The era of comics before the Comic Authority Code came into existence brought about some of the most wonderful stories in the history of the medium. EC Comics, a publishing company putting out horror books, cornered the market in amazing stories and ridiculous artwork, and was really the first company to ever treat comic books as an adult medium with literary leanings. During those days, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby put together savage, brutal, and ingenious horror stories.
Continuing their incredible work with Simon & Kirby collections, Titan Books has released Simon & Kirby Horror!, a meticulously put together hardcover collection of some of Simon & Kirby’s best work. As always, Titan Books has improved the colors and inks of the work. They don’t change anything; just allow the vibrancy of the visuals to shine through as they originally did. The collection also gives a deeper historical prospective of one of the greatest teams in comics.
Most of the three hundred plus pages here come from Black Magic, the horror magazine that featured the ’50s run of Simon & Kirby’s work. Interestingly, this began a new era in what the two icons were doing. While other horror comics were getting by with blood, gore, and shock, Simon & Kirby were venturing into mood, tension, and chills. Their stories were looking to unnerve and disturb the audience, not just gross them out or shock them. It was yet another example of how these two men looked at the world of comics from way, way, way outside the box.
Joe Simon’s storytelling is unparalleled. There is no wasted space in anything he writes. The story is never too long, it never strides off into unnecessary tangents, and it is always focused exactly on the story it wants to tell. Simon understands that character development can often succeed with just enough information to get a reader invested in the story. The definitions can be cut and dry at first. Bad guy. Good guy. Sweet girl. Evil temptress. Simon takes those identities and subverts them, creating characters we either love or hate in the confined space of a comic story. It’s a natural gift that even the best comic scribes today can’t always master.
Jack Kirby. Seriously? What is even left to say? The man absolutely changed the entire face and scope of comic book art. Nothing that is standing today would be here without Kirby. His imagination is on fire here. His shading, the inking involved in his artwork, it’s master-craft-level material. Nothing touches Kirby; nobody even comes close to his level of greatness. This Horror! collection shows that genius in yet another genre. There is nothing better than Jack Kirby, and there never will be.
Simon & Kirby’s Horror! is an absolute must have to all comic book enthusiasts. It just does not get any better than this on any level.
(only because that’s as high as our rating system goes)
