The Jack Kirby Closing Triptych In "The Fantastic Four": Why Don't We Do That So Much Anymore No. 1

1. Why Don't We Do That So Much Anymore?

There's a blog to be written about why certain comic book narrative conventions have fallen out of fashion, but this isn't that blog. This blog is a celebration of a comic book convention that's fallen somewhat out of fashion, and which ought not to have, namely "The Kirby Closing Triptych", an example of which you can see below;

This example comes from the first Fantastic Four annual, and although the panels are too untypically overcrowded by Stan Lee's dialogue to qualify as one of my favourite such sequences, it's certainly both paradigmatic and touching. It's typical, in that it shows the reader what has happened after the main action of the story has closed. (In this case, the Atlantean's invasion of New York has been defeated and Namor has abandoned his forces to seek medical assistance for Sue Storm.) And with the main conflict over, the triptych can focus on the emotional force of the discovery by the Sub-Mariner that his people have abandoned Atlantis just as he'd abandoned them. (You'll note how Namor's isolation and loneliness is cleverly accentuated by Kirby in each panel by having, firstly, the Sub-Mariner's craft dwarfed by the sky, and then the sea, and then finally by having the tiny figure of Namor hemmed in by the great empty buildings of his evacuated capital.) It's one of the clever and effective ways that Lee and Kirby often used to leave their readers feeling that there was an emotional core to the super-powered punch-a-thons which constituted much of each issues' content; they ended on a subdued and yet involving panel progression.

2.

"The Kirby Closing Triptych" is obviously just the term my mind threw up to describe the three panel sequences with which Kirby would close many of his Fantastic Four stories. But don't get me wrong, I know that many artists have used this story-telling trope. It's just that it was Kirby's use of the closing triptych which attracted my attention to the technique. And, of course, I'm not claiming that Kirby invented the three-panel closer. I'm know, for example, it was a common trope in many of the EC tales from the early Fifties, and that Steve Ditko amongst many other artists used it brilliantly. (Indeed, the earliest Kirby example of it I can find is in the June/July Doubleheader lead in the second issue of 1954's "Fighting American", which means that it had been a common device in comics for at least years prior to that issue.)

3.


Here's another use of the Kirby Triptych, this time from 1966's "The Fantastic Four Annual" No. 4. Again, the main action of the story has closed by this point. The original Human Torch is dead, the Fantastic Four are safe, and the villainous Quasimodo has been rendered helpless. But the story is made more memorable by slowing the pace of the reader's eye across the last page and having Quasimodo deliver a pitiful, dying soliloquy.

4.

The three-panel closer was most effectively used when dealing with relatively quiet and emotional moments. (The engagement between Reed and Sue comes to mind as another example of this.) But it was less effective when it was applied to conveying a sense of danger and threat, such as in the sequence below from Fantastic Four # 41;

It's hard to imagine that Kirby couldn't have delivered a far more imposing and fearsome effect if he'd chosen - or been free to chose - considerably larger panels, or even a full page spread, for this malicious declaration. Surely that would have been more effective than ending on the final panel's close-up on Ben Grimm's eyes, which aren't so different from how they were usually depicted. The closing triptych was excellent for small, intimate moments, but, given that the panels typically occupied less than a third of the pages' height, physical action could often end up constrained and its' emotional effects diminished.

5.

The first appearance of the Kirby triptych in "The Fantastic Four" was in its' third issue, and even now that's one of my favourite closing sequences of all. Once again, the main conflict of the issue has already been resolved, with the defeat of the Miracle Man, and a cliffhanger concerning the Human Torch walking out of the Fantastic Four has been established. That all having already been achieved, the triptych effectively raises the intensity of the sense of dread which the dissolution of the Fantastic Four is intended to inspire, again accentuating the emotional punch of the story.

And if the triptych didn't usually deal effectively with extremes of physical action or violent emotion, it was brilliantly effective in evoking a sense of impending doom, of dread. Dread, after all, is associated with the slowing down of the progression of time, with one awful moment being compounded by another, and another and another, and here the clever and partial freezing of the movement of Reed and Sue in the panel's forefront while the Torch disappears out of view, only to leave a flame-trail in the last panel's upper right corner, creates that dreadful sense of disaster and helplessness and foreboding.

6.

We see something of that same sense of dread mixed with more hopeful emotions evoked in the panels above from Fantastic Four # 91, the bulk of whose story has previously concentrated on the kidnap and enslavement off-planet of The Thing by Skrulls. The main cliffhanger for the next issue has already appeared on the previous page to the one this triptych appears on, where a fearsome robot informs Ben Grimm that " ... only your DEATH will justify my life." But here the reader is given some hope that help will be on its way, though you'll note there's no loosening of the tension in the scene by any suggestion that would make rescue appear inevitable. Reed and Johnny are still in their civvies, showing they're far away from the conflict and its' resolution, and it's Reed's brainpower that's coming into play, letting the viewer know that the actual fighting is still ahead. (Brain-power alone rarely if ever closes a superhero story without fists being thrown beforehand, after all.) I particularly admire how Kirby pulls his "camera" away from Johnny and Reed as each panel succeeds the one before, leaving us with the final shot of our heroes constrained by the framework of the Baxter Building. (If the shot had pulled out to show the Baxter Building, with clear sky behind and above it, there would have been the danger of making the endeavour ahead to free Ben feel a touch too easier than a sense of partial dread requires. Blue and open skies, of course, tend to make us feel more hopeful than a couple of men staring out of a concrete-framed window.)

6.

My favourite example of the Kirby Triptych, if you'll pardon my indulgence, comes from the conclusion of "The Fantastic Four" No. 87, and it's ironic that the sequence owes its' power to the skills of Mr Lee far more than Mr Kirby. As you can see, it's a somewhat untypical sequence for a closing triptych, in that the second panel is a close-up on Doom after he appears in the first panel's background, which means that we might imagine from experience of these three-panel closers that the last shot would bring an extreme close-up, perhaps of Doom's eyes with the edge's of his helmet eye-pieces around them. But instead Kirby pulls back to show us Doom from the middle distance, and has us faced with his back too. It's the least artistically engaging and elegant design of the examples here, bar the Quasimodo sequence, with the eye being encouraged to focus in and out of the action, but it's still a perfectly competent and effective piece. In truth, however, it's Stan Lee's dialogue which makes these particular panels so affecting, and I wanted to show how brilliantly Lee could write rather than solely focus on Kirby's undoubted skills. To my mind, this quiet coda, presented once again after the comic's conflict has been almost completely settled, is the finest evocation of Doom's character in almost 50 years of comic books. That's a pretty far-fetched statement where just three panels are concerned, I know, but the Doom here is a fearsome creature made all the more terrifying by his particular sense of honour, his patience, and his rather melancholic sense that victories are often won in the long term rather than the short. This is a far more interesting, and intimidating, Doom than the one who rages against fate, breast-beats his armour and shouts very loudly about conquering this universe and the one next to it too.

I'm sure you've also noticed how elegantly the speech balloons have been placed by Mr Lee in these panels. It's something of a lost art, the careful application of speech balloons so that the effect of the art is diminished as little as possible while the story reads as effectively as it can. There's a lingering suspicion that Mr Lee must have worked out exactly where the balloons would most effectively go before writing the dialogue itself, somewhat as a musician might wait until a tune is perfectly constructed before attempting to write and fit lyrics to it.

It's an untypical end to a superhero punch-up, even for today, in that it's so quiet, and that it carries no hint of a specific conflict to come. There's no hook for the next issue here, unless it's the sense that a creative team that can produce fascinating little story-telling progressions like this demand our presence next time around.

7.

Our last example here isn't by Mr Kirby and Mr Lee at all, but by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, though Joe Sinnott, Kirby's long-standing FF inker, is still on hand to maintain some continuity between the golden age of the Fantastic Four and a somewhat more tarnished era. The above triptych is from Fantastic Four No. 128, the closing issue of the first FF story written by Lee's successor Roy Thomas. The three-panel closer had disappeared from the Fantastic Four with Kirby's departure after issue 102, only to reappear two years later in 1974 with Thomas's first script. Given that writer's keen and detailed sense of comic book tradition, it's hard to suppress the sense that he asked for the triptych to return. (And with his soon leaving the book, the triptych largely disappeared as a regular feature in the FF for at least the many years I stayed with the book.)

But all the great strengths of the triptych can be seen here, given that the main conflicts in the story have, as usual, been settled. Here in this coda we again have the focus on emotion, and in this case the focus is on the awful loneliness of the Mole Man. The design by Mr Buscema is exquisite in its simplicity and precision. The panels are still, with only the choice of closer and closer shots giving the panel sequence a sense of progression. And from the first panel, where we can see the Mole Man in his apparent regal pomp surrounded by his subjects, which is surely a difficult design to pull off in an uncluttered fashion in such a small panel, to the last, where our sympathy is inevitably engaged by the silly lovelorn man, it's perfect. (The fact that Mr Thomas restrains his usual loquaciousness greatly assists the touching affect too.)

And perhaps this example shows that the Kirby Closing Triptych might be a narrative convention which other artists and writers might put to good use more often in the present day too.

8.

The Kirby Closing Triptych is of course a relatively minor artistic resource. And it's understandable that it might not be the common closing trick which it once was. But it remains a brilliant way to create an emotional response at the end of a superhero punch-up, and it's also an effective way to help create anticipation and even dread where the prospect of the next episode of a comic book is concerned. Perhaps the fact that it's less useful in conveying "big" moments, teeth grinding hyperbole and muscle-tensing face-offs, has meant that it's not so fashionable a tool anymore. But I would conceed that the matter of why the closing triptych is less popular an option today is worth saving for another blog entry, and another time.


I'm sure that I've missed many examples of the triptych being used in recent years. But I guess I can only write about my experience, and there's alot of comics out there! And of course, I'm not arguing for a return to the days of 1961 and 1962, when pretty much every Marvel Comic, including the romance titles, seemed to use the three-panel closer more often than not. Have you spotted the technique in use recently? Do you think it has a place in the modern-day artist's armoury? Next time I write such an entry, I'll be focusing on a contemporary artist, just to show that I'm as big a fan of today as yesterday. As always, do feel free to let me know, and thank you for reading! Have a good day.


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