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Although towards the end of his life, Jack Kirby did some work in animation, he never really got to sink his pencil into doing concept art for film or stage. Current best picture nominee Argo is based on a real story, and there was actually a movie planned to be made based on for Lord of Light, an adaptation of Roger Zelazny’s novel. And Jack Kirby did some concept art for the project. Int he film Argo this is portrayed as new art commissioned for the phony movie, but Kirby’s art was extant before the plot to save the hostages. Although bits of it have been floating around for a while, Buzzfeed has the big files.
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They are pretty mind blowing.

8 COMMENTS

  1. A shame they didn’t take the opportunity to expand the Kirby character (portrayed for all of about 20 seconds by the great Michael Parks) in the movie – especially since they kept bringing out the story-boards (on film, featuring somebody else’s generic art).

    For me Argo was disappointing & overrated, tedious and annoying. After an interesting history lesson at the start, the stock and trade become cliched characters, contrived political turmoil (quickly reducing the Iranians to stock bad guys, after first suggesting it might treat them with some nuance), and finally degenerating into pedestrian action TV stuff. While it was nice the see “Jack Kirby” in the credits, doing something interesting with the Kirby was one of many lost opportunities.

  2. An interesting tidbit about Kirby is he DID do some work for Max Fleischer’s studio in the late 1930s, working on Popeye as an “in-betweener” – someone who “fill[ed] in the intermediate drawings to complete an action.” (This info by way of A “KING” KIRBY PORTFOLIO [1971], my first major purchase – $4! – as a fanboy geek.) I’ve always thought that early work in animation is where Kirby honed the furious representation of momentum in his style.

  3. IF the creators of Argo had 1/1000 of Jack Kirby’s visionary storytelling prowess… I really can’t understand how such a creatively uninspired and formulaic movie can seriously be considered to be in the same class as , say, Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca, Network….. But, apparently, no one involved had actually been personally inspired by the 20th Century’s best answer to Homer and Michelangelo. How sad. Jack Kirby deserves a better movie than this one, anyway, and maybe it’s best in the long run, because Argo doesn’t really live up to these Astonishing Drawings. Later, wiser generations will tell a better and more meaningful story springing from the Source’s fountainhead, namely Mr. Jack Kirby, an Inspiration to All , as is wisely and simply inscribed on his gravestone, presumably at the behest of Mrs. Rosalind Kirby , sine qua non. Not quite good enough, Hollywood. Try again when you’re grown up….

  4. @Drake Sinclair:
    The guy who wrote Argo (and won the AA last night), directed a movie (Heights ) some years ago, with James Marsden & Glenn Close – I happened to catch this one on PBS last week…There was no Jack Kirby, Hostages, CIA, Hollywood or menacing Arab stereotypes… Instead, a story about upscale urban types struggling w/ sexual identity & career issues (not necessarily my 1st choice genre) .. never the less, I found this uncontrived, un-pandering, un-sickeningly-sentimental little flick about 1,000 times more satisfying than Argo & in its own way, Heights seemed to have far more in common w/ Kirby’s graceful work.

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