Mountain of Judgment

"Hey, kid, what's your name?"

"My name's Sebastian."

"My name's Abe. Let's play!"

"Okay."

"Do you want to pretend to kill my mother?"

"Okay."

As my father-in-law once told me: whatever new idea you think of, there's already a club in Manhattan devoted to it.

With that in mind, here's a much earlier Kirby eyes collage from San Francisco's Comix Experience (via Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter). The caption says it was done when the King died, so they beat me to the idea by 12 years.

just a ghoulish head
hanging there in the darkness
Madame Evil Eyes

glowing like hot flames
my stare can kill at full force
look, look at her eyes

consummate power,
master of the holocaust--
so devestating

eyes turned to the left
hear the rustle of linen:
tying of bed sheets

you think it's easy?
that chick gives me the whim-whams
they are not like us

Previous Editions:
August 17, 2005
Energy crackles
through cosmic machinery--
behold, Kirby dots

August 24, 2005
The Last Boy on Earth
raised in bunker “Command D”
outside, the beasts rule

August 31, 2005
all creatures fear the
Ultimate Nullifier—
even Galactus

September 7, 2005
the Mole Man’s challenge:
try to strike me with that pole
you are slow, clumsy

September 14, 2005
know this before death:
there is no escape, none, from
my Omega Beams

September 21, 2005
A.I.M.-bred, this Mental
Organism is Designed
Only for Killing

September 28, 2005
don’t you worry Steve
there’s time to reach Zemo’s bomb
“No, Bucky, look out!”

October 5, 2005
here, two lives collide
negative meets positive
This monster? This man.

October 12, 2005
their bellies empty,
Hunger Dogs feast on despair
in Armagetto

October 19, 2005
across this blue world
men fight, bleed and die to own
King Solomon’s Frog

November 9, 2005
"They airbrushed my face"
a lament shared by Mike Stipe
and the King's Kal-El

Ever wonder if someone watched Footloose and disagreed with the point of view of the Kevin Bacon character? This letter appeared in the Monday 4/10/06 Union Tribune, and it is awesome.

Move youngsters off the dance floor
Regarding "Ballroom, classroom/Dance lessons helping kids with social skills, self-esteem" (News, April 4): Ballroom dancing classes for 10-to 12-year-old elementary school students: Was this program dreamed up by educators who thought our youngsters were not getting sexually active early enough? This idea ranks right up there with making P.E. classes optional, and then wondering why so many of our young people are getting obese! Three cheers for the educational establishment!
TOM B.
San Diego

There really is something about those Kirby eyes, I guess.

With my lowly post wending up the blog chain all the way to BoingBoing, I want to point out one thing: almost every one of these panels is taken from less than two years of the King's career, when he was cranking out 4 Fourth World books simultaneously for DC. (Thanks to Athelind in comments for the correction.)

There probably isn't enough space on all the internets to display like examples from Kirby's Marvel days and other DC books like Demon and Kamandi. A cursory look at my Thor and FF Essentials show roughly one use of the composition per issue after Kirby's style exploded circa 1966. and I'm counting only the panels where a face fills the entire frame. Eyes are the focus of countless other panels.

I don't think the eye obsession was blind artistic reflex for Kirby; the power of eyes was central to much of his work, from such minor characters as the count from Transylvane with his the "Evil Eye" to Madame Evil Eyes, to, most famously, Darkseid's fatal Omega Beams. Orion's hidden face is a literal demonstration of the dichotomy between how people see themselves, and how they are seen by others. And of course it's strange that Kirby, given how often he drew them, often drew what was supposed to be a normal set of eyes at irregular sizes and way out of alignment, as if the person's head had been caught in a vise off-panel.

I don't know exactly what it all means, but I know I've been hypnotized since 1975.

# posted by Cole Moore Odell @ 4/12/2006 2 comments