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Old 04-14-2010, 11:35 AM   #20 (permalink)
Jetée
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Jack Kirby’s Heroes in Waiting


{Jack Kirby working in 1971. Photo: Bill Bridges (c) The New York Times Company}

The characteristics of a Jack Kirby illustration are easily distinguished: extravagantly costumed heroes and nefarious villains locked in titanic struggles; foreshortened fists, feet and muscles that seem to pop off the page; intricately detailed settings meant to conjure the ancient past or suggest the distant future.

His style made Mr. Kirby a sought-after talent at DC Comics, now a piece of the Time Warner empire, and at Marvel Comics, a recent acquisition of the Walt Disney Company. At Marvel in particular he played a crucial role in creating superheroes like the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and the X-Men — work that is now at the center of a property dispute between the heirs of Mr. Kirby, who died in 1994, and Marvel and Disney.

Those same signature design elements are also vividly on display in hundreds of illustrations for never-produced cartoon shows and toy lines that Mr. Kirby created in the 1980s for the animation studio Ruby-Spears Productions — work that thus far does not belong to any of the media conglomerates and that has been seen by few people.

Now, a partnership between that studio’s founders, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, and Sid and Marty Krofft, the longtime children’s entertainment producers (“H. R. Pufnstuf,” “Land of the Lost”), is planning to revive these unseen Kirby characters in as many forms as possible. It’s a proposition that faces challenges as the studios scour the landscape for the next comic book or cartoon character they can transform into a franchise, but also one that has piqued the interest of some powerful Hollywood players.

“I love comic books, but this is a treasure,” said Ariel Z. Emanuel, the co-chief executive of the William Morris Endeavor Entertainment agency, who is representing these Kirby works for Ruby-Spears and the Kroffts. “It’s like a boat sank at the bottom of the ocean, and all of a sudden you’ve uncovered it.”


VIEW A SLIDESHOW of the soon-to-be-seen Characters, developed by Jack Kirby.


[NYTimes.]
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