Saturday Leftover Day.
In 1954 Jack Kirby and Joe Simon left prize and started their own company Mainine. They ahd made a lot of monet for Prize and wanted to try and get some of their own. Unfortunately they did this at the wrong time. The comic book industry was shrinking because of the rise of television and the effects of the anti-scares. When the distributor they had chosen collapsed, they were left with a debt that effectively ened a partnership that had endured fifteen years. One of their books was a war series called Foxhole. It tried to tell stories from a different, more human perspective. the artists and writers were encouraged to sign the stories with their rank in the second world war.
Jack Kirby drew some of his best covers for these war titles.My favorite has always been an unfinished one, with the reworked version that was published as my second favorite. For the first issue they devised the idea of doing a cover about the landing of Amercan beaches. As we know from Steve Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, we now know that must have been the most hellish moment of D-Day. They wanted to compare it to 'a day at the beach' by contrasting it with a letter by a soldier to his mother.
But either the found somthing lacking or they ran into this painting...
.. and they decided it would make a great idea even better. So they converterted the image (some call it swiping, but this is more like appropriating, since the image was redrawn by Kirby in his own style) and turned it into this striking cover.
But I have always liked they original concept and have wondere dwhat it would look like in a finished form. No that the sketch is being sold on Heritage (for more than I can afford) I finally have a large enough scan to put the question out to my readers. Is there anyone out there who can finish the cover for me... for us? I don;t think you should try and so it in the style Kirbe developed in the seventies and eighties. This should be more in Kirby's fifties style, which is rougher... but still more reminiscent of the eighties style that his work on the first few superhero books from Marvel in the early sixties (probaby because he was usually inked by others). For those of you who ant to see samples, follow the label to the many posts about his work here.
I can give one inking tip... Jack Kirby himself always did a line drawing first and added the blacks later with a brush. The slight disconnect between the two is what gave his work such a distinctive look.
