King Kirby’s Kurator: Randolph Hoppe
A Jack Kirby Museum-how cool is THAT!? The people involved are dedicated, talented and visionary-just like Jack! The board of trustees are John Morrow, publisher of The Jack Kirby Collector, Jack and Roz Kirby’s own daughter, Lisa and Randolph Hoppe. I quizzed Randolph (the purple guy above) recently for The Arf Lover’s Blog…
1. *WOW*, is running the Jack Kirby Museum your DAY job? “Museum and Research Center” sounds so high falutin’, what the heck are you trying
to do with this?The Museum’s almost-a-year-long existence has been a good one. Membership is growing. The Catalogue Raisonné is going to be an amazing web resource, and we hope our recently-announced digital archive will support scholarly and historical efforts for years to come. We’re also aiming to hang exhibits around the world. We’ve got Blogs! Discussion groups! And more! Point your browsers at http://kirbymuseum.org and join us, folks. Get a cool Kirby poster!
If I could spend more of my working days educating the world about Jack Kirby’s work, I’d be very happy. ‘Til then, I’m a cartoonist who makes a living as a designer of web sites and print graphics.
Jack’s pencil work from page 14 of 1976′s 2001: A Space Odyssey #1.
(click for a closer look)
2. Who’s your favorite comic book artist?
What are you, a wise guy?
Jack Kirby
3. Ok, Jack Kirby was a fair artist, but he really didn’t make much of a contribution to comic books. Comment?
His development of dynamic action in comic book storytelling alone would be enough of a contribution. Add to that the entertainment of millions via the imaginative stories he and Stan Lee told through the end of the 1960s. So many of the properties he created, whether with Joe Simon, with Stan Lee, or on his own, continue to entertain people world-wide. Not bad for a guy who often said his job was “to sell magazines”.
4.What’s up with Devil Dinosaur?
He and Moon-Boy haven’t spoken for a few years now. Devil’s hoping to land the third male lead in Jurassic Park IV, having just finished mocap work for The Land Before Time 3-D: This Time It’s Personal.
(click to see the entire page)
I’ve lent the original art to the above page where the Lee/Kirby monster Fin Fang Foom comes life to MoCCA. It’s for their current not-to-be-missed Stan Lee exhibit. The Kirby Museum was a co-sponsor of the exhibit.
5. Finally, the question on every fan’s mind, who would win in a fight, Jack Kirby or Cathy Guisewite?
Mr. Kirby would not have fought a lady.
Good answer, Randolph! Thanks for your time and good luck with this wonderful endeavor!
Jack Kirby comic from Modern Arf.
The amazing Kubist Kirby story above is reprinted from the original art in its entirety in Modern Arf.
The other page from the above story will be in Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings.
Click here to order Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings
One last bonus for your enjoyment, Arf Lover: here’s the illustration Jack Kirby did for my book, The Art of Mickey Mouse…
— C. Yoe (in the funny papers)
I always loved that piece from the MM book, just so totally offbeat…
[...] King Kirby’s Kurator: Randolph Hoppe [...]
[...] Craig Yoe offers a short interview with the Jack Kirby Museum’s Randolph Hoppe, rounded out by some rare Kirby art (such as the page from which the above is excerpted, part of a two-page story going into Yoe’s forthcoming book, Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings). [...]
yeah, the kirby mick is cool and jack and roz were totally psyched about doing it. i guess it ws something different for them. it was such a pleasure working with them on it. they were such humble sweet people. i was psyched myself working with them-and getting to color the piece. quite a thrill for me!