True Believers: Kirby 100th - Groot #1 - Marvel Comics

TRUE BELIEVERS: KIRBY 100TH - GROOT No. 1, October 2017

Despite Jack Kirby having “some pretty crazy stuff up his sleeve”, Editor Jordan D. White was probably right when he wrote in this anthology’s foreword that the “titan of the comic industry” would “likely never have guessed… When he first started drawing a giant tree-monster from space bent on conquering Earth”, that the “despot” would become part of “a big-budget Hollywood film in which” the extra-terrestrial was later “reduced to a tiny sprout dancing to some choice pop songs.” Certainly there's little in the way of the character’s modern-day likeability on show as far as this seven-page publication is concerned, with the rather two-dimensional “Monarch of Planet X” simply stomping about an American village and threatening to carry its entire population off into outer space…

Moreover, Stan Lee’s “overlord of all the timber in the galaxy” is far from heroic, and undoubtedly the villain of the piece, as he selfishly consumes vast amounts of wooden furniture and fencing, and then seeks to crush any of the local population who dares defy his fiendish plan to tortuously experiment upon Mankind. Instead, the New York-born writer pens for down-trodden scientist Leslie Evans to be the actual ‘saviour of the hour’, a man who supposedly lacks the manly ruggedness his wife Alice desires, yet is still capable of outwitting Groot by breeding a strain of termites in his laboratory which ultimately kills the giant alien; “Oh, darling, forgive me! I’ve been such a fool! I’ll never complain about you again! Never!!”

Fortunately, this book’s second script, a “Journey Into Mystery” reprint entitled “Here Comes… The Hulk”, proves a far more satisfying read, even if the orange-furred Xemnu the Titan is a far cry from the gamma-green character Marvelites will later much more readily associate with the name “The Hulk”. Far from telling a simple invasion yarn, the Will Eisner Award Hall Of Famer provides a thought-provoking plot featuring a planet upon which criminals are exiled in order to stop them “menacing the universe”, a failed escape attempt in an ill-equipped space rocket, a naïve resurrection of an alien abomination and the ‘zombification’ of every person on Earth.

Admittedly, Lee has to rely upon a number of cheesy coincidences to make the all-encompassing narrative satisfyingly speed along, such as the unconscious “part monster, part machine” being found by just the right sort of “small town electrician” to repair him, and the creature from outer space’s god-like ability to mesmerize “millions of helpless labourers” using his hypnotic spell rays. But such coincidental contrivances are easily forgivable considering the grand scope of Stan’s story, the succinctness of its page count, and “King” Kirby’s wonderful illustrations of the ever-menacing Xemnu.

Writer: Stan Lee, Penciler: Jack Kirby, and Inker: Dick Ayers