Talks | HAND OF FIRE

18 September 2015

Comic Book Apocalypse, Events, News, Other Thinkers on Kirby, Talks

Talking Kirby at Rose City!

I’m delighted to announce that tomorrow, Sept. 19, I’ll be talking Kirby at the Rose City Comic Con! That means I’ll be joining the thousands thronging at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland this weekend.

Thanks to my friend and colleague (and Comic Book Apocalypse catalog co-editor) Ben Saunders, of the University of Oregon, I’ll be taking part in a jam-packed panel on Kirby, as follows:

Jack Kirby’s Greatest Comics: An All-Star Tribute to The King

Room: Panel Room 7
Time: 3:00PM – 3:50PM

Captain America. The Fantastic Four. The Incredible Hulk. The Mighty Thor. The Avengers. The Silver Surfer. The Inhumans. Mr. Miracle. The New Gods. The Eternals. All these iconic creations and titles — and many more besides — were first brought to life on the comic book page by Jack Kirby. But although he is without doubt one of the greatest American comic book artists in the history of the medium, the full range of Kirby’s achievement is less than fully understood by many fans today. In a forty-year career, he drew every genre of comics — Romance, Western, War, Horror, and Crime titles as well as superheroes — and his powerful, kinetic style would pass through three distinct phases, from the 1940s through the Silver Age and into the 1970s. Join a panel of creators and academic experts for a gallop through some career highlights from this master of the form, and find out why Kirby is still the King!

Among the stars gathered for this panel (besides moderator Ben) are Mike Allred, Kurt Busiek, Glen David Gold, Joe Keatinge, Gary Phillips, and Diana Schutz—good company! (Ben, Glen, Diana, and I all contributed essays to the soon-to-be-released CBA catalog.)

Rose Citygoers, I hope you can make it! Talking Kirby with a room full of smart and creative people is my favorite kind of gig.

18 August 2015

Leave a comment

Comic Book Apocalypse, Kirby in Academia, Talks

Countdown to Comic Book Apocalypse!

Orion tells it like it is, from NEW GODS #10 (Aug. 1972)

Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby opens at the CSU Northridge Main Gallery in just six days, on Monday, August 24, 2015—exactly in time for the launch of the new CSUN semester, and just days before Jack Kirby’s 98th birthday.

The CSUN Art Galleries team and I have been working like mad to ready this show: the first CSUN exhibition devoted to original comic art, the first university exhibit anywhere dedicated to Kirby, and, we believe, the US’s largest Kirby show ever. We’re also working to get the word out—across campus, in the press, and at local shops. At the same time, I’m figuring out how to make this exhibition the centerpiece of my teaching this semester.

This is a busy time. 🙂

Far from a final layout—this was two weeks ago!

Comic Book Apocalypse includes over 100 original artworks by Kirby, as well as scores of his published comics. It focuses on Kirby from the mid-1960s on, but gives an overview of his career (including the Simon & Kirby era) and features work from as early as 1943. Highlights include the originals for two complete Kirby comic books, plus unpublished pencils, Kirby’s 1975 painting Dream Machine, more than a dozen of his trademark double-page spreads, five collages, and walls devoted to The Fantastic Four and The Fourth World. Tablet displays provided by the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center will enable viewers to see even more art than the Gallery’s walls can hold.

Thanks to Gallery Director Jim Sweeters and his team, plus the help of a great many others, this exhibition is a dream come true. I hope you can join us for our opening reception on Saturday, August 29, from 4 to 7pm; it’s free, informal, and open to the public. Also, on Monday morning, August 31, at 10am we’ll be presenting a gallery talk with Kirby biographer Mark Evanier, and on Saturday, Sept. 26, at 1pm we’ll be doing a panel discussion with Scott Bukatman, Doug Harvey, Steve Roden, and Ben Saunders. Please come!

Unfinished Boom Tube graphic on Main Gallery wall

Things are starting to happen. Again, far from final…but a hint.

PRESS ALERT: check out this article on the exhibit at CSUN Today, as well as this this teaser from the LA Weekly! And thanks to Meltdown Comics for featuring us on their homepage!

A final note: please help celebrate Jack’s 98th birthday by contributing to Kirby4Heroes!

12 June 2014

Leave a comment

Events, Talks, The Comics World

DENVER CON THIS WEEKEND!

NEWS! This weekend, from Friday through Sunday, June 13-15, I (Charles Hatfield) will be attending Denver Comic Con, now in its third year and already one of the largest comic cons in North America.

In particular, I’ll be a special guest at ROMOCOCO, the Rocky Mountain Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, where I’ll be giving a plenary talk on Friday from 4:30 to 6:00 pm and taking part in a professional development workshop designed for graduate students on Saturday from 12:50 to 2:20pm. I’ll be in the company of such comics scholars as Chris Angel, RC Harvey, Jason Tondro, Jim Vacca, Rob Weiner, and Dan Yezbick, and my fellow keynote speakers Barbara Postema, Bart Beaty, and ROMOCOCO organizer William Kuskin.

I attended ROMOCOCO and DCC during their inaugural year, 2012, and I’ve been eager to get back there since! Glad to be making it this year.

Thanks to DCC, its sponsoring organization Comic Book Classroom, convention director Chris Angel and her team, and especially William Kuskin for making this visit possible!

22 September 2013

2 Comments

Events, Kirby in Academia, Talks

Mix 2013, plus a blast of Kirby from Mix 2012

About a year ago, in October 2012, the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) launched Mix, its annual series of symposia about comics. I hope it lasts forever. Under the leadership of CCAD’s Robert Loss, Mix is rapidly shaping up to be a key event in the comics studies calendar—and that first Mix, 2012, was a delight. I had the privilege of attending Mix then, and fondly recall working and hanging out with Robert, Douglas Wolk, my good friend, fellow scholar, and co-author Craig Fischer, local comics creators such as Ken Eppstein and Michael Neno, and a host of other fine folk.

Ach, would that I could attend Mix THIS time, but sadly I cannot. I still want to tell you about it! This coming weekend, Friday and Saturday, Sept. 27-28, CCAD will put on the second annual Mix, i.e. Mix 2013, featuring keynote guest Jeff Smith, plus Carol Tyler, Tom Spurgeon, documentary filmmaker Dr. Jonathan Gayles, and a screening of Gayles’s White Scripts and Black Supermen, plus Jared Gardner, John Jennings, Mark C. Rogers, and many other comics scholars, both veteran and new. PLUS an exhibition of art from Smith’s RASL, and, talk about an embarrassment of riches, an exhibition of work by Gary Panter (visiting CCAD almost as I type this!). It sounds fantastic, and I wish Robert and everyone a stimulating, collegial, and fun event!

I had the pleasure of giving a talk at Mix last year, on Oct. 5, 2012, titled “Kirby Goes for Broke.” Thanks to Robert and his collaborators, video of that lecture, as well as other events from Mix 2012, has just gone online!

(Check out CCAD’s YouTube channel, CCADedu, for more!)

Giving that talk was a blast, especially the post-talk Q&A, which I thought was rich and interesting. It gave me a chance to think about Kirby “on my feet” before a very sharp and attuned audience, something I’ll always be grateful for. It’s all captured on this video!

Go to Mix 2013 if you possibly can.

28 February 2013

Leave a comment

Events, Talks

Emerald City Comicon: Why You Should Care about Jack Kirby!

Belated news flash—and the first one here in way too long a time! This weekend the Emerald City Comicon lays siege to the good city of Seattle—and yours truly will be there to talk about, natch, Jack Kirby!

To be more precise, ECCC 2013 will take place at the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle on Friday March the 1st (2:00 to 8:00 p.m.), Saturday the 2nd (10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.), and Sunday the 3rd (10:00 to 5:00).

Among the many events, media guests, exhibitors, and working artists at ECCC—in the midst of all those enticements, yow—my colleague and friend Professor Ben Saunders (U of Oregon) and I will be presenting a tag team panel titled “Why You Should Care about Jack Kirby.” And we mean it!

“Why You Should Care about Jack Kirby” will happen in Hall C from 6:20 to 7:15 p.m. on Friday, the first night of the Con. There will be talk, there will be slides, and, we dearly hope, there will be spirited and enlightening discussion of Kirby and Kirbyana! If you can make it, please come.

Sadly, I won’t be doing any sit-down signings of Hand of Fire this time out—but, to bolster my ego, I will be bringing my signing stamp and red pen, so if you’ve got a copy of the book you’d like me to personalize, don’t hesitate to ask!

And catch Ben’s other panels too! He’ll be collaborating with Howard Chaykin on a discussion of “Graphic Sexual Content” in comics (Saturday, 11:20 a.m.-12:15 pm., Hall C) and moderating a 35th anniversary panel on Will Eisner’s A Contract with God (Saturday, 4:00-4:55 p.m., Room 3AB) with a star-studded lineup. For more details on ECCC programming, click here.

The Young Romance archival reprint volume, brainchild of Michel Gagné

I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends and making some new ones this weekend, hopefully meeting a few artists in Artist Alley, and of course paying a visit to the Fantagraphics booth—where artist Michele Gagné, compiler, editor, and prime mover behind the excellent anthology Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby’s Romance Comics, is scheduled to appear on Saturday evening! (He’ll also be signing at the Image Comics booth earlier in the day—I bet he has a busy day.)

Buddy Does Seattle, by Peter Bagge