TwoMorrows Publishing is releasing the 58th issue of The Jack Kirby Collector magazine as a special 160-page squarebound edition entitled Lee & Kirby: THE WONDER YEARS. It celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Fantastic Four #1, the two pop-culture visionaries who created the FF, and a decade in comics that was more tumultuous and awe-inspiring than any before or since. Calling on his years of research, plus new interviews conducted just for this book (with Stan Lee, Flo Steinberg, Mark Evanier, Joe Sinnott, and others), the late Mark Alexander traces both Lee and Kirby's history at Marvel Comics, and the remarkable series of events and career choices that led them to converge in 1961 to conceive the Fantastic Four. It also documents the evolution of the FF throughout the 1960s, with previously unknown details about Lee and Kirby's working relationship, and their eventual parting of ways in 1970. With a wealth of of historical information and amazing Kirby artwork, Lee & Kirby: THE WONDER YEARS beautifully examines the first decade of the FF, and the events that put into motion the 1960s era that came to be known as the Marvel Age of Comics
Tuesday, August 8, 1961 was a fairly discouraging day for America. In the headlines, Cosmonaut Gherman Titov completed a 25-hour trip around the Earth which U.S. newspapers called “Russia’s ticket to the moon.” Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev went on television and announced that Russian troops were gathering to terminate Allied-occupation rights in West Berlin. Later that week, construction of the Berlin Wall began. The only good news that day was on the pop culture scene: On 8/8/61, a new magazine called Fantastic Four hit the newsstands. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, its impact on the comic book world was prodigious. Classic comic book stories, at their best, can make you nostalgic for an era that ended before you were born. Lee & Kirby: THE WONDER YEARS captures the feel, the pulse, and the beauty of comics’ greatest era—the 1960s “Silver Age.” For those with fond memories of the Marvel Age of Comics, this “comic book novel” provides many moments of deep nostalgia. For second and third-generation fans, it paints a seductive picture of what it was like to pull a copy of Fantastic Four #1 off the spinner-rack in the late Summer of 1961, when the world was a sunnier place.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mark Alexander (1955-2011) was a regular contributor to The Jack Kirby Collector magazine, and completed this labor of love just weeks before his recent untimely passing. Loaded with previously unpublished behind-the-scenes details from 1960s Marvel Comics insiders, this thoroughly researched critical analysis of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four explores the accomplishments of the most influential superhero series of all time, and recaptures the experience of growing up with the FF in the turbulent 1960s. Augmented with a plethora of rare Jack Kirby art and other artifacts, it’s a must-read for any fan of comic books, and pop culture in general.
After the jump, get a first look at the upcoming volume!
