Month: July 2023 (Page 3 of 4)

We’re nearly at the mid-point of July, and once again we’re bringing you our regular programming on The AIR that means it’s time for a new  Radio Free Charleston and a new edition of The Swing Shift. You simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with tons of replays throughout the week.

We have another hybrid show this week, where I do a full-hour of new stuff, and then fill up the remaining two hours with a revival of the free-format Radio Free Charleston International. In this case, it’s a show from 2017 that hasn’t been heard in more than five years.

But our first hour is loaded with tons of cool new local and indie acts, along with a couple of ringers.

Our opening band, Wrong War, formed in Chicago in 2019 and features Matt Weeks on lead vocals. In addition to being at the helm of Council Records, Weeks played and toured extensively with the widely influential bands Current, Calvary, and Ottawa. On guitar and bass, respectively, are Patrick Keenan and Dave Pawlowski, who played together in The Phenoms. Salvo Beta drummer Dan Smith, along with Weeks, is responsible for much of the band’s relentless, aggressive sound. Smith also handles all noise and sampling. KirkbyKiss also comes to us from Council Records.

Our first hour also brings you new tunes from The Wearing Hands, Golden, Dave Strong, The Dollyrots, Buni Muni, Telehealth, Nixon Black, Jeff Ellis, Galen & Paul and more.

Our second and third hours revive episode 22 of Radio Free Charleston International, and it’s pretty much as free-format as you can get. I mean, I played The Pixies, The Monkees, Kansas and Macy Gray…in a row, in that order. The rest of these two hours is equally brilliantly headscratching.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. In the first hour, live links will take you to the artist’s pages so you can find out more about them, buy their music and find out where to see them perform live…

RFC V5 137

hour one
Wrong War “The Call”
The Wearing Hands “Mr. Boston”
Golden “Smokers”
Dave Strong “Still Thinking About You”
The Dollyrots “I Touch Myself”
Science of the Mind  “Kaoss”
KirkbyKiss “Standards and Practices”
Buni Muni “Chunky”
Telehealth “Taliesin Grid”
Stewart Copeland “Demolition Man”
Slik “The Kid’s A Punk”
Nixon Black ” “Treading On Darkened Waters”
Payback’s a Bitch“Johnny and Jenny”
Marcie Bullock“Little Did You Know”
Jeff Ellis “Doors He Could Open”
Logical Fleadh “MacArthur Road”
Galen and Paul “No Es Necesario”

hour two
Green Day “Revolution Radio”
The Pixies “Um Chagga Lagga”
The Monkees “The Porpoise Song”
Kansas “Summer”
Macy Gray “Redemption Song”
The Sword “High Country (acoustic)”
Vangelis “Mission Accomplished”
Regina Spektor “Older and Taller”
Manfred Mann “I Put A Spell On You”
The Isley Brothers “Shout”
Freddie Mercury “The Great Pretender”
John Lennon “Stand By Me”
The Who “Batman”
Marillion “Living In Fear”
Frank Zappa “Cosmic Debris”
Elvis Costello “…and in every home”
No Doubt “Open The Gate”
Sting “I Can’t Stop Thinking About You”
The Screaming Jets “Cash In Your Ticket”
Miss Behaviour “Savage Heart”
Neil Young “We R In Control”
Starpilot “Blazor”
Mi Sex “Computer Games”
New Order “Bizarre Love Triangle”
M “Doubletalk”
Kate Bush “Pull Out The Pin”
Peter Gabriel “Intruder”
Adrian Belew “Standing In The Shadows”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different classic episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for encores of last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM, a new episode of The Swing Shift give you a one-hour mixtape of piano-driving Swing Music. You’ll hear everything from Amos Milburn to Stan Kenton, Lionel Hampton, Nat King Cole and many others, but due to deadline pressures, you don’t get a playlist. Thems the breaks. Just tune in and let the 88 keys take you to swingin’ new places.

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM and 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

You guessed it, our art is still infused with my recent visit to New York City.

This week, it’s a street scene, based on blurry photos I took while there, of the display canopy for the current Broadway Show, Some Like It Hot. I did this on cheap sketchbook paper using oil pastel crayons. I had to lay a sheet of acetate over it so I could scan it, and it was color-corrected once it was in the computer.  I’m still trying to follow Hopper’s quest to capture light with my art. This might get blown-up into a more detailed painting later.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a brand-new episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a brand-new edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

The problem is, like last week, I don’t have full playlists for either show. I’m working on an early deadline, while our friends at Haversham will be getting the shows to me well after I write this. I do know that Herman Linte will present two full hours of the music of progressive classical-crossover band, Sky. Nigel Pye says to expect his usual assortment of trippy, mind-expanding music.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

At 8 PM you can hear an encore of last Wednesday’s new episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents ten hours of classic episodes of Prognosis.

If you are of a certain age (it’s a range, probably about ten years on either side of your PopCulteer), you may have grown up with a love of classic Aurora figural model kits.

I’m not talking about the cars. Those are cool enough, but they didn’t approach the coolness of Aurora’s monsters, dinosaurs, Knights or their kits based on hit TV shows and movies.

Above and below we have just a couple of the dozens of videos about Aurora that you can find on the YouTube. Up top you get a short history of Aurora. Below you get over an hour and a half of raw video footage of collector and occasional model-kit-producer, Phil Ceparano’s massive private collection of kits, narrated by the owner. The video below, I must warn you, is so low-key astonishing that any fan of model kits will be shouting exclamations of shock and delight all the way through it.

If you’re wondering what whipped up my interest in model kits all of a sudden, the news came out that later this year, Atlantis Models, who recently purchased all the existing Aurora molds, will be reissuing two of the classic Aurora Prehistoric Scenes kits that have never been reissued before. I’ll tell you more about that when I have more details, but Prehistoric Scenes are my weakness.

From January, 2008 comes an edition of Radio Free Charleston with music from Holden Caulfield and The Synergy Collective. This show also includes Turkish Star Wars and animation by Frank Panucci.

Holden Caulfield was captured live at the La Belle Theater in South Charleston in August, 2007. For The Synergy Collective, we took our cameras to Ric Cochran’s Lighthouse Cafe at the Baptist Temple Fellowship Hall in November, 2007.

While remastering this show, I was reminded that, in the early days of Radio Free Charleston, I was not as adept at salvaging camera audio as later became. I hope that the performances come through despite the shaky sound.

Frank Panucci contributed another installement of his animated “Existential Journey” series, while we also dug up scenes from the “so bad it’s good” Turkish sci-fi movie that used the special effects from Star Wars without permission. You can read the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
July 7, 2023

We have some short items and radio notes this week in The PopCulteer, so let’s dive in…

Kickstarter Reminder

There are only a few days left in the Super Joe Unlimited. comic book Kickstarter campaign, and they’ll have to sprint to the finish to make their goal.

This is a really great project, with several Bronze Age comics greats contributing to the first full-length story featuring the 1978 Super Joe toys.

I told you about this Kickstarter campaign last month, and time is running out. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do, and new add-ons have been announced in the last few days to help them meet their goal. They are less than 1800 dollars away, so they’re very close to making this happen.

Originally introduced in 1977 as “…a new team: the SUPER JOE ADVENTURE TEAM answers the call anywhere in the galaxy,” Super Joe was the amazing, but short-lived follow-up to the 12 inch G.I. Joe.

It consisted of eight different figures: Super Joe Commander (white and black); Super Joe Adventurer (white and black); The Night Fighters (Shield and Luminos); and Darkon and Gor (the enemies of the Super Joe team). Each figure came with features new to action figures at the time, the “1-2 Punch” and “light-up action.”

I’ve been telling you about the toy revival of Super Joe for months, and I’ve mentioned the comic book, back when the preview poster of the cover of the first issue was sold at ToyLanta. Now the time has come to launch the campaign to get this book into the hands of the collectors. From Power Comics, the folks who brought us The Masters, comes Super Joe Unlimited.

I know I plan to increase my pledge to include one of the Randall Wall (get well soon) diorama kits, and if you have kicked in already, you might want to go back and revisit the Super Joe Unlimited. campaign to see what else they’ve added.

(UPDATE: This campaign just funded, hours before this post was set to go live. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go support it, though. It’s going to be a great comic!)

Tap Or Die

I’ve been telling you about Anthony Stokes’ comics for over a year now. He’s one of the most exciting young storytellers to turn up on the scene, and now he has a new project, an adult-oriented black-and-white comic book about professional wrestling called Tap Or Die.

TAP OR DIE is a new wrestling series that is chockful of action. It’s about perseverance, battling adversity, and REVENGE.
Wrestling fans will get a bonus from seeing references to classic wrestlers and non-wrestling fans will enjoy the high-octane action and character drama. There’s something here for everyone.

After Decay and Intrusive Thoughts, I was sold just seeing Anthony’s name on the book.  The fact that I follow pro wrestling is just gravy.  If you missed out on those books, you can snag the first issue of Tap or Die and then catch up with digital or physical copies of his earlier series as add-on rewards.

This book was already fully-funded before I had a chance to tell you about it. If you want to see another great project from Stokes, Kick in while you can.

MIRRORBALL

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, Mel Larch devotes a full hour to Disco Hits from the legendary Casablanca Records label.   The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear these shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

Casablanca Records, run by Neil Bogart, despite being the home of KISS, made their mark on the music industry with their disco hits.  Mel has put together a salute to this amazing roster of Disco stalwarts.  Mel decided to take a pass on Casablanca’s biggest Disco stars, Donna Summer and The Village People, because she recently devoted entire shows to those artists. Instead, you’re going to hear the heart of this amazing collection of Disco hitmakers.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 079

The Ritchie Family “Put Your Feet To The Beat”
Paul Jabara “Pleasure Island”
Cameo “I Just Want To Be”
The Sylvers “Don’t Stop Get Off”
Nightlife “Dance, Freak and Boogie”
Gloria Scott “Just As Long As We’re Together”
Patti Brooks “After Dark”
Teri DeSario “Ain’t Nothin’ Gonna Keep Me From You”
D.C. LaRue “Let Them Dance”
Liquid Gold “My Baby’s Baby”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM and a mini-marathon Saturday nights at 9 PM

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat Salutes Wall of Voodoo

Also on The AIR  at 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with special mixtape-style new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat. This week Sydney presents a split mixtape, with the first hour devoted to Wall of Voodoo with Stan Ridgeway on lead vocals, and the second hour devoted to Wall of Voodoo with Andy Prieboy handling the microphone.

Originally consisting of Stan Ridgeway, Marc Moreland, Bruce Moreland, Chas T. Gray and Joe Nanini, Wall of Voodoo cultivated an underground following until their breakthrough hit, Mexican Radio, became an MTV staple in 1982, and the band performed in front of hundreds of thousands of people at the US Festival the following year…and then Ridgeway, Nanini and auxiliary keyboardist Bill Noland left the band.

In 1983, Bruce Moreland, who had left the band after their first album, returned, and the band recruited singer-keyboardist Andy Prieboy, who also became the band’s primary lyricist.

The band thrived for a short time with Prieboy fronting, then split up for good in 1988.  Ridgeway and Prieboy have both cultivated followings with their superb solo albums since leaving the band.

The band’s name came from a friend of Ridgeway’s, who on hearing him compare his records of keyboards and drum machines (gifted to him by none other than Daws Butler) to Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound,” counted with “it sounds more like a wall of voodoo.”  This was when Ridgeway was eking out a living composing scores for industrial films and porno.  It was an inauspicious beginning for a band that would become a mainstay of MTV with their biggest hit, “Mexican Radio” and play for hundreds of thousands of people at the 1983 US Festival.

Check out the playlist…

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat 105

Wall of Voodoo 1979-1983 with Stan Ridgeway
“Mexican Radio”
“Crack The Bell”
“Tomorrow”
“Two Minutes Till Lunch”
“Full of Tension”
“Spyworld”
“Me and My Dad”
“Ring of Fire”
“Animal Day”
“Red Light”
“They Don’t Want Me”
“Tse Tse Fly”
“Call Box”
“On Interstate 15”
“Good Times”
“Call of The West”
“Back In Flesh”

Wall of Voodoo 1984 to 1988 with Andy Prieboy
“Far Side of Crazy”
“Tragic Vaudeville”
“Big City”
“Chains of Luck”
“Wrong Way To Hollywood”
“When The Lights Go Out”
“Room With A View”
“Elvis Bought Dora A Cadillac”
“Blackboard Sky”
“Back In The Laundromat”
“Country of Man”
“Empty Room”
“This Business of Love”
“Do It Again”
“Mexican Radio (live)”

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays Saturday afternoon,  Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning at 10 AM.

That’s it for this week’s PopCulteer, check back for all our regular feature, with fresh content, every day.

We are now in the hot and muggy part of the year, and that means that many people are looking for STUFF TO DO so that they don’t melt into their couches.  Here’s a few suggestions…

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM.  Friday it’s Steve Himes. Saturday Autumn Rae entertains the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery.

The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe has some great stuff this weekend to tell you about. Thursday at 10 PM, Kenny Booth returns with Shred Night, a metallic open mic. Friday Tim Courts plays during happy hour.  Later on Friday the Glass presents Sean Richardson and Trey Ilderton.  Saturday singer/songwriter Emily Psycher performs at 9 PM.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. It’s still a going concern. And now there are seasonal allergies, the flu, synchronized attack squirrels, serial huggers, leftover inebriated Regatta-goers, Repubican gubernatorial candidates and other damned good reasons to be careful. Many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for coming weekend, roughly in order…

For yet another Wednesday afternoon, The AIR brings you new episodes of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast.  You can tune in at the website, or just stay right here and  listen to the convenient embedded radio player lurking elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM (EDT) Beatles Blast brings you a mixtape salute to one Ringo Starr, in advance of his 83rd birthday, this coming Friday. We don’t have a playlist for you, but this episode is filled with Sir Ritche’s solo songs about Peace and Love.

Beatles Blast can be heard every Wednesday at 2 PM, with replays Thursday at 11 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday afternoon.

At 3 PM (EDT) on Curtain Call, Mel Larch is a day late with a patriotic presentation of the original Broadway Cast Recording of George M!.

George M! is a Broadway musical based on the life of George M. Cohan, the biggest Broadway star of his day who, over a century ago, was known as “The Man Who Owned Broadway.” The book for the musical was written by Michael Stewart, John Pascal, and Francine Pascal. Music and lyrics were by George M. Cohan himself, with revisions for the musical by Cohan’s daughter, Mary Cohan.

The story covers the period from the late 1880s until 1937 and focuses on Cohan’s life and show business career from his early days in vaudeville with his parents and sister to his later success as a Broadway singer, dancer, composer, lyricist, theatre director and producer. The show includes such Cohan hit songs as “Give My Regards To Broadway”, “You’re a Grand Old Flag”, and “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Mel brings you the original Broadway cast recording from 1968, with Joel Grey as Cohan, and a very young Bernadette Peters as his sister, Josie.

Curtain Call can be heard on The AIR Wednesday at 3 PM, with replays Thursday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM, Saturday at 8 PM and Monday at 9 AM. A six-hour marathon of classic episodes can be heard Sunday evening starting at 6 PM, and an all-night marathon of Curtain Call episodes can be heard Wednesday nights, beginning at Midnight.

Also on The AIR, Wednesday at 11 PM,  The Comedy Vault collects an hour of the comedic music and poetry of Shel Silverstein.

It’s the Fourth of July, and for the first time I can recall, we’re bringing you our regular programming on The AIR that means it’s time for a new  Radio Free Charleston and a new edition of The Swing Shift. You simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with tons of replays throughout the week.

Our first hour is all new and loaded with great local and independent music. We have new tunes from The Tom Batchelor Band, TAFKAVince Band, Jeff Ellis, Galen & Paul, Inception In Black, Speedsuit, Love Interest Matt Mullins & The Bringdowns and more.

Our second and third hours revive a prog-heavy episode of Radio Free Charleston International that hasn’t been heard in over five years. This show dates back to when Prognosis had not yet made its debut, so loading up one of my shows with prog made sense. I have to admit, while I love progressive rock, Herman Linte does it better.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store. In the first hour, live links will take you to the artist’s pages so you can find out more about them, buy their music and find out where to see them perform live…

RFC V5 136

hour one
Tom Batchelor Band “Toe Truck”
TAFKAVinceBand “Magazine Pages”
The Humans “Pipeline”
Jeff Ellis “The Destroyer”
Galen and Paul “Room At The Top of The Stairs”
Scarlet Revolt “Ghost Town”
Inception In Black “The Misty Eyed”
Speedsuit “Never Take You Back”
Elvis Costello “My Science Fiction Twin”
Golden “I Want To Run”
Love Interest “Motherwound”
Sean Richardson “Cerulean”
The Wearing Hands “Eyeball”
The Anchoress “Martha’s Harbour”
Novelty Island “Turn To Me”
Matt Mullins and The Bringdowns “Aurelian”

hour two
Tubes “White Punks on Dope”
Nektar “Burn Out My Eyes”
Dream Theater “The Gift of Music”
Robert Fripp “Breathless”
Tame Impala “Let It Happen”
Floyd Acapella “Us And Them”
Emerson Lake and Palmer “Pirates”

hour three
Steve Hackett “The Steppes”
Roger Waters “Amused To Death”
Alan Parsons Porject “I Robot”
Progessive Experience “The Storm”
Steven Wilson “Don’t Hate Me”
King Crimson “21st Century Schizoid Man”
Anderson Bruford Wakeman and Howe “Roundabout”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different classic episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for encores of last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM, a new episode of The Swing Shift presents a career retrospective of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. This seminal Retro Swing Revival band is marking thirty years of  kicking it and spreading the Gospel of Swing to new generations.

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM and 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

Okay, I’m still doing NYC-inspired art this week. Not gonna apolgize for it, either.

This week’s art is not any kind of a political statement, which a reasonable person could suspect, given the title.

What you see above is a high-detail pencil sketch on heavy-duty watercolor paper, which I worked on for weeks. I began with a pencil, then went over with an ink wash and even used some wax pencil and white acrylic paint until I got it looking exactly how I wanted it to look.

Then, when I went to remove it from my watercolor pad so I could scan it, It got stuck and I wound up tearing the lower left corner off the piece. Feeling disgusted, I scanned it as two pieces and then digitally pasted them together…rather sloppily.

I’m still quite happy with the way it came out on the page, but I’m angry at myself for not having enough control over my fingers to perform the simple task of removing it from a pad of paper.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a brand-new episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a brand-new edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

The problem is, I don’t have full playlists for either show. I’m working on an early deadline, while our friends at Haversham will be getting the shows to me late Sunday evening. I do know that Herman Linte will present Rick Wakeman’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, and it’s 25-years-later sequel, Return To The Centre Of The Earth. Nigel Pye says to expect his usual assortment of trippy, mind-expanding music.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

At 8 PM you can hear an hour of classic insanity from The Goon Show on The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM the Monday Marathon presents ten hours of classic episodes of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.

Recently Disney+ ran a documentary about Stan Lee that many people feel was highly inaccurate and downplayed the creative contributions of the artists who did the bulk of the work when it came to creating Marvel Comics. To counter that, we’re going to re-present a couple of videos that we first posted here a decade ago, dedicated to Jack Kirby.

Jack Kirby was a font of creativity, from whose mind sprang forth most of the Marvel Universe and a huge chunk of DC Comics’ heroes. Kirby is often overlooked for his role in creating Marvel’s Fantastic Four, Thor, X Men, Iron Man, Avengers, Nick Fury and The Hulk.

While Stan Lee was the public face of his uncle, Martin Goodman’s company, the division of labor between Kirby and Lee is still a topic for debate.  Lee must be credited with pointing Kirby in a direction and then getting out of his way, but it’s well-documented that many of their “co-creations” were a complete suprise to Lee, who didn’t see the pages until Kirby went off on his own and crafted penciled pages based (or not) on Lee’s suggestions.

For instance, Lee himself has often admitted that he had no idea who The Silver Surfer was before Kirby drew him into an issue of Fantastic Four. Kirby’s career pre-dated his work with Lee.  As a partner to Joe Simon, Kirby co-created Captain America, The Newsboy Legion, The Guardian, Manhunter as well as the very first romance and horror comic books. After leaving Marvel and Lee in 1970, Kirby created The New Gods Saga, Kamandi, The Demon, The Eternals, Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur and Captain Victory on his own.

Stan Lee creations following his work with Kirby are paltry and uninspired.

We lost Jack Kirby almost thirty years ago, but we’ll never forget him. Above you will see a documentary about Kirby. Below you will see a half-hour of Jack Kirby, speaking frankly and unedited, at a comic book store appearance in 1993.