Sky Masters of the Space Force was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, syndicated

Print syndication

Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....

 newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 created by writer Dave Wood and penciler Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....

, featuring the adventures of an American astronaut

Astronaut

An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

.

Conception

Sky Masters of the Space Force began life as a science-fiction strip created by artist Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....

 and writer Dave Wood called Space Busters, which was designed to be sold to a newspaper syndicate

Print syndication

Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....

 This strip did not sell, however.

In 1958, Harry Elmlark, "an agent from the George Matthew Adams Service

George Matthew Adams

George Matthew Adams was a newspaper columnist and founder of the George Matthew Adams Newspaper Service, which syndicated comic strips and columns to newspapers for five decades...

", asked DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

 editor Jack Schiff for a science-fiction comic to be adapted into strip form, to capitalize on American interest in the Space race

Space Race

The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national...

 in the wake of the previous year's launch of Sputnik. Schiff rejected Space Busters and then either collaborated in the creation of a new strip, or simply encouraged Kirby and Wood to produce "a strip that dealt with rocket launchings, moon shots, and general story lines just a little ahead of current developments in the news."

Creation and conflict

With art samples and story outline approved by Elmlark, Kirby penciled the strip, which was initially written by brothers Dick & Dave Wood and inked by the unrelated Wally Wood

Wally Wood

Wallace Allan Wood was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, best known for his work in EC Comics and Mad. He was one of Mads founding cartoonists in 1952. Although much of his early professional artwork is signed Wallace Wood, he became known as Wally Wood, a name he...

; at that same time, Dave Wood was also working with Kirby on the Showcase Comics

Showcase (comics)

Showcase has been the title of several comic anthology series published by DC Comics. The general theme of these series has been to feature new and minor characters as a way to gauge reader interest in them, without the difficulty and risk of featuring "untested" characters in their own ongoing...

issues of Kirby's "Challengers of the Unknown" feature for DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

, and Wally Wood would later ink issues #2-8 of Kirby's Challengers of the Unknown

Challengers of the Unknown

The Challengers of the Unknown is a group of fictional characters in comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Jack Kirby, or co-created with Dave Wood , this quartet of adventurers explored science fictional and apparent paranormal occurrences and faced fantastic menaces.Scripts for the first...

comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 series during the last half of 1958 and the first half of 1959. Later "Sky Masters" strips were written by Kirby, and inked by Dick Ayers

Dick Ayers

Richard "Dick" Ayers is an American comic book artist and cartoonist best known for his work as one of Jack Kirby's inkers during the late-1950s and 1960s period known as the Silver Age of Comics, including on some of the earliest issues of Marvel Comics' The Fantastic Four, and as the signature...

, with the final month penciled and inked by Kirby alone.

Ayers described in participation in a 1996 interview:

"I also began [work on] Sky Masters, the newspaper strip. There is a lot of confusion on this; people think Wally Wood inked them all, because they're signed Kirby/Wood. But that was Dave Wood, the writer [who was unrelated to artist Wally Wood]. I began Sky Masters with the 36th Sunday page; Jack's pencils, my inks, in September of 1959. I ended the Sundays in January of 1960. I also did the dailies for a period of [over] two years, from September of '59 to December of '61. These were complete inks; I was the only one doing it at the time. Of course, Wally Wood also worked on that strip, in the beginning, before me."

Dave Wood promised Schiff "a percentage for arranging the deal," which Kirby allegedly assumed was a one-time payment but that Schiff understood to be on-going. In Spring 1958, pre-publication, Kirby verbally agreed to pay Schiff an ongoing percentage, in large part to safeguard his (Kirby's) lucrative relationship with DC. But confusion over whether the percentage should come from gross or net income (and the apparent expectation that Kirby would personally cover the strip's production costs) strained the relationship between Kirby and Schiff. Kirby also butted heads with writer Dave Wood, requesting a higher percentage of the royalties, ostensibly to cover costs of paying Wally Wood for inking. When Kirby threatened to leave the strip, Schiff implied Kirby should ink himself, and noted that Wood required money to pay his brother, Dick, who was helping with the writing.

On April 15, 1958, Schiff drew up a formal agreement documenting the royalty cuts between Kirby and Wood, and also Schiff himself (4%). By July, Schiff requested a higher percentage before the strip debuted on September 8, 1958 in "over three hundred newspapers." With the arrival of the first royalty checks, the Wood brothers sent money to Schiff, but Kirby refused, leading to tension between himself and DC. In an attempt to defuse the situation, Kirby attempted to buy Schiff out of the contract, reiterating the feeling that Schiff was only due a onetime payment rather than an on-going percentage of the royalties.

Legal challenge

Schiff refused the offer, and subsequently fired Kirby from Challengers of the Unknown, claiming that ideas from the Challengers story conferences were finding their way into Kirby's Sky Masters work. On December 11, 1958, Kirby discovered that Schiff was suing both he and the Woods for breach of contract, and counter-sued Schiff. Kirby claimed that Schiff was merely an editor who had "assigned him, the Wood brothers, and Eddie Herron freelance work," that Kirby and the Woods had visited Elmlark without Schiff, that Schiff was not involved in the agency agreement, but that he and the Woods had offered Schiff a gift. Kirby further alleged that Schiff had implied that not paying his demands would lead to Kirby losing work at DC.

Schiff's lawyer Myron Shapiro questioned Kirby at trial, and confirmed that Schiff had not verbalised such threats. Jack Liebowitz

Jack Liebowitz

Jacob "Jack" S. Liebowitz , was an American accountant and publisher, known primarily as the co-owner with Harry Donenfeld of National Allied Publications .-Early life:...

 (executive vice president and general manager of National/DC) testified on Schiff's behalf, and the signed agreement promising Schiff an on-going percentage led the "very short trial at the supreme court in White Plains

White Plains, New York

White Plains is a city and the county seat of Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located in south-central Westchester, about east of the Hudson River and northwest of Long Island Sound...

, New York" led to Schiff being successful. Kirby left then "market leader" DC, and returned to work for Atlas Comics

Atlas Comics

Atlas Comics may refer to* Atlas Comics , one of the two comic publishing companies that would be the forerunner of Marvel Comics* Seaboard Periodicals, founded by Timely/Atlas /Marvel founder, a short-lived comic publisher that published under the Atlas Comics name and referred to as...

, but continued to draw Sky Masters until early 1961.

Episode guide

Daily stories

• "First Man in Space"
• "Sabotage"
• "Mayday Shannon"
• "The Lost Capsule"
• "Alfie"
• "Refugee"
• "Wedding in Space"
• "Message from Space"
• "Weather Watchers"
• "The Young Astronaut"

Sunday stories

• "The Atom Horse"
• "Project Darkside"
• "Mister Lunivac"
• "Jumbo Jones"
• "The Yogi Spaceman"

Reprints

All the Sky Masters strips are reprinted in The Complete Sky Masters of the Space Force, Pure Imagination

Pure Imagination (comics)

Pure Imagination is a comic book, magazine, and comics-related book publisher run by Greg Theakston since 1975.While briefly doing some original comics in the 1990s, as well a publishing a few "girlie" magazines, its main focus has been in publishing books to preserve the great works of several...

, 2000, ISBN #1-56685-009-6. Note that one daily does not appear in sequence, but does appear on the back cover of the book. The Sundays are in black and white.

The first eight Sundays were reprinted in color in an earlier Sky Masters book from Pure Imagination. The remaining Sundays were reprinted in color by Comics Revue

Comics Revue

Comics Revue is a bi-monthly small press comic book published by Manuscript Press and edited by Rick Norwood. Don Markstein edited the publication from 1984 to 1987 and 1992 to 1996....

magazine.

A 1980 collection published by Quality Comic Art Productions of Buffalo New York reprinted the beginning of the strip and, while smaller in format, often featured artwork less-modified by artists involved in the reprint production than the later Pure Imagination publications.