#JackedKirby - Advertisements Abound!!! 📰📰📰 Back in 1958 artist Jack Kirby and writers Dave & Dick Wood were co-workers at National Comics (which would later become DC Comics) when they decided to work together on a daily comic strip that would focus on space travel and outer space adventures. Titled “Skymasters of the Space Force”, the team also featured the legendary Wally Wood (no relation to the other Wood brothers) on inks and was set to be distributed in over 100 newspapers across the US and other countries in the world... and would also lead to Jack leaving National forever, being sued by publisher Jack Schiff and eventually joint Atlas (soon to be Marvel Comics) and changing the industry forever! 📰📰📰 The strip itself ran for over three years, with 4 panel single line strips daily and full page Sunday Strips in the Sunday funny pages... but this post focuses on the promotional ads ran in the newspapers leading up to the September 8th, 1958 premier. 📰📰📰 First up is a short article in the Pittsburg Gazette that also profiles the creative team, focusing much of its attention on Kirby. I love the headshot that they use of a youthful Jack, and also that they feel the need to mention Boy Commandos as one of his “hit comic books” alongside Captain America... 📰📰📰 The second ad comes from the St. Petersburg Times (Florida) and extolled the virtues of the coming strip in the days leading up to its release. Also note how it’s was to be a strip “for all ages” considering how it’s topic, space travel, was now inching further and further toward real life plausibility! 📰📰📰 Both of these ads come from the recently released collected edition of Skymasters Sunday Strips from editor Ferran Delgado. Delgado credits Rand Hoppe from the @kirbymuseum as a go to source for this project, so considering the museums exhaustive archive of Kirby related news items he probably helped out with these... get this book, it is absolutely beautiful and an essential for all Kirby collectors and completists! 📰📰📰 #JackKirby #KingKirby #Kirby #Skymasters #SkymastersOfTheSpaceForce #NewspaperComics #NewspaperComicStrips #ComicStrips #DaveAndDickWood #WallyWood #FerranDelgado
