King Kirby, that is.  He’s considered by many to be the “big poppa” of comics, and rightly so.  He created or helped create some of the biggest comic book characters ever known such as Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor and many others.

I doubt that there is any group of people that knows just how pivotal and important his work is to the industry than the good folks at TwoMorrows Publishing.  Just visit their web site at www.twomorrows.com and take a look at the extensive collection of books they have and the “Jack Kirby Collector” magazine. The later issues of this magazine contain up to 83 pages of Jack Kirby goodness – celebrating his life and his work through art and interviews both with Kirby himself as well as with others.

I’m going to tell you about one book in particular that I feel is a very important book to any fan of comics and especially to every Jack Kirby fan.  It’s the Jack Kirby Captain Victory Graphite Edition published by TwoMorrows.  This book is done entirely with photocopies of Kirby’s original penciled pages.  I can’t imagine any book for a budding comic book artist (or a professional comic book artist for that matter) that would be any cooler than this book.   It allows the reader to get a real honest feel for Kirby as an artist by showing you his work in it’s original penciled form – not touched or detailed in any way by another artist or inker.  This is a seriously cool insight into one of the greatest comic book artists ever.  It’s a look at Kirby’s raw talent.  I mean, if you’re a comic book fan, you might own some original comic pages of your own of some of your favorite artists.  Another artist, however, has inked most of the pages for sale at conventions.

This book also includes the screenplay that Jack Kirby and Steve Sherman prepared for Captain Victory and the Lightning Lady in 1977.  Apparently, Kirby felt that George Lucas had appropriated some of his ideas from his 1970s Fourth World comic book series for Star Wars, so he decided to create something using Star Wars as his inspiration.

Captain Victory certainly has all of the grand schemes and ideas of far-flung space adventure that you expect in things like Star Wars and Star Trek.  The Insectons certainly seem a lot like the Borg from Star Trek:  The Next Generation to me in their methods and behavior at least.  Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers are a varied group of individuals seemingly from different planets across the cosmos – brought together under a common cause – to eliminate the scourge of the Insectons.

All of that alone should be reason enough for you to pick up a copy of this book!  If it’s not though, let me tell you more.  The proceeds from the sale of this book go toward a project that TwoMorrows Publishing is undertaking to preserve these pages of Jack Kirby’s original pencils for future generations.  There are some 5,000 + pages of photocopies that Jack Kirby made of his original pencil work and TwoMorrows would like to get it all scanned and digitally archived for preservation.   That’s a huge undertaking and I tip my hat to the folks at TwoMorrows for even taking it on at all.  You can help, though.  For just $8 postage paid, you can get yourself a copy of this 52-page landmark comic.  So there you have it.  It’s a truly unique look at some raw Kirby talent and you can take pride in knowing that you’re helping to preserve Kirby’s work for the enjoyment of the generations of comic book fans that will come after us.

For more information or to place an order for the Captain Victory Graphite Edition book, head on over to www.twomorrows.com/books/captainvictory.html .  I really can’t say enough how cool I think this book is.  It’s truly one of a kind.