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Jack Kirby's Dingbat Love by Mark Evanier, John Morrow, Jack Kirby

dantastic's review

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4.0

Jack Kirby's Dingbat love contains unpublished comics by Jack Kirby - True Divorce #1, Soul Love #1, and Dingbats of Danger Street #2 and #3.

The stars were right because it's Jack Kirby Month on Twitter and this was 50% off at the TwoMorrows web store.

This a beautifully done book by the folks at TwoMorrows. There are essays about when the stories were created and Kirby's original intentions for the titles. Kirby mainly wanted to edit them and farm them out to other people and said "Soul Love shouldn't be written by a 63 year old married Jew" or something to that effect.

Anyway, the original art for some of the four comics is presented here. Some of the stories are inked and/or lettered, and some are completely uninked and still have Kirby's rough lettering on them. The Dingbats stories are all finished and colored but the original art is included for comparison. A couple Soul Love stories are also finished and colored.

The stories kept me quite entertained. It was interesting to see Kirby's bombastic style applied to what were basically romance comics in True Divorce and Soul Love. Dingbats was a return to the kid gang concept Kirby had done before with Boy Commandos, Boy's Ranch, and the Newsboy Legion and felt more like a crime book than anything else.

Jack Kirby's Dingbat Love would be worth it to see Kirby's unfinished pencils on some of the stories but the stories themselves are good too. Four out of five stars.
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