The story is, I'm assuming, pretty faithful to the novel. Lots of intrigue, back-stabbing and romance among the residents of the doomed city, with the noble Athenian Glacius as the hero and evil Egyptian Arbaces as the villain (and a great looking Kirby villain he is, with a long face, a longer goatee and a skake-headband, I could see him fitting in as a minion of Darkseid).
While far from Kirby's best, the art in here does look very good most of the time, when the Kirby elements are allowed to shine through. You can see a lot of that in the faces of some of the characters, the great clothing designs and some of the backgrounds, and when he got to cut loose with an action sequence, like the fleeing from the volcano at the end, it really shines.
Kirby's said one of the reasons he didn't like working at Gilberton was their insistance that certain details be what they considered accurate, and requiring a lot of editorial control and re-drawing. This panel, in the published version and from the original art where a paste-up fell off show this nicely:
I'd have to say, the original version of the face is just gorgeous work, and any editor who would replace it with the published version is just insane. Maybe they should have spent some of the time they wasted on that on improving their colouring or printing.
Despite all that, it's a book well worth picking up, and usually available fairly inexpensively given that it's a 45 page Kirby story from 1961 that's unlikely to ever see a decent reprinting (I believe that the current rights holders of the CI books are doing extensively re-drawn reprints, and concentrating on the CI JUNIOR and religious line).
Published 1961
4 comments:
If the woman is Julia I'd guess Kirby originally drew that way throughout the comic, and the editor had her changed to look meaner. I much prefer the original drawing, though.
Wow - great example! Kirby's verison, with the forward lean of her head, is so much more interesting, his version of her hair much more detailed and well done - and the second version of the face doesn't even have an ear...
Yeah, that's Julia. You're probably right about why the editors wanted her look changed, but I'd have to say they were absolutely wrong. It didn't help that the re-drawing just isn't very good. Fortunately, the character only appears in about a dozen panels, most of them small. I'd love to see the Kirby/Ayers original to the page before the one with this panel, which has several drawings of Julia, one more than twice the size of this one. I bet Kirby really went to town on the details of her hair and face there, only to have it pasted over.
Wow, great panel. The original version is definitely better.
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