun Time

Kirby Draws The Iliad -- Jack Kirby's Boy Commandos Fight the Trojan War!

From Boy Commandos #3 in the summer of 1943 comes this stunning Jack Kirby comic book epic featuring his Boy Commandos and the Siege of Troy!

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby must have realized how ridiculous this anachronism was, so right up from that ask the reader to... "stretch your imagination...to imagine that Rip Carter and his gallant Boy Commandos were living in the days of other great crusaders for freedom...to imagine for example that they were fighting at The Siege of Troy!"

It may be a goofy idea, but what the heck...
it's Jack Kirby drawing the Iliad!

There's lots of amazing battle scenes in this comic!

This kind of epic battle of gods and men
is the stuff Kirby was best at!

You can tell Kirby's having a lot of fun drawing this one!

Here are the scans for the complete story:

Click on any thumbnail for a BIG Kirby comic book page!

Click on any thumbnail for a BIG Kirby comic book page!

Click on any thumbnail for a BIG Kirby comic book page!

And remember...

There are lots more golden-age Kirby comics scans in the archives, so go take a look!

Just For Laughs - Video

Gorilla In The Back

This image burned my brain when I was a little kid...

This image burned my brain when I was a little kid...

Sub-Mariner Battles the Human Torch by Bill Everett

I think it's one of the reasons I decided to become a cartoonist. I first saw this image in Jim Steranko's History of Comics book, and I remember begging my parents to buy the book for me at the Pickwick bookstore when I was about seven years old.

For full impact, you gotta see it BIG
at http://tinyurl.com/Submariner-Torch

This is just one of thirteen gorgeous comic book pin-ups specially commissioned for the Jim Steranko Calendar for 1971. See the whole thing in high-resolution at the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog.

Alex Toth - Part 2: How a TV Cartoon is Created - Animating, Layout, Camera and Production

Welcome back to the second half of Alex Toth and Bob Foster's illustrated guide to how TV cartoons are made.
This ran as a bonus back-up feature in the 1976 Super Friends oversized Limited Collectors' Edition comic book. For more of the background on this feature and the artists who created it, check out the first part at http://cartoonsnap.blogspot.com/2008/11/tv-cartoon-is-created-by-alex-toth-and.html

The first five pages covered the earlier stages of cartoon production from development through storyboarding.

These last five pages cover stuff like...

Studio setup and animation desk...

Animation and Layout...

Character Design and Model Sheets...

Background Layouts...

Painting Animation Cels...

And right below are the full-page high-resolution scans
of the second part of Alex Toth and Bob Foster's
"How TV Cartoons Are Made."

 

Click on any page for a HUGE hi-res image

Click on any page for a HUGE hi-res image

Click on any page for a high-resolution comic scan

Click on any page for a NICE BIG high-res image

In case you missed it, the first five pages of this series on
"the how and why of animated TV Cartoons" are posted
here:

http://cartoonsnap.blogspot.com/2008/11/tv-cartoon-is-created-by-alex-toth-and.html