The Mark of Kane

 As the summer begins, in all its grey, damp Caledonian glory, I am reminded of the lurid Sword and Sorcery books and comics of my adolescence. For several weeks, I've been meaning to blog about them but to do that, we first have to look at the wider work of the man whose pencils introduced me to those barbaric worlds: Gil Kane.

Thanks to his prolific output in the Bronze Age as cover artist, next to Kirby, Kane is the Sine Qua Non of comic book artists. The dynamism of his characters is amazing but as we'll see, certain themes and ideas are repeated in his work. One of my favourite blogs, Bronze Age Babies, put Kane in the spotlight last week but didn't touch upon his preoccupations in comics.

My earliest memories of Kane's artwork were in DC Comics

 As a Bronze Age Boy, I find the elegant stories of Julie Schwartz's era rather staid and polite- all scientific factoids and movie-star heroes in their Responsible Citizen jobs (like handsome dullards Hal Jordan and Ray Palmer). The Shark issue was part of my cousin Jim's collection, passed down to me in the very early 70s.
 Kane's contemporaneous work at Marvel immediately strikes me as more grotesque and dramatic- compare the goblin-like features of the Shark to the death's head of the Red Skull.

 Just imagine...if Kane had replaced Don Heck as the artist on Avengers in the mid-Sixties! However, one of the themes I wanted to discuss appears in this Hulk story:

I don't think Kane's a great match for the Hulk, as BAB pointed out- too ugly and brutish- but in this story, Lee and Kirby's mutant-collecting alien, the Stranger (the deus ex machina who previously ended the original Magneto/X-Men cycle) turns Old Testament God and unleashes Ol' Greenskin on the human race. Highly advanced superbeings plotting to rid the Earth of human "infestation" would be the first of the recurring plots I mentioned above.

As a kid, I was captivated by Kane's lithe figures in flight and the operatic suffering of his heroes, even in blatant, money-spinning licensed properties like this one:

Written by teen prodigy Jim Shooter, Captain Action and his son Action Boy, wield the godlike powers once displayed by Fawcett's Captain Marvel. Clive Arno's father-in-law, the highly evolved Dr. Evil (!) launches a campaign of destruction against the Earth- even utilising the image of his dead daughter to unnerve father and son (Now, that's cold!)
The next flying captain also recalls the Big Red Cheese, although I didn't realise it at the time. This was a psychological shocker that touched on Behaviourism and Holcaust survivors. Mar-Vell is not the most powerful of Marvel heroes-and certainly not a "cosmic" hero at this point- but under Kane's pencil, he is sleek and electrifying.

I've said before that the Kane/Thomas Captain always seemed poised to break out as a Marvel star but never quite succeeded until Jim Starlin fused Kirby, Kane and Ditko in his pencils.

Another preoccupation for Kane was the positive potential of Youth, as reflected in the Counter-culture with which Marvel flirted. DC, always rather traditional and tasteful, seemed less comfortable with the groovy chicks and hip cats but Kane supplied striking, if melodramatic images for the company:

 I also associate great, glutinous teardrops with Gil

 Kane explored the Counter Culture with Mike Friedrich through Batgirl and Robin, rescuing the former from silly capers with makeup and tights (and even spoofing Andy Warhol) and steering the latter through angry young manhood.
One of my most memorable encounters with Kane was on another counter-culture saga, The Power of Warlock. Before Starlin turned Him into Elric of Melnibone, the character's prime inspiration was Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell!

He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy

This comic was bought at Queen Street Station in Glasgow, as was my first issue of Conan- but more of that another time. Meanwhile, this issue introduced me to some of Marvel's forgotten Golden Agers (note the prominence of the android Vision, Bendis!):

Bill Everett inks his own creation, Namor the Sub-Mariner

Kane was supplying more covers for Marvel while Kirby's Fourth World magnum opus sputtered to its ignominious end at DC. Here are two favourite reprints, one from Prestwick Airport, the other from Glasgow's High Street:

 It's Marvel's Movie Sensation, Sean Cassidy!

Of course, the ultimate expression of Kane's work at Marvel is probably his Spider-Man run. I want to look at that another time- partly because I'm waiting for a Treasury edition of the Morbius story to arrive from the US and partly because the Death of Gwen Stacy is so depressing.

As the Comics Code relaxed and allowed Marvel to explore new properties ( while DC went into overdrive reprinting material from the 40s and 60s), Kane became cover artist for some of the new breed of "grindcore" heroes from monsters to Kung Fu practitioners to Blaxplotation stars:

How often do you see Tom Sutton's werewolf-like Beast anyway?

As a ten-year-old subscriber to Foom Magazine , I also knew about Kane's barbarian graphic novel, Blackmark and at some point in the last decade, I finally got a copy of it. Gil would return to the sci-fantasy milieu in the Eighties.

 His covers could even lure you to Marvel's stolid and improving Classic Comics range:

Kane's work on full strips for Marvel in the mid-to-late 70s was rare. He had a run on Daredevil with a downbeat urban crime story (no one's heroes suffer quite as exquisitely as Kane's) and he pencilled some of Marv Wolfman's John Carter of Mars issues - but I preferred Murphy Anderson's version at DC.

 Kane was among the tide of Marvel stalwarts who moved to DC in the early 80s where he lent dynamism to the squarest of thier properties:

Many of Kane's villains pit exotic technology against the hero's brute strength. In this Brainiac arc, the computerised criminal also undergoes a transformation and evolution into a terifying skeletal form. Imagine a Superman movie based on that!

Kane's pencilling especially suits the Red Tornado's original, less garish garb.

 As for DC's younger generation, while his Kara is a bit too soft and rounded, his Nightwing is imposing.

The last regular pencil job Kane did for Marvel was, I think, on Micronauts. Several motifs reappear here: the tiny heroes recall Ray Palmer's Atom; the sinewy monster Devil and the cyborg-Zombie Prometheus.After the work of Michael Golden and Pat Broderick, Kane's bold and kinetic pencils were something of a disappointment on this title, with its cast of miniature robots and alien creatures.

Through the auspices of ebay,  I've recently read some giant Kane issues that I overlooked in the 80s:

 I passed the first one by, in Virgin's Megastore in Union Street - it seemed crude and unsophisticated compared to the X-Men the Legion and the New Titans...

In this Superman Special, Kane writes and pencils a tale where the Man of Steel has to deal with a politician turned would-be dictator and a well-meaning scientist who evolves into an advanced being who can cause natural disasters. The Ultimate Man recalls Captain Action's Dr. Evil in his M.O. and this is the Pre-Crisis Superman who flies through space warps and caps volcanoes. On several levels, I enjoy a hero like that-just maybe not this one. 

 The DC Comics Presents Annual is a primary-coloured romp but it treats the Marvel Family very well: they are neither childish nor gritty- just very pure superheroes, in every sense.

 Like Blackmark, Talos is represents the beginning of a longer saga and introduces the hero as a boy in a post-apocalyptic world. Images on the text page depict the older Talos, who recalls He-Man with his giant feline mount or the jungle lord, Ka-Zar. The overall feel of the issue is sameiness. Talos appeared about ten years too late- if he had been around in 76-77, he might have been the figurehead of DC's S&S line. All three issues would benefit from an inker who could add detail to Kane's thick lines. It looks like they were drawn in felt tip.

I haven't even touched upon his Western work, or the Star Hawks newspaper strip or even the Graphic novel His Name Is Savage perhaps because it's the super-hero book that snared me first. But next time, it's the long-promised sojourn into the Seventies world of loincloths and lost cities, interplanetary swordsmen and evils from the Elder Dark...

Next: Sword of Sorcery or Kane and the Barbarians