Generally speaking, I agree with the adage that the best person to compare yourself with is yourself at another time. That way you can see progress, how you’ve developed as a writer or in other ways. Sometimes though, it’s useful to have a peek at who else is out there, and see who they’re doing. At the very least, it’s useful to have some idea of what professional benchmarks exist for the field you’re in; how many script pages per day will support you, how long it takes to put a decent treatment together, and so on.

All I can say is, I’m very glad I’m a writer and not a comic artist. I’m reading Kirby: King of Comics at the moment, an impressively large book for a man who still casts a shadow over the industry he helped to define. Comics had existed as newspaper strips since the turn of twentieth century, but it was Jack Kirby who defined the distinctions between what could be done in a four-panel strip and what was possible in a full-length comic. His pace, energy, and vision drove an incredible capacity for creation; in the 1940s he was routinely drawing 8 pages a day, and his peers agreed they were the best in the business. These days, many comic artists struggle to do 22 pages a month. Yes, the requirements are more sophisticated today, and correspondingly greater skills are required…but that doesn’t make the work being produced now any superior to what Jack Kirby was doing way back when.

Kirby co-wrote and drew westerns, crime stories, war tales, romance and science fiction, all long before the superhero titles that secured his reputation for posterity. It was with Marvel’s Stan Lee that he enjoyed his most fruitful partnership, the pair of them hacking out title after title, coming up with characters and stories that are still being reprinted to this day, and which today’s comics creators continue to mine for inspiration. Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and The Hulk are just a few of the iconic creations that poured from Kirby’s mind onto the page, and few of the superheroes created since have captured the public imagination in anything like the same way.

Kirby: King of Comics is written by the artist’s longstanding assistant and friend Mark Evanier, and I find it an easy and entertaining read. Kirby was hampered by his inability to capitalise on his creativity in an economic sense: others would always make more money from him than Kirby ever saw. And that’s why he had to draw so much; driven by a fear of being unable to support his family, he would continue to get the pencils out and create, because it was the only thing he knew.

It’s a physically impressive book, substantially illustrated with a cross section of Kirby’s work, reproduced from the originals in many cases. I find it thoroughly enjoyable, but some net critics have noted that it doesn’t show or tell anything new. True enough if you’re one of the geeks who subscribes to specialist magazines about Kirby, but if you’re a fan without that exhaustive knowledge, I’m sure you’ll find this a rewarding book.

Kirby is one of my two favourite original Marvel artists, and he died some years ago. The other, Gene Colan, is in hospital at the moment. Their styles couldn’t be more different: Kirby is brash, energetic, his characters physically impossible but commanding all the same. Colan’s work is more sophisticated, all about the dance between light and shade, with characters conjured to perfection from the simplest of lines.

Where Kirby is primal rock and roll power, Colan is a sinuous Miles Davis composition. Sure, he could kick out the jams when called for, and did so in The Avengers and Daredevil among other titles, but his real skill was in the depiction of nuance and atmosphere. Howard the Duck wouldn’t have been the same without him, and his art on Tomb of Dracula made that series work in a way that no other comic artist could have. If Gene Colan and his work have meant anything to you at all, tell him so: send a Get Well card to him at this address:

Gene Colan
2 Sea Cliff Avenue
Sea Cliff
NY11579
USA