BEST OF SIMON & KIRBYS MAINLINE COMICS HC
Story: Joe Simon
Art: Jack Kirby, Chris Kirby
Cover: Jack Kirby
Publisher: TwoMorrows, $49.95
Published in 1954-55, Mainline Comics was Joe Simon and Kirby's own publishing firm. Simon and Kirby were the closest thing comics had to superstars at the time, having conquered every genre in the business. With Mainline, they focused on four such genres: Westerns, War, Crime and Romance (which the two are credited with creating in 1947 with Young Romance). The result was Bullseye, Fox Hole, In Love and Police Trap.
There were no superheroes in Mainline's lineup, a notable omission from the creators of Captain America. Marvel/Atlas, meanwhile, re-launched Captain America (and Human Torch and Sub-Mariner) at the end of 1953 in Young Men #24, continuing in the next year for four issues. Atlas' Big Three also appeared in Men's Adventures #27-28 in 1954. Captain America and Human Torch were revived for three issues each in 1954, and Sub-Mariner for 10 in 1954-55. All of it was gone by the time Barry Allen debuted in Showcase #4 in 1956. One has to wonder if the news of Mainline didn't prod Martin Goodman into this short-lived experiment. He, of all people, certainly knew that S&K could be serious competition.
On paper Mainline should have been boffo but, unfortunately, the timing was terrible. The hysteria against comics was at its height in 1954 and 1955, and those were the very years when the Comics Code was instituted. Publishers and distributors went out of business in great numbers and, sadly, that wave carried Mainline with it. The firm's inventory material was published by Charlton, but then the titles ended.
Here's what got published:
- Bullseye #1-5 (Mainline), #6-7 (Charlton)
- Fox Hole #1-4 (Mainline), #5-7 (Charlton)
- In Love #1-4 (Mainline), #5-6 (Charlton)
- Police Trap #1-4 (Mainline), #5-6 (Charlton)
The only other element of interest from the publishing angle was that Fox Hole was always Foxhole on the cover, leading to some confusion. (Most historians and archivists go by the indicia, which is Fox Hole.) And of all the Mainline books, Fox Hole is the only one continued (for one issue) past the point where the S&K material was exhausted. The Grand Comics Database lists Mainline staff for issues #5-6, but only question marks for the creators in Fox Hole #7, and with the next issue it was titled Never Again.
As to the material itself, the foreword claims that Bullseye is reprinted in its entirety, to which -- as a fan of comprehensive reprints -- I have to award a "half truth" to. The Bullseye covers and stories are all included (even the Charlton issues), but none of the ancillary material is. One-pagers, backup strips, half-page gags, prose stories, ads -- anything, in short, that does not feature Bullseye -- are notably absent.
All the Bullseye material is drawn by Kirby. For Kirby completists, that's good news. For readers like me, who have reached the end of their tether on the dishonest tropes of '50s Westerns, the sheer amount of it made me feel like I was doing homework. I plowed through, watching guns being shot out of hands and Bullseye (no real name) adopting a secret identity that somehow fools people and Natives alternating between being "savage" or "noble," and so forth. All of this is utterly familiar to anyone who has read a lot of Kirby Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid and Kid Colt, which I have. At least in Bullseye, the character's uncanny marksmanship was remarked upon and considered virtually a mutant ability, whereas in the Marvel Westerns it was treated as a given for heroes.
There's really only a smattering of Fox Hole, In Love and Police Trap. If I wanted to invest the time to compare and contrast the book to the creator listings in the GCD, I'd probably discover that TwoMorrows reprinted just the Kirby material, with only a little Mort Meskin tossed in here or there out of necessity (in some stories Kirby would do only main figures or somesuch, and Meskin would flesh it out).
Fox Hole looks very much like early Sgt. Fury, all sturm and drang and mud and shouting. That is not a complaint. Early Sgt. Fury looked like I always imagined combat to be, and certainly Kirby would know. It would take a couple of years before I realized Sgt. Fury was basically a superhero comic, with all of the Howlers wearing plot armor, and very few scenes of even Nazis getting shot. I lost a lot of enthusiasm for the book then, but I will always remember the grittness of those early issues with fondness. Fox Hole, what little we get, is like that.
Police Trap is pretty forgettable tough-guy stuff. The cops and crooks all talk like they're in a '30s gangster movie, although the former tend to moralizing and speeches. That's fine, just not memorable.
In Love, I have to say, sure looks like it's trying to elevate the genre. There's a three-parter, for one thing, although the central dilemma is so mired in '50s mores that it didn't feel like a real problem to a reader in the 21st century. In fact, that's my complaint overall, that the simplistic and outmoded gender norms in which these these stories are trapped resist S&K's efforts to write mature stories. Still, In Love makes more of an effort than other '50s Romance books, and are worth a look for that reason alone.
One last remark, just because it bugged me: My book seemed to have inferior binding. Despite the way I read books -- carefully, and in some cases with gloves on -- I feel like if I read it a second time, pages might start coming out. I hope that's not true of the entire run, and that I just got the runt of the litter.
Replies
Whenever I get a collection such as this, I always read the editorial material (of which there wasn't much) first, then I may or not go on to read the comics themselves right away. I know from past experience it's easy to get "Simon & Kirbyed out" so flipped through it and put it on the shelf next to the "Simon & Kirby Library" series. Although I haven't yet read the volume itself, your overview seems pretty spot-on to me. The binding of my copy is perfectly fine, BTW.