Justice Inc #2 - "The Skywalker" - from book to comic

© DC Comics and The Jack Kirby Collector.  Original pencils for cover of Justice Inc #2

I’m sure a lot of you reading this will have acquired multiple copies of the same comic, of different versions of the same story. I’m as guilty of this as the next collector, as evidenced by the three versions of The Avenger story “The Skywalker”, which first came to my attention as a DC comics adaptation by Jack Kirby in July-August 1975. I subsequently picked up the 1972 Warner Paperback reprint of the original pulp story,  and finally picked up the Sanctum Books facsimile reprint of the original pulp story from 1941 back in 2009. So in effect I worked my ways backwards in time to the original source.

Despite being quite a compelling character, The Avenger has never made it to the top tier of popular culture heroes. Created as an amalgam of Doc Savage and The Shadow, the premise - Richard Benson’s wife and daughter are murdered and his face is frozen from the shock, thus making it possible for him to rearrange his features to fool criminals, supported by his crack team of agents and his weapons “Mike” and “Ike” (a gun and knife) - would make great TV series fodder. A Mission Impossible of the 1940s.  (Some similarities to The Punisher).

But back in 1975, Warner had licensed various publication rights to a number of Pulp heroes from Conde Nast, and had decided to integrate them into the DC comics universe. The Avenger went on to meet The Shadow, who in turn had met Batman, so quickly The Avenger became six degrees of separation from every DC comics hero.

I had become a big fan of DC’s Shadow comic, so was pleased to learn of the new Avenger series. I actually picked up the DC issue #1 from a local Southsea newsagent, but I had already picked up issue #2 from famed London comic store  Dark They Were & Golden Eyed as a 25p “import”, so Jack Kirby’s depiction of The Avenger had been my first exposure to a comics rendition of the character. 

Unlike DC’s depiction of the Shadow by Mike Kaluta and Denny O’Neil, it became clear that DC did not start with a clear vision of the Avenger. Issue #1 had kicked off with a superb cover by Joe Kubert  and underwhelming interior art by Al McWilliams. By issue #2, the art chores had been handed over to Jack Kirby, continuing plotting and dialog by Denny O’Neil. Like issue #1, the story in issue #2 was an adaptation of an early Avenger story , in this case “The Sky Walker”. Warner, the parent company of DC, had the publication rights and had republished the original pulp story in their Warner Paperback Library line a few years earlier.

It is interesting to compare the evolution of these publications. Looking at the O’Neil and Kirby version, the art layout is uninspired (mostly 6-panel, 5-panel, 7-panel pages, no compelling splash pages) , but the action within the small panels is dynamic Kirby, evoking memories of his In The Days of the Mob one-off. There may be no “Kirby Krackle” in the fights, but it is a solid entry. The story adaptation by O’Neil sings along.  Essentially the story is about an evil businessman who acquires an invention to render metal invisible and to disrupt the molecules of major structures for nefarious ends. He flies an invisible plane and destroys skyscrapers and train tracks to test the invention. 

In subsequent interviews with The Jack Kirby Collector (TJKC #23 and #45) , O’Neil revealed no strong memories of writing, or editing, these comics. O’Neil and Kirby did not work collaboratively in the Marvel style; O’Neil was in New York and Kirby was in California.  O’Neil sent Kirby the finished script and relied on Jack to create the look of the characters, the era, the guns and the gangsters. As far as O’Neil recalled, Kirby picked up the assignment because he was prolific and Al McWilliams was unavailable. 

I liked it enough to seek out the paperback of the original story written by Paul Ernst under the house name of Kenneth Robeson, tempted by the gorgeous cover painted by the late Peter Caras.

© Conde Nast and Warner. Cover by Peter Caras.

© Conde Nast and DC. The published comic cover

Reading the original book, in is clear that Denny O’Neil adhered to his own guidelines (as published in The DC Comics Guide to WRITING Comics by Dennis O’Neil) in adapting and structuring the story. You’ll see the focus is always on ‘major visual action’.

Denny On Comic Story Structure:

Act I

The hook

Inciting incident

Establish situation and conflict

(Major visual action).

Act II

develop and complicate situation.

(Major visual action).

Act III

Events leading to:

The climax

(Major visual action).

Denouement

Denny on Adapting screenplays for Comics:

First, define what the story is about- that is, locate the spine. Next, choose which scenes are important. Then, choose which lines of dialogue and bits of action within the scenes are important. You’ll also want to decide which lines that aren’t integral to the spine of the story are so interesting and memorable that they’ll have to be included…….(You’ll be wrong as often as not, but make the effort anyway.) 

Denny had stripped away the extraneous elements of the original story of The Sky Walker to deliver a fully-scripted straightforward pulp narrative ideally suited to Kirby’s artistic talents. 

As a result, the Kirby/O’Neil story starts with a bang  - a train crash in the desert…the story jumping well past the slow burn setup in the novel of people drinking in a bar in Lincoln Park, Chicago and seeing a cocktail glass shatter, or a subsequent scene of a farmer being mystified by a man appearing to walk in the sky.  The comics adaptation starts with The Avenger already happening to be in the sky above the train by chance, and seeing the rail tracks ahead of the train being targeted by the villain, and immediately following the crash, spots the Skywalker in the sky. (Very much conforming with the instruction “Start with the Inciting Incident” in Act I).

As LoC writer Scott Jeffrey subsequently noted in the letter column of DC’s Justice Inc #4, other changes included omitting Avenger agents Nellie Gray and Fergus MacMurdie from the story, along with a superfluous sub-plot featuring inventor Robert Gant’s brother Maximus. The technical aspect of rendering metal invisible is changed. The name of the villain Darcy is also changed from “Darcey” in the original pulp.

O’Neil does not seem to have lifted specific dialogue, but the comic is very dialogue heavy, with upwards of ten or more speech bubbles per page. The number of words does not exceed the 210-word limit per page set by Mort Weisinger, but the panels are small and very busy. There are very few thought bubbles - perhaps four in total in the entire comic - and what they contain could easily be included in a panel caption. The Avenger - like most pulp heroes - is not an introspective character. This is an action-oriented narrative.

© DC Comics. Example of text-heavy page

Jack Kirby had a track record (see what I did there) of drawing train collisions, and the opening pages of the Justice Inc comic draws on similar imagery from Mr Miracle #17, published two years earlier. 

It is interesting to compare the drawings of the original pulp to the DC adaptation. Although Paul Ernst's original story starts with random secondary characters in a bar in Chicago (remember, Ernst was paid by the word), the original pulp features the train crash on its cover, painted by Harold Winfield Scott.  

Comparing the imagery in the pulp spot illustrations and in the comic, Kirby may well have referred to a copy of the original pulp - both the cover of the train crash and interior illustrations. The final panel of the comic carries the motif of the Avenger’s face in the sky overseeing the scene - the image of Justice meted out - which was common across the Avenger pulps, but not the paperback reprints.

© Conde Nast. The Sky Walker - the Avenger sees all

© DC and Code Nast. Final panel Justice Inc #2. The Avenger sees all

The original pulp’s interior artwork by Paul Orban focuses on two story elements - the Skywalker in the sky, and the train crash. Orban’s drawing style was quite sedate, and his realistic style does little to punch up the action or threat of the evil genius in the story. Philip Jose Farmer wrote about the “Apocalyptic” lives of pulp heroes like Doc Savage and The Avenger - always fighting to banish anarchy and restore balance to society - and Kirby is much better at communicating this than Orban.

Train Wreck as envisioned by Paul Orban and Jack Kirby

First View of the Sky Walker - by Orban and Kirby

© Conde Nast. A farmer spies the Sky Walker - artist Paul Orban

© Conde Nast and DC. The Avenger spies the Sky Walker. Artist Jack Kirby

DC's Justice Inc only lasted four issues before cancellation, with issues #3 and #4 being original stories created by the O’Neil/Kirby team. O’Neil was unaware of the reason for cancellation, as sales had been fine. Other than each story featuring the villain falling to their death, the tales were imaginative and held promise for a long run of the comic. It was not to be. 

I can’t help but think what a great comic book series it would have been if Stan Lee had written it. Stan had lifted many elements of the Fantastic Four from The Avenger, Doc Savage and other pulp heroes (a team/family based in their own building in New York, bickering team members, incredible foes, scientific weapons) and had used the pulps as his template for many of the Marvel superhero comics in the early sixties.