Captain America #101 (Marvel Comics, 1968)

Kirby blasts into action with this career-defining title page for one of his greatest novelistic stories since the resurrection of Captain America in The Avengers #4 (1964). This pivotal title page heralds an account of the fourth of a squadron of Sleepers -- lethal Nazi robots, planted near the end of World War II as long-term agents of retaliation from a defeated Third Reich. The composition achieves almost a three-dimensional illusion, as a result of Kirby's use of extreme perspective, thrusting Captain America's head and shoulders toward the foreground while forcing the character's fists and shield toward the background to dispose of armed thugs. The extreme foreground contains an element of near-subtlety by comparison with the surging Captain America figure: The gun-wielding figure will prove to be a fugitive war criminal, intent upon eluding capture. Syd Shores, a sensitive Kirby-style inker in a class with Dick Ayers (1950s-60s) and Mike Royer (1970s), captures well Kirby's Expressionistic preference for power-streaks and impact-lines to convey violent action -- an illusion so powerful that no sound-effects lettering is needed. Kirby's handwritten description of the scene appears in faded pencil-strokes at upper margin. Kirby's autograph appears in felt-pen ink at lower left.