All scans courtesy of the Jack Kirby Museum’s Original Art Digital Archive (www.kirbymuseum.org), with help from Tom Kraft of What If Kirby (www.whatifkirby.com). All images are pencil and ink on board and all characters and likenesses are TM and © DC Entertainment.

A pillar of Kirby’s “Fourth World” construction: Mister Miracle 16, 1973.

Nostalgia Journal

was

One of Kirby’s talents was injecting familiar genres into unlikely scenarios: Here’s a lone horseman, à la John Huston, in a cosmic world. Forever People 7, 1972.

Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen; The Forever People; Mister Miracle;

New Gods

Kamandi

Our Fighting Forces

Kamandi

Planet of the Apes

Apes

The bikers destroy the peace in this highly cinematic, noisy visual from Kamandi 6, 1973.

Nostalgia Journal

Kamandi

The beginning and middle of Kamandi 6, 1973, as Kamandi and Kirby move from carefree to solemn.

Our Fighting Forces

Jack Kirby Collector 27

The three climactic pages from Our Fighting Forces 156, 1975.

Our Fighting Forces

The Masters of Comic Book Art

A half-inked page from the still-unpublished True Life Divorce 1, 1970. This page is a notable example of just how much detail Kirby would put into his penciled pages before handing them over to the inker.