Captain victory biography

By the very beginning of the 1980s, what we now know as the Direct Market for comic books–specialty shops devoted to the product who would buy new issues on a non-returnable basis, thus eliminating the enormous amount of waste the Newsstand consignment system generated–had grown to the point where it looked as though there might be enough accounts to generate sufficient orders to make titles directed exclusively at the Direct Market possible. And there was a bit of a gold rush, as new companies sprouted up attempting to tap into this new marketplace, while mainstays Marvel and DC tried to work out how to leverage it to best advantage.

One of the earliest entrants into this burgeoning marketplace was Pacific Comics, owned by the Schanes brothers. They had been distributors for comics into the Direct Market, and they saw an opportunity to make the transition into publishers themselves. Theirs was among the earliest product directed at the Comic Book Specialty Shops whose package mirrored that of Marvel and DC–most earlier trailblazers, such as WaRP Graphics or CEREBUS or THE FIRST KINGDOM or Eclipse tended to be publishing either in a magazine format or in black and white. But Pacific Comics would field comic books that looked and felt similar to those of the major publishers.

Pacific Comics didn’t last long, only a couple of years–they overextended themselves financially and after a few reversals they were forced to go out of business–competing firm Eclipse Comics wound up putting out a few of the last remaining unpublished Pacific Comics products. Still, in their brief time on the stands, they released new series by Mike Grell and Steve Ditko, created a new short-lived renaissance for horror with Bruce Jones’ TWISTED TALES, unleashed Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer onto the world–and published some of the last original concepts created by the King of comics himself, Jack Kirby.

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Origin[]

Jack Wilson worked as an aide to a U.S. Ambassador, but after discovering saboteurs planning to attack America, he becomes Captain Victory. Jack prevented the attack by intercepting and then sinking the ship.

Powers and Abilities[]

Captain Victory possessed the superpowers of super strength and flight.

Public Domain Appearances[]

Notes[]

See Also[]

1980s comic book series

Captain Victory is a comic book originally created, written and drawn by Jack Kirby. It was first published by American comic book publisher Pacific Comics in 1981. Kirby agreed to create a comic for the fledgling publisher because Pacific promised him full creative control, and ownership of the characters.

Publication history

One of Pacific Comics first titles, the original run of Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers lasted thirteen issues, plus a special, through January 1984. All were written, illustrated, and edited by Jack Kirby.

In the last issues of the Pacific series, Kirby crafted an origin story for Captain Victory which he tied into the New Gods comic book that he had written and drawn for DC Comics in the 1970s. It was suggested that Captain Victory was the son of Orion, of the New Gods. Orion was not specifically named, but a number of clues were planted, including equipment said to belong to Captain Victory's father that was identical to the astro-harness ridden by Orion in the earlier series. Additionally, Captain Victory's grandfather, Blackmaas, was illustrated only as a cast shadow, but a shadow that to many readers bore a resemblance to Orion's father, Darkseid.

After the end of Pacific, no more was seen of Captain Victory until Topps Comics attempted to revive the character as part of a planned 5-issue mini-series. It only lasted one issue (Victory #1, June 1994) before Topps cancelled all of the 'Kirbyverse' books in 1994. This issue was a part of a more complex project named Secret City Saga.

TwoMorrows Publishing created a 'graphite edition' reprint of the first Captain Victory issue. The edition, in TwoMorrow's words, "presented [Captain Victory #1] as it was created (before it was broken up for the later Pacific Comics series), reproduced from copies of Jack's uninked pencils!"

In 2000, Jack Kirby's grand

Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers (1981) #1-13,
Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers Special (1983) #1

After dipping their toes into publishing comics with One four years earlier, Pacific Comics was ready to do a real push into the comics market now, and they wanted to launch with the biggest name possible: Jack Kirby:

We needed a creator who was a juggernaut, one which every collector and every CBSR would recognize, even if the character (s) involved would be entirely new.

Pacific Comics launched with the king, Jack Kirby, and his new creator owned title called Captain Victory.

However:

Most people don’t know this next tidbit, but we intended on our first major release to be a project Gil Kane was working on at the time – Blackmark.

Furthermore:

Gil very much liked our creator friendly contract, but Gil was really old school, and he wanted to have Blackmark on newsstands nationwide. Gil was quite stubborn and was challenging to have a conversation with. We didn’t believe in the newsstand channel of a viable distribution model, as the sell through percentages often were as low as 20%, and we felt the whole old school fully returnable system was so out of date and fundamentally flawed. Also, when we were going to launch our line of full color comic books, we wouldn’t have any advertising revenue, just sales from the actual comic books.

The negotiations fell through and they started with Kirby instead…

Since this is the first comic-book comic that Pacific published, I’m going to do a few more images from this comic than strictly necessary, perhaps. I bought this comic more or less as it was being published, so I was like 13 at the time. The thing is that I can’t recall a single thing about it. I can’t have disliked it, because I continued buying it