Jack Kirby's Storyboards for 'Fantastic Four' (1978) III.

Continuing from my previous posts, here is the third part of Jack Kirby's amazing pencil storyboards for the 'Fantastic Four' Animated Series from 1978. Again, all boards are from the seventh episode 'The Olympics of Space', scripted by Roy Thomas.

First though, here's an extraordinary radio interview with Mr. Kirby himself by J. Michael Straczynski and Larry DiTillio (creators of the TV series 'Babylon 5') on April 13, 1990 on Mike Trudell's Hour 25, KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, talk radio show. Uploaded in seven parts by Rob Steibel (from Kirby Dynamics), I have collected all of them in a playlist, so you can easily listen to the entire hour and a half conversation. For a little more background info on the animated series I welcome you to enjoy the previous two blog posts.

Just a tip: feel free to click and thus enlarge the storyboards below. Doing so while listening to the interview however, will leave you without the audio connection. In this case it's better to open the artwork by right clicking it and choosing 'open link in a new tab'.

If you still want more after that, I recommend you read Gary Groth's amazing interview with Jack from February 1990, just four years before he died, which was posted in it's entirety over at The Comics Journal. In both interviews, Jack clearly states he not only drew, but also wrote all comic stories by himself, without Stan Lee's collaboration, something which is not part of Marvel's official company history. (Below are several excerpts from Groth's interview with Jack about the creation of his comics for Marvel:)

"Stan Lee and I never collaborated on anything! I’ve never seen Stan Lee write anything. I used to write the stories just like I always did."... "If Stan Lee ever got a thing dialogued, he would get it from someone working in the office. I would write out the whole story on the back of every page. I would write the dialogue on the back or a description of what was going on. Then Stan Lee would hand them to some guy and he would write in the dialogue. In this way Stan Lee made more pay than he did as an editor. This is the way Stan Lee became the writer. Besides collecting the editor’s pay, he collected writer’s pay. I’m not saying Stan Lee had a bad business head on. I think he took advantage of whoever was working for him."

"Remember this: Stan Lee was an editor. He worked from nine to five doing business for Martin Goodman. In other words he didn’t do any writing in the office. He did Martin Goodman’s business. That was his function. There were people coming up to the office to talk all the time. They weren’t always artists, they were business people. Stan Lee was the first man they would see and Stan Lee would see if he could get them in to see Martin Goodman. That was Stan Lee’s function."

"I came in (to the Marvel offices) and they were moving out the furniture, they were taking desks out - and I needed the work! I had a family and a house and all of a sudden Marvel is coming apart. Stan Lee is sitting on a chair crying. He didn’t know what to do, he’s sitting in a chair crying - he was just still out of his adolescence. I told him to stop crying. I says. “Go in to Martin and tell him to stop moving the furniture out, and I’ll see that the books make money.” And I came up with a raft of new books and all these books began to make money. Somehow they had faith in me. I knew I could do it, but I had to come up with fresh characters that nobody had seen before. I came up with The Fantastic Four. I came up with Thor. Whatever it took to sell a book I came up with. Stan Lee has never been editorial minded. It wasn’t possible for a man like Stan Lee to come up with new things - or old things for that matter. Stan Lee wasn’t a guy that read or that told stories. Stan Lee was a guy that knew where the papers were or who was coming to visit that day. Stan Lee is essentially an office worker, OK? I’m essentially something else: I’m a storyteller. My job is to sell my stories. When I saw this happening at Marvel I stopped the whole damned bunch. I stopped them from moving the furniture! Stan Lee was sitting on some kind of a stool, and he was crying."

Wally Wood ('Mad' and 'Daredevil') had this to say from his experiences: 'Did I say Stanley had no smarts? Well, he DID come up with two sure fire ideas… the first one was “Why not let the artists WRITE the stories as well as draw them?”… And the second was … ALWAYS SIGN YOUR NAME ON TOP …BIG”. And the rest is history … Stanley, of course became rich and famous … over the bodies of people like Bill (Everett) and Jack (Kirby)'. More about that on the web here.

Jack Kirby's Storyboards for 'Fantastic Four' (1978) II.

As promised, the second part of Jack Kirby's pencil Storyboards for the 1978 animates series 'The Fantastic Four'. Again, these are for the seventh episode 'The Olympics of Space', scripted by Roy Thomas. Remember, Kirby had already worked in the animation industry early in his career in 1935, when he was only eighteen years old. as an assistant animator on the Popeye shorts at Max Fleischer's studio, although that proved a short- term stunt. After that, he started doing various newspaper comic strips for Lincoln Features Syndicate, and later (in 1938) worked for Jerry Iger and Will Eisner's studio, who ran the 'Universal Phoenix' Syndicate.

'A Clean Shaven Man' was one Popeye short Kirby worked on. Released on February 7, 1936, it was remade by 'Famous' studios in color as 'Clean Shaven Muggs', released as the 200th Popeye cartoon short in 1953. For part one on Kirby's storyboards for 'The Fantastic Four' Animated Series see here.

Deitch on Today's Animation

Gene Deitch, animation legend, recently shared his views on today's mainstream feature animation landscape…

I had originally misinterpreted what he had said, thinking that his piece was a criticism of computer animation given his thoughts on Blue Sky's Epic and how he felt that today's computer animated films "imitate live action movies". Being so used to computer animation being called inferior to hand-drawn, I had assumed that Deitch was putting CGI down. Instead, Deitch is saying that he would like to see something in today's animation world that we all would like to see, really. Something different: Diversity.

He raises awareness of Ernest & Celestine, a French production done in hand-drawn animation that will be hitting American cinemas soon thanks to GKIDS; a film with animation that embraces a great minimalistic style that is definitely not realistic, and thankfully so. Its subject matter (I haven't seen it yet, so I can't say) apparently is not like what we see in a typical American animated feature, either. Now if only a big studio could make something like that!

As I've said here before (and I don't want to spite studios like Blue Sky or Sony Animation), I feel that mainstream American feature animation is kind of stuck in a hole right now. I may be excited for what's to come, but I feel that mainstream feature animation isn't being allowed to break out of the family-friendly comedy romp bubble. Disney ruled the roost for years with family-friendly films, and then Pixar took the torch and made great family films. DreamWorks now makes family films, the other studios follow suit. Even some studios making lower budget fare go for the G/PG family-friendly comedy formula. I look at the trailer fort The Nut Job and I think, "With a $45 million budget, that studio should've pulled off something different!"

I think today, there are two kinds of styles for computer animated films: The naturalistic kind, like Pixar's, which make me think of something like Bambi or Lady and the Tramp. Films like these, for me, look real but also look animated… But you still feel what's going on, you can immerse yourself in the fi;m's setting. The other kind is definitely more cartoony, the likes of Madagascar, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Despicable Me and Hotel Transylvania go this route. These films still have a naturalistic sheen to them.

But there should be more styles of computer animation, there are many areas that are currently untapped. We need films that look a little less real and embrace different, unique styles. Where's the Yellow Submarine of computer animation? Where's the Rooty Toot Toot of computer animation?

I think we've found the Disney and Warner Bros. of computer animation, now we need find the UPA of computer animation. A studio who will introduce a bold new style that'll contrast heavily with the works coming from Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony, Illumination and Blue Sky.

In the meantime, hand-drawn animation obviously needs to be brought back to the forefront since it has already tackled multiple unique styles and there are many more to explore. Once head honchos stop believing that all audiences want are computer animated films (sorry to beat the dead horse Disney, but The Princess and the Frog could've done better if the marketing was stronger and it wasn't put up against the likes of Avatar and such), we'll start seeing changes. The optimist in me would like to see Ernest & Celestine get some sort of a boost from an Oscar campaign, do well enough at the domestic box office and start a new trend. It would be cool to see big studios acquire smaller-scale fare, more experimental work and films from all over the world and give them wide enough releases.

Deitch had produced cartoons for the UPA during the Golden Age while also doing his own thing with films like Munro. We need to see more of that in feature animation today; studios doing what they want to do and not emulating Disney or Pixar or DreamWorks, or what has been done before by others. I'm personally okay with someone like Pixar sticking to their style; Monsters University was almost photo real while its accompanying short, The Blue Umbrella, at times felt like an animated live-action film. (Some shots in it really did look too real!) But the fan in me would love to see someone like Illumination, since they spend less on animated features than their competitors, go all out with a CGI film that's unlike anything we've seen before.

Reel FX might be doing so with Jorge Guiterrez's The Book of Life, which I've been championing for a while. Producer Aron Warner says its look is unlike most computer animated films, so that's definitely something to look forward to. Like I've asked before, will it be a game changer? Perhaps. Computer animation and mainstream theatrical animation needs one now, since 2013 gave us a slew of animated features that underperformed… And we also need a film that successfully tackles adult subject matter to be a hit in the states, and create a bigger market for adult-oriented animation. I don't really know if Seth Rogen's Sausage Party will do just that, I have a feeling it'll either create a market for these kind of films or it will set adult animation back 10 years. Adult animation is more than raunchy humor.

Again, it is time to diversify. Time to explore. Things may turn around soon, and now animation pros like Gene Deitch are beginning to speak up for the art of trying new things. Let's hope we see some changes being made some time this year, if not next year…

Jack Kirby's Storyboards for 'Fantastic Four' (1978).

Before Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created Mickey Mouse, they produced their Alice Comedies and cartoons starring 'Oswald the Lucky Rabbit'. Three of Disney's animators at the time, had the idea of starting a business of their own and created a new character, 'Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid'. Rudy Ising, Hugh Harman and Friz Freleng successfully managed to sell their cartoon to Warner Brothers and started a new series of animated shorts, apply named the 'Looney Tunes'. But while Harman and Ising left in 1933, Freleng went on to direct many famous cartoons,introducing us to popular characters like Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety and Sylvester and many others.

In 1963 Warner closed their cartoon studio and Freleng, together with Warner's former animation producer Dave dePatie, started their own company DePatie-Freleng, which became successful after they came up with the 'Pink Panther' and created the animated opening titles for Blake Edwards' comedy by the same name, which starred Peter Sellers as inspector Clouseau.

Above: Jack Kirby, the 'King of Comics', as always, working at his drawing table. Below: David De Patie (left) and Isadore 'Friz' Freleng (right) in front of their new company DFE Films.

In 1978, DePatie-Freleng created a new cartoon series of the 'The Fantastic Four' for Marvel, based on their popular comic book characters (actually, one of the Fantastic Four team members, the 'Human Torch', was replaced by a newly created character, 'Herbie' the robot, as Universal Studios was already working on a TV movie starring the Human Torch at that time).  For the new cartoon series, which ultimately only lasted twelve episodes, the stories were written by Robert Stitzel, Bob Johnson and Roy Thomas. While these animations are only so-so, the pre production work is truly amazing, as all storyboards were done by none other than Mr. Jack Kirby himself! Freleng by the way, sold DFE Films right after in 1981 to Marvel. While Depatie remained working there until his retirement, the studio was renamed to 'Marvel Productions'. Marvel used it mainly to produce animated TV shows of their popular characters 'The Incredible Hulk' and 'Spider-Man' in the 1980's.

While not complete, I'll post the first series of Kirby's pencil storyboards today, created for the seventh episode in the cartoon series titled 'The Olympics of Space' (click to enlarge). Check my next posts for more!