Titan Books’ The Simon and Kirby Superheroes ($49.95), a massive 480-page tome containing all of Joe and Jack’s superhero work done for publishers other than Marvel and DC, will have its exclusive debut at the San Diego Comic-Con in July, well before its general release on October 12th. Edited by Steve Saffel, the volume includes a number or real rarities including a Stuntman story, “Stuntman Crowns a Jungle Lord,” which was never printed, because the Stuntman comic book fell victim to the late 1940s comic glut (check out the preview pages from the Stuntman story here).
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That Stuntman tale along with The Vagabond Prince story “Trapped on Wax,” and the Fighting American story “The Mad Inker” were culled from Joe Simon’s personal files. Although Marvel published a hardcover collection of the 1950s over-the-top, super-patriotic Fighting American comics in 1989, it didn’t include “The Mad Inker” story, which means that the only complete run of the cold war parody title, which has come to be known as “The Doctor Strangelove of Comics” and includes such colorful characters as Yucha Lifso, Jiseppi the Jungle Boy, and Rhode Island Red, will be in the new Simon and Kirby Superheroes book.
In the new Titan Books compendium, the non-Marvel/DC Simon and Kirby superhero sagas are presented chronologically starting with The Black Owl (from Prize Comics), followed by the post-war Stuntman, the never-before-collected The Vagabond Prince, Captain 3-D, which contains some of Steve Ditko’s first work, the only complete run of The Fighting American, The Double Life of Private Strong, and The Adventures of the Fly.
All the stories included in this substantial 480-page volume, which has dimensions that are bigger than the Masterworks or Archives volumes, will be reproduced at their originally published Golden Age size with full color restoration by Harry Mendyk.
Description of preview: 3 pages from an unpublished Stuntman story, “Stuntman Crowns a Jungle Lord:”
Preview -- Page 8
Preview -- Page 9
Preview -- Page 9 (pencils/inks)
