This strip series is constantly reprinted it seems. Here is my review from the old CBO in 2011 -some of the material appears in Titans Simon & Kirby Collection: Super Heroes
Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
Titan Books
Dimensions: 258 x 170mm
Paperback: 200 pp
ISBN: 9780857681157
£14.99/$19.95
Publication date: 27 May 2011
The complete adventures of the quirky Cold War superhero,
launched in 1954 by the creators ofCaptain America , are presented here in an
affordable graphic novel format, with weird and wonderful characters like Yucha
Liffso, Jiseppi the Jungle Boy, and Poison Ivan! This volume boasts a new
introduction by co-creator Joe Simon as well as previously unpublished stories
and covers!
A good few years back I purchased a hard cover edition of
The Fighting American. Slightly damaged
but a real gem. When I opened this
package from Titan Books I thought “Oh, at least I have an undamaged book
now!” However, I then thought that it
seemed a lot thicker.
I’m very clever. I
checked the Titan press release and found that this book had far more pages
than the hard cover edition. Some two
hundred pages of pure Simon and Kirby.
But better still: this collection contains every Fighting
American strip that Simon and Kirby produced…with one exception. As Joe Simon points out:
“The volume you hold in your hands contains every Fighting
American story we ever produced, with the exception of one page from “The Mad
Inker” that to this day is missing…”
This is a bloody gold-mine for any comic collector with
taste!
Deadly serious adventures but with tongues firmly in their
cheeks –as with “Super-Khakalovitch..Boy Has-Been!” and the lovely “Sneak of
Araby”. Then you have the almost sci-fi
“Home Coming 3000”, a strip I love! But
then you have the villains that range from the normal to the strange and the
completely off-the-wall!
If anyone doubts Simon & Kirby as a team they need to
buy this. If they ever doubted the work
of Kirby then buy this. No wonder he
could never be bothered with the mundane every day things in life; Kirby’s mind
was so far out there that I sit sometimes and wonder just what he might have
come up with were he still around!
As a birthday or Christmas present for a comic fan you know
this is spot on. Unless you read it
first and decide to keep it!
Brilliant stories, brilliant art and wonderful colour. A book to treasure and read whenever you need
inspiration or a smile.
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