I was a little too young to follow the uproar Jack Kirby made in the ’60s at Marvel Comics, where he plotted and drew “The Fantastic Four” (among many others) and set the dynamic house style. But when he jumped to DC Comics in 1970 I bought as many issues as I could of the series that would become known as the “Fourth World”. This was an ambitious epic of mythic scope that ran in four titles concurrently, all written and pencilled by Kirby. It’s too bad that the comics didn’t meet sales expectations; the series was cancelled before it was concluded. At their best the stories (especially in “The New Gods” and “Mister Miracle“) were four-colour masterpieces. I’ve never seen any other modern pop artist who could create a world that Homer would recognize: a world of titanic struggle presented without irony, just awe and compassion.

Though I love his stuff, I can’t say that Kirby has been a huge influence on my work. I gravitate more to the sarcastic irony of MAD magazine. But there is at least one Fisher strip that was a tribute to Kirby. This one appeared in the early years (1994, to be exact):