The current popularity of superheroes is due in no small part to the genre-redefining work that artist Jack Kirby and writer Stan Lee did at Marvel Comics in the 1960s. This year, as part of the annual InkTober drawing challenge, cartoonist Adam Koford paid tribute by rewriting and redrawing the entirety of Thor #163, a classic comic from April 1969, from cover to cover, including the ads. Why that one in particular? “I chose this issue,” Koford writes on his Imgur account, “because I love Jack Kirby, and it’s the only original run issue of his I have.” The cartoonist has given this vintage book a thorough makeover, retaining the original title (“Where Dwell The Demons”) and Kirby’s panel compositions but completely changing the dialogue and rendering the characters in his own style. Essentially, Koford has remade Thor #163 as a knockabout comedy, with the Asgardian hero depicted as an oblivious knucklehead whose solution to every problem is to throw a hammer at it.
Koford has posted scans of his work to Flickr, Imgur, Instagram, and Tumblr. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the original 1969 comic and Koford’s tribute/parody. The satirical tone throughout this project could be described as a mixture of Woody Allen’s 1966 redub What’s Up, Tiger Lily? and Fox’s current Son Of Zorn.
Koford’s redesigned ads may be the best part. Comic books from this era are notorious for having contained some of the most enticing but misleading promotions in history. Companies could pretty much get away with outright deception in their advertisements back then, with nary a hint of a disclaimer in the fine print. Koford has a lot of fun with this aspect of comic book history.
[via Laughing Squid]