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Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby. CharlesHatfield. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2012. 304 pp. $65.00 cloth.

2012; Wiley; Volume: 45; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jpcu.12010_1

1540-5931

Matthew J. Costello,

Themes in Literature Analysis

Jack Kirby is one of the seminal figures in the development of comic books in the United States, and probably the single most influential artist in superhero comics. It is thus appropriate that the first volume in the University of Mississippi Press's Great Comics Artists series is devoted to Jack Kirby. Charles Hatfield brings to his subject both the critical acumen of the scholar and the sheer joy of the fan to produce a solid volume that can serve to introduce Kirby to academics. Hatfield knows Kirby well, both as artist and as subject of commentary from the fan press. Kirby's biography, the history of Marvel comics and the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby controversy have spawned extensive and passionate debate. Hatfield negotiates these debates with knowledge and skill, maintaining a balance that serves him particularly well in discussing Lee and Kirby, and the tensions between Kirby's role as auteur-artist and as employee in a mass production industry. Hatfield's emphasis is on Kirby as a “narrative artist,” one whose art is dedicated to producing and propelling a narrative. As Hatfield notes, all cartooning is narrative art (65), but argues that Kirby specifically fuses “mimetic, symbolic, and graphic qualities” (38) in his visual story-telling. He develops his argument through a close reading of Kirby's later work, particularly his late 1960s work for Marvel on Thor and The Fantastic Four, and in his “Fourth World” titles for DC comics. Hatfield is at his best when reading Kirby's artistry. The first chapter, describing Kirby's “narrative art,” offers a solid primer on how to read comic art in general and detailed readings of Kirby's page work. While the semiotic framing of the chapter is under-developed, Hatfield manages to offer several insights into the peculiarities of Kirby's page layouts, perspective, line work and use of abstractions to decode that which is peculiarly Kirby. He labels the aesthetics of this period the “technological sublime,” which refers to “the use of high-tech motifs to represent vast forces that not only are ineffable and awful (in the original sense of the word) but also may result in shock, estrangement, or madness,” (146). Hatfield brings these elements together in chapter 6, where he offers a close reading of “The Pact” and “Himon,” two issues from the “Fourth World” books produced in the early 1970s. The weaknesses of the book are few. While the book is attractive, including several color plates and a detailed index, it could have used some finer editing to remove some repetitive quirks in the prose that are distracting from what is a generally compelling treatment of Kirby's later work. The focus on the work of Kirby from 1965 onward also precludes a thorough analysis of the development of Kirby's aesthetic—only two out of twenty-one figures and eight panels treat material earlier than 1965. Given that Kirby's career began in the 1930s, this is a deficiency. Few would challenge that his greatest work comes in the mid-1960s to early 1970s, and there is great difficulty in locating Kirby's individual input in much of the earlier work which was done under the constraints of a mass production studio or freelance system, which Hatfield explains well. Still, the neglect of his earlier work seems significant given his profound influence on various genres, from kid gang books to romance and monster comics, as well as his contributions to developing the very idiom of superhero comics. These weaknesses aside, Hatfield reads the later Kirby astutely, with both insight and passion. Hand of Fire is a solid contribution to the field of comics studies that will be widely read and cited as an important study of one of comics most seminal influences. The book should be of interest not only to seasoned comics scholars but as an introduction both to Kirby and to the analysis of comics arts.