FB: “Objectivity has fallen to metaphor! Our literal engines of destruction are no match for their figurative engines of destruction!”

Jack Kirby is one of the most widely discussed artists in the history of action comics, especially if you’re old enough to remember the last days of his career. But I haven’t seen a lot of analysis cover his “shouting into the camera” trick, seen in the image at right (the guy shouting “OPEN FIRE” at the bottom) and imitated in our second panel here with the soldier.

It’s a nice way to get the immediacy of a close-up along with the far-ranging scope of a long shot…intense emotion and mass destruction in one image, almost interpenetrating each other like in a Picasso. If we had it all to do over again, I think I’d urge us to go even closer-up on that soldier, maybe cutting off part of his face the way Kirby did in the sample here. Still wonderful art, though.

Sir Groff’s role in this battle mostly consisted of getting you guys to say “Which one is he again?” (Panel one, riding the rhinosaur mount with the ridiculously big, gnarled lance.)