I recently began reading the complete run of Jack Kirby’s Sky Masters daily newspaper strips in Spanish. This endeavour is nothing short of a joy thanks to the exquisite Sky Masters of the Space Force: Recopilación de todas las tiras diarias (1958-1961).
The book’s curator, Ferran Delgado, is the mastermind behind the magnificent book Sky Masters: The Complete Sunday Strips in Color from 2018 that was republished as a Kirby Museum initiative in 2025. It is still available at the Museum table at select shows.
Both books were a labour of love for Ferran who could never expect to see a reasonable return on his investment. Much of the material came from the remarkable personal collection he had amassed including printer’s proofs.
Ferran says most of the original English lettering was by Joe Letterese, with contributions by Wallace Wood, and Kirby himself. One of Ferran’s rare talents is lettering in a style, and here in re-lettering the entire run in Spanish, he provides a gorgeous uniform style.
Like the Sundays book, this thing is a beast, weighing in at nearly 1.75 kg (over three pounds) and measuring 11.25″ wide by 8.75″ tall. The size and quality at which the strips are reproduced, two per page, puts previous efforts (Theakston and Hermes) to shame. Greg Theakston pioneered the work in the late ’90s but when he couldn’t complete the collection he fudged the ending, pretending it didn’t exist. The Hermes edition is just a cheap copy of Theakston’s work, defects intact, designed to take away the market from a more caring and faithful undertaking.
I’m personally delighted for the opportunity to read this book in Spanish. Much of my pre-Canadian ancestry is from England and Scotland, but my maternal grandmother was from Chile. My mother’s two oldest siblings were born there, but when the family immigrated to Quebec (in the 1920s or 30s) the two were strongly discouraged by their elementary school peers from using one of the languages of their childhood. My mother, born in 1936, never learned Spanish. I can’t think of a better way to reconnect with the language than through this work of Kirby’s, magnificently presented.
Ferran continues to share his Sky Masters research on Facebook. He had a recent post in the Marvel Method group in which he ties the judge’s decision in the Schiff case to Kirby’s decision to stop producing Sunday strips. At or about the date of the judge’s decision, Kirby resorted to cutting up daily strips to cobble together the final Sunday strip (recently sold at Heritage).
There are still copies of Sky Masters of the Space Force: Recopilación de todas las tiras diarias available from the author. The publisher may still offer it for sale for 39.90 Euros: I’ll update this post when it’s confirmed. Both of these options come with exorbitant shipping rates from Spain thanks to the one-man withdrawal of the United States from the rest of the world. The publisher recommends Amazon, where I found one reseller with one remaining copy, but there appear to be dozens available through AbeBooks.
DC Comics has nearly figured out how to present Kirby’s work with the Absolute Fourth World books, but they still fall short of what Ferran has done with his Sky Masters productions. The Fourth World (1970-85) may be chronologically the next Kirby work worthy of the deluxe treatment, but Ferran has set the standard for presentation.
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