Blow a Kiss, Fire a Gun: The Complete Kirby War & Romance

By Kayleigh Hearn

Let us set the sultry Silver Age scene: a beautiful woman in red, her brunette hair a buoyant flip, gazes adoringly at the gun in her hands. She doesn’t see the man in a suit coming up behind her. Eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat, he pulls her close: “Here, let me show you how to load that, Anne!”

With a knowing smirk, Anne slides into his embrace. Four hands now caress the steel barrel of the rifle, that gleaming phallic symbol. “Mmm,” Anne murmurs. “You make it seem so delightfully easy!”

Now, turn the page. Witness another tender scene between a man and a woman. They’re both in uniform; her brother has just died in the war. A thought balloon hovers over the man’s head like an iron cloud: “How can I tell her the truth about him? What good would it do? I’d face a regiment single-handed sooner than hurt…this one girl!” Holding onto each other tightly, they disappear into the pink sunset.

War and Romance. Like two comic book titans clashing over the fate of humanity, they should be bitter foes, but under the pen of he-who-needs-no-introduction, Jack Kirby, they are more like star-crossed lovers. The Complete Kirby War & Romance is a beautifully-assembled restoration of Jack “The King” Kirby’s lesser-known, non-superhero Silver Age comics. Spanning roughly a decade of Kirby’s career from 1956 to 1966, many of the stories in this deluxe Marvel omnibus are reprinted for the first time and restored from his original pages. This book rescues forgotten issues of Battleground and Teen-Age Romance from dusty oblivion, making it one of the most unusual – but essential – volumes published by Marvel this year.

Flipping through fizzy pink and fatigue-green pages, the reader is easily swept away by tear-jerking melodrama and heart-thumping action. Re-reading the scenes described above, can you be sure which story is from Love Romances or Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos? A combat veteran of World War II and the co-creator (along with Joe Simon) of the romance comic, Jack Kirby was uniquely suited to depicting these era-defining aspects of midcentury American life. The Complete Kirby War & Romance is a sparkling cocktail that burns like whisky.

You’ve heard of “The Lady or The Tiger,” well, how about “The Gal or The Gun”? I confess, when I pre-ordered this omnibus, the war comics were an afterthought; it was love I was after. I am a longtime fan of classic romance comics, with their combination of good-girl art and melodramatic plots worthy of Douglas Sirk at his teary, Technicolor best. (One of my first long-form articles written for WWAC was a review of Simon and Kirby’s Young Romance 2, released by Fantagraphics way back in 2014.) Romance comics are also some of the most ephemeral works in an ephemeral medium. If they linger in the public consciousness at all, it’s not because people actually read these comics. Their beautiful blondes have acquired an artistic afterlife through pop art reproductions like Roy Lichtenstein’s painted death masks — a rather pale imitation, indeed.

It is tempting, and all too easy, to dismiss the romance comics in this book as “kitsch,” as writer/artist and Kirby biographer Tom Scioli does in his introduction. Some of these comics are bite-sized bursts of camp. Consider the Cheez Whiz aftertaste of a title like “The Teen-Ager and The Truck Driver!” or the story “My Life, My Love,” in which a sheltered blind girl named Rachel falls in love with that most alluring of men, the traveling vacuum cleaner salesman. Still, there is a level of sophistication in Jack Kirby’s craftsmanship that rises above even the most reductive readings. Their operatic intensity demands the audience takes them seriously.

One of the delights of reading The Complete Kirby War & Romance is seeing Jack Kirby operating outside of the “girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl wins boy” formula that would calcify the genre by the late 1960s and early '70s. Not every tale has a happy ending. “The Summer Must End” stars “walking dream” Sheila Van Reynolds, a haughty blonde beach bunny who taunts the working-class lifeguard she sees as beneath her. By the time Sheila realizes she loves him, it’s too late, and she’s left alone in the sand to wonder what might have been. In “If Your Heart I Break ---!” a young woman becomes engaged after a whirlwind romance but quickly realizes it was only a passing fling. Afraid of breaking his heart, she tearfully tells him the truth, only for him to confess he feels the same way. They part amicably, illustrating that break-ups can be positive experiences of personal growth rather than world-ending tragedies.

Other stories are, by modern standards, eyebrow-raisingly risque in their implications, or push unexpected boundaries. Sally Rogers, the dandelion-headed college girl featured in “Give Back My Heart!” returns home unable to forget the man she loves — her high school teacher, Paul Carter. Revisiting her former classroom, she catches Mr. Carter caressing the initials she once carved into her desk — he loves her too! “Now you’re older, and our age difference no longer seems to matter!” he says with a straight face, impervious to the screams of the writer describing this scene for you nearly 60 years later.

“I Dare Not Tell Him,” Kirby’s final full-length romance comic for Marvel, reflects the changing sexual mores for women in 1963, just on the cusp of second-wave feminism. Bette, a receptionist, falls in love with her boss but fears that he’ll discover the truth about her past: she was once married. Though her speedy annulment assures us the marriage was unconsummated, the story is an acknowledgment that women were not blank slates before they met their Prince Charmings; they are fully formed individuals who have their own interior lives, experiences, and love affairs.

I live for the sheer drama of these stories — who among us has never felt like a beautiful Silver Age heroine, stoically turning up our collars as the rain washes away our tears? But upon closer examination, they are fascinating chronicles of the societal expectations forced on young women of the era, tripping them up like a bear trap clamping down on their delicately drawn little ankles. Don’t be “The Fun Girl,” frivolous and carefree, or you’ll never settle down — but don’t be “A Regular Gal!” either, because nothing kills romance faster than being friends or sharing common interests!

Then there’s the case of Vivian Carter, a cutthroat female executive; assured in every aspect of her life, she’s nevertheless thrown off balance by Brad Steele, a man determined to put her in her place. Vivian is driven by an almost fetishistic need to be dominated by Brad even as she tells him, “You can’t ask someone to give up part of her life — her dreams!” But give up she does, because no career can fulfill a woman’s needs when she could be “Mrs. Brad Steele” instead. So, if you can’t be a fun girl, a regular girl, or a career girl, who can you be? The answer is in the title to this story, which is also Brad’s condescending nickname for his future wife: “Little Girl.”

Brutal, I know. But still, absorbing these emotional blows as a reader, it’s hard not to root for these young women, trapped as they are in white middle-class heteronormativity. (Later in his career, Kirby would explore the love lives of Black women, older women, divorced women, and fat women, with uneven results — these stories are collected in Dingbat Love, published by TwoMorrows.) These women are also the prototypes for beloved female characters that Kirby and Lee would create together and apart. They speak like Mary Jane Watson (“You’re mad, lad!”) and look like Jean Grey’s sorority sisters, wishing her good luck as she leaves for the Xavier Institute with her white gloves and Christian Dior dress. We feel the intensity of their emotions — not just their oft-reproduced tears but also their jealousies, insecurities, and joys. Even when Stan Lee’s scripting is at its most paternalistic (“Boy! If that isn’t just like a female!”), their desires and needs are achingly familiar. They aren’t just looking for love, but what love represents: adulthood, adventure, security. To put it one way: love hurts.

This, of course, leads us to the other subject of this book. All’s fair in love and...what’s that other thing? Oh yeah, war. Thankfully, Jack Kirby’s war comics are not as hypermasculine as one might suspect given the era in which they were drawn. Women are vital in several stories, whether acting in the role of a French resistance fighter, an anti-Nazi lion tamer, or, in the case of Pamela Hawley, Nick Fury’s first love, a nurse for the Red Cross. (That’s Pamela and Nick starring in the second tender scene described at the beginning of this article, taken from the final panels of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #4.)

Bookended by war stories drawn almost a decade apart, The Complete Kirby War & Romance is a glimpse into the evolution of a master of the comic book form. It has an unexpectedly humanizing effect; Jack Kirby occupies the role of “The King” so firmly in the minds of Western comic book fans that it’s fascinating to see the work of a younger artist who hadn’t yet reached the peak of his powers. His earliest war comics from the 1950s lean heavily into nonfiction, functioning almost as illustrated newsreels. Though admittedly I have never seen a newsreel as throat-grabbing as “Find ‘Em -- Chase ‘Em -- Blast ‘Em!”, a guide to, well, guided missiles, which are depicted with an almost superheroic intensity and dynamic names (“Roc,” “Gorgon,” and “Little Joe”) to match.

Inevitably, autobiographical elements begin to seep into Kirby’s war comics, like blood darkening a bandage. As noted by Tom Scioli, “The Invincible Enemy” from Battle #67 was drawn from Kirby’s real-life war experiences, down to the “red haze” that falls over a nervous young “replacement” in the heat of combat. By the time he was drawing Sgt. Fury in 1964, Kirby would be specifically credited as “Ex-Infantryman Jack Kirby, U.S. Army.” While the Howling Commandos’ wartime adventures became increasingly pulpy and fantastical, it is hard to forget the young man in the final image of “The Invincible Enemy,” his back facing us as he takes his position with his rifle. “The new replacement is now a combat soldier...he has done well...this time…”

As The Complete Kirby War & Romance marches up the body-strewn hill towards its climax, I’m reminded of the sentiment initially attributed to French New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut, that any depiction of war onscreen, regardless of intent, is so ambiguous and exhilarating that it becomes effectively pro-war. The omnibus concludes with Jack Kirby’s muscular, monumental work on Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. An ongoing series with a regular cast of memorable and offbeat characters, Sgt. Fury’s themes are deeper, and its tragedies more memorable, than the one-act war stories that precede it. Unabashedly pulpy, it’s arguably one of the best action comics ever made — one issue features special guest star Captain America jumping into a handstand to deftly avoid a flying grenade, and ends with a dizzying photo collage of an exploding Nazi base. (Pop art goes the weasel.)

Sgt. Fury walks a fine line with more delicacy than one would expect given Fury’s own broad-shouldered, bare-knuckled bravado. No matter how many bullet-headed Nazi barons they blow to kingdom come, glory eludes the Howling Commandos - and for at least one of them, death is their only reward. (Notably, these comics were also published in the brief window of time when death in the Marvel Universe was met with grim finality.) And yet - and yet - who, after reading these comics, would not race to join Sgt. Fury in socking the monocle off Baron von Strucker’s ugly mug? To quote the man: “Let ‘em have it, you Howlers!”

The Complete Kirby War & Romance is a collection of stylistic extremes and artistic high points for two genres soon to be swept away by the red, white, and blue tide of costumed superheroes. (It feels appropriate that Kirby’s later Sgt. Fury issues include guest appearances from a young, not yet fantastic Reed Richards and, “in answer to the greatest reader demand in history,” Captain America and Bucky.) While one genre should seem like the distorted reflection of the other, Jack Kirby’s protagonists are united by their common humanity. Not just the emotional honesty displayed by both a lovestruck receptionist and a nervous young soldier half a world away, but in the dramatic storytelling techniques employed by the king of the comic book form. Here, a stray kiss is no less dangerous than a stray bullet.

Jack Kirby’s final penciled page for Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #18 is devastating in its thematic perfection. Nick Fury stands on the doorstep of his first love’s home, ready to spend the rest of his life with her. Terrible news awaits him: Pamela died helping the wounded during an air raid. Time slows down. In the span of three panels, the engagement ring in his hand falls uselessly to the ground as Nick hears Pamela’s final words.

“Tell my wonderful American sergeant...how much I love him…”

On that heartbreaking page, superficial boundaries dissolve and the genres converge. War and romance, walking away together, hand-in-bloodied-hand.