The Simon & Kirby Library: Science Fiction - Hardcover

Simon, Joe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848569610 ISBN 13: 9781848569614

Publisher: Titan Books, 2013

Synopsis

The Simon and Kirby Library: Science Fiction spans more than 20 years, beginning with the first stories Joe Simon and Jack Kirby ever produced together (beginning in June 1940)--their ten-issue run of Blue Bolt adventures. Then the Cold War years will be represented by Race For the Moon, featuring pencils by Kirby and inked artwork by comic book legends Reed Crandall, Angelo Torres, and Al Williamson.

"Joe was one of the industry's greatest innovators--he commissioned stories from some of the greatest talents of the time," series editor Steve Saffel notes. "Thanks to his efforts, we have exclusive access to more than 80 pages of original artwork from the 1950s. Stories by all four artists appear in all of their stunning detail. This was a book Joe wanted the world to see."

Other rarities from both decades are included, and as a bonus for readers, the volume features stories illustrated by Crandall, Torres, and Williamson--without Kirby.

Including an introduction by Dave Gibbons, the award-winning co-creator and illustrator of Watchmen, this is an historic volume no comic book aficionado will be able to live without.

About this title

About the Author

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created one of the most famous icons in popular culture with Captain America, star of the 2011 blockbuster film, also featured in the 2012 blockbuster The Avengers. Simon was the first editor of Marvel Comics, and together he and Kirby conquered every genre, raising the bar on an entire industry.

Reviews

Their groundbreaking, action-packed superhero tales made Simon and Kirby comic books’ most popular creators in the 1940s, but when the popularity of costumed crime fighters waned, the team turned to other genres, including the science-fiction sagas that were seeing success on the big and small screens. This oversize collection leads off with the Blue Bolt, an early superhero with sf trappings who just predates the late-1940 debut of Simon and Kirby’s seminal Captain America, but the bulk of the volume comprises some two-dozen short stories from the 1950s dealing with space exploration, scientific experiments gone wrong, interplanetary visitors, and other familiar tropes. Twilight Zone–style twist endings are de rigueur, even though the pieces actually predate that show’s 1959 premiere. Although these comics fail to even reach for the relative literary sophistication of the sf titles published by EC Comics in the early ’50s—considered the genre’s gold standard—their lack of pretension, perfectly expressed in the verve of Kirby’s robust drawings, makes them arguably more appealing to today’s readers. --Gordon Flagg

Edition details

• Publisher: Titan Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1848569610
• ISBN 13: 9781848569614
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Kirby Jack
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320