A new collection of Sky Masters of the Space Force, Sunday strips, written by Dave Wood with art by Jack Kirby and Wallace “Wally” Wood, the focus of a crowdfunding campaign last year, is now available to buy from select US-based retailer Budd’s Books, and others.
Sky Masters of the Space Force – The Complete Sunday Strips in Color, designed and produced Ferran Delgado, published by Kirby Museum Press is a new edition of the collection, published in a deluxe, larger size with 16 bonus pages in colour.
Priced at $55, with international postage on top from the likely to high, this is no impulse buy for Kirby fans outside the United States… but can you resist?
The Sky Masters newspaper strip is one of the most fascinating and obscure works by comics legend Jack Kirby. Created and developed by Kirby with writer Dave Wood at the beginning of 1958, while Kirby was working for National (DC), the Sky Masters daily strip debuted on 8th September of that year.
Five months later, on 8th February 1959, the colour Sunday strips arrived, featuring a totally independent story line from the dailies, the focus of this new collection.
The strip narrates, with a realistic approach, the adventures of Major Sky Masters during the early days of space exploration in the late 1950s, just as a new front opened in the Cold War between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.: a frenzied space race.
Sky Masters features spectacular art from two of the comics industry’s leading lights of the era, Jack Kirby and Wallace Wood. Compared to the dailies, the Sunday strips were the maximum expression of the team’s artistic prowess. While the Sky Masters Sundays have seen print before, they’ve never been presented in their complete form or in colour.
Spanish designer Ferran Delgado, who compiled and produced the Eisner Award-nominated first edition of this book published in 2015, found all the best source material, including an extra 100 panels that were created to allow for the various formats of Sunday newspaper sections. Some of these panels hadn’t been seen in any reprint editions.
Sky Masters of the Space Force — The Complete Sunday Strips in Color contains all 54 complete Sunday strips, including the extra panels, compiled in color, all painstakingly remastered in this deluxe volume.
Delgado also features the first re-printing of strip #52, which hadn’t been printed since its original publication in newspapers.
“The colour of the Sky Masters Sundays is especially fantastic since it was prepared by Kirby himself,” Rand Hoppe, Jack Kirby Museum Director, said. “These are rare and certified samples of published ‘Kirby Kolor.’” The volume contains 13 beautiful colour guides painted by him over pristine stats highlighting Wallace Wood’s delicate ink work.
The daily strip continued until 25th February 1961, but the Sundays only lasted for a year, abruptly ending after Kirby received the negative verdict of a Sky Masters-related lawsuit brought by National editor Jack Schiff. Comic Book Creator editor Jon B. Cooke’s article, “The Story Behind Sky Masters” from The Jack Kirby Collector is included in the book, to provide more detail on this difficult period in Kirby’s career.
Originally a Zoop offering which was a huge success, this book’s likely to sell out quickly, so get your orders in now – and don’t think about the postage!
Sky Masters of the Space Force — The Complete Sunday Strips in Color also includes plenty of extras, like articles by comics scholars, samples of stunning original art, and many other surprises.
New Daily Collection in the works
Ferran Delgado has also curated an entirely new collection of Daily Strips from proofs, which is being published in Spanish. Hopefully, this will also be offered by Kirby Museum as they have this Sundays collection, and in English of course.
• Sky Masters of the Space Force – The Complete Sunday Strips in Color is available here from Budd’s Books | Also available from Walt’s Comic Shop here
With thanks to Allan Harvey
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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I backed it on Zoop! , it really is a stunning edition. Excellent Kirby and Wood artwork complemented by great storyline.