Jack Kirby and the Flying Chair: Seldom Seen 1950's Comics from Alarming Tales #1

Here is another great Jack Kirby story from that amazing comic from 1957: Alarming Tales #1 from Harvey Features Syndicate. Please say "hello" to hapless Timothy Donnegan and Donnegan's Daffy Chair.

This is one of four Kirby tales in this classic science-fiction comic, and it's the one that made the cover (shown below) Click on the cover thumbnail below to see it nice and big.

So it seems that sad-sack janitor Timothy Donnegan is cleaning up the patent attorney's office when an impatient inventor leaves his invention behind. It's one crazy-lookin' chair. Naturally our hero has to set down for a spell...

"No harm in that."

Famous last words. Donnegan pushed a button, and BEGORRA---

Talk about Unidentifiable Flying Objects--!

Busting out of Earth's atmosphere, he breaks the sound barrier, The heat barrier, and the speed of light!

...and five years later...

Looks like Donnegan spent some time hanging out with Moebius's Arzach!

Check out the crazy headgear, man!

Look familiar?

Anyway, here's the entire four-page story below. Just click on any of the thumbnail pages below to open up a new window with nice BIG high-resolution comic book scans!

...and if you missed the other stories from this issue, you'll find them here >>>>

The Fourth Dimension is a Many-Splattered Thing

(Jack Kirby's Ditko-esque take on Matheson's Little Girl Lost)
Click on the splash page above for the whole story.

and HERE >>>>

The Last Enemy --Jack Kirby's proto-Kamandi post apocalyptic story. Click on the splash page above for the whole story.

---and there's still one story left to come from this alarming comic book! Stay tuned!

Harvey Kurtzman's "Hey Look" Appreciation over at John K's Blog

 

There's some great analysis about Harvey Kurtzman's Hey Look pages at John K's blog today. I could start a huge loving rant about Kurtzman, but instead, I'll just beg you to go over to John's place and read what he has to say.

 

Suffice to say that it was reading Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book hardcover back in 1986 that got me back into drawing after a nasty period of burn-out. Kurtzman got me excited about funny comics at a time when there wasn't much to get excited about.  I found out about his brilliant Hey Look comics later that year when I found a beat-up copy of Kurtzman Comics at Hi-De-Ho comics in Santa Monica. That little 32-page underground comic included Pot-Shot Pete and a variety of Hey Look pages.

 

A few years later, Denis Kitchen put out the complete collection of Hey Look and Pot-Shot Pete in the now-hard-to-find Hey Look hardcover and paperback. Since it's long out of print, that book's quite expensive these days, but if you're a cartoonist, it's literally worth ten times what they're asking. There's a link to used copies at John's post.

...and for those of you that have never seen these pages, there are a few nice Hey Look scans at John's post, too!