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Jack Kirby (pencils), Dick Ayers (inks)
Tales to Astonish #18 (Atlas Comics), April 1961
“Gorgilla Strikes Again!” is from an iconic Stan Lee/Kirby/Ayers collaboration from the now-classic (then reviled) pre-Marvel Silver Age monster comics. A blatant King Kong lift, Gorgilla was curious about the men in the expedition that found him, and somehow stowed away (!) on their ship, stopping an assassination attempt but tragically dying when he plunges from the Statue of Liberty. Stupid? You bet. Fun? Damn straight! At the tender ages of five through eight, I ate this early Marvel lunacy up like crazy, in constant awe of the raw, primitive, expressive power of Jack Kirby’s work. Kirby’s potent pencils weren’t tamed or tempered by vet cartoonist Dick Ayers’ inking style—if anything, they were given greater weight, completed with a bold brush line that emphasized their masculine strengths (which wasn’t true of many of the inkers Kirby was saddled with at Marvel in the early 1960s).
