Jack Kirby
Encyclopedia
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.
Growing up poor in New York City, Kurtzberg entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s. He drew various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon
created the highly successful superhero
character Captain America
for Timely Comics
, predecessor of Marvel Comics
. During the 1940s, Kirby, generally teamed with Simon, created numerous characters for that company and for the company that would become DC Comics
.
After serving in World War II
, Kirby returned to comics and worked in a variety of genres. He contributed to a number of publishers, including DC, Harvey Comics
, Hillman Periodicals
and Crestwood Publications
, where he and Simon created the genre of romance comics
. He and Simon also launched their own short-lived comic company, Mainline Publications
. Kirby ultimately found himself at Timely's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics
, later to be known as Marvel Comics
. There, in the 1960s, he and writer-editor Stan Lee
co-created many of Marvel's major characters, including the Fantastic Four
, the X-Men
, and the Hulk
. Despite the high sales and critical acclaim of the Lee-Kirby titles, however, Kirby felt treated unfairly, and left the company in 1970 for rival DC.
There Kirby created his Fourth World saga, which spanned several comics titles. While these series proved commercially unsuccessful and were canceled, several of their characters and the Fourth World mythos have continued as a significant part of the DC Comics universe. Kirby returned to Marvel briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s, then ventured into television animation and independent comics. In his later years, Kirby, who has been likened to "the William Blake
of comics", began receiving great recognition in the mainstream press for his career accomplishments, and in 1987, he, along with Carl Barks
and Will Eisner
, was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor.
. His parents, Rose and Benjamin Kurtzberg, were Austrian Jewish immigrants, and his father earned a living as a garment factory worker. Growing up on Suffolk Street, Kirby was often involved in street fights with other kids, later saying that "fighting became second nature. I began to like it." Through his youth, Kirby desired to escape his neighborhood. He liked to draw and sought out places he could learn more about art. Essentially self-taught, Kirby cited among his influences the comic strip
artists Milton Caniff
, Hal Foster, and Alex Raymond
, as well as such editorial cartoonists as C. H. Sykes, "Ding" Darling, and Rollin Kirby
. He was rejected by the Educational Alliance because he drew "too fast with charcoal", according to Kirby. He later found an outlet for his skills by drawing cartoons for the newspaper of the Boys Brotherhood Republic, a "miniature city" on East 3rd Street where street kids ran their own government.
Kirby enrolled at the Pratt Institute
in Brooklyn
, at what he said was age 14, leaving after a week. "I wasn't the kind of student that Pratt was looking for. They wanted people who would work on something forever. I didn't want to work on any project forever. I intended to get things done".
Per his sometimes-unreliable memory, Kirby joined the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate in 1936, working there on newspaper
comic strips and on single-panel advice cartoons such as Your Health Comes First!!! (under the pseudonym
Jack Curtiss). He remained until late 1939, when he began working for the movie
animation
company Fleischer Studios
as an inbetweener (an artist who fills in the action between major-movement frames) on Popeye
cartoons. "I went from Lincoln to Fleischer," he recalled. "From Fleischer I had to get out in a hurry because I couldn't take that kind of thing," describing it as "a factory in a sense, like my father's factory. They were manufacturing pictures."
Around that time, the American comic book industry was booming. Kirby began writing and drawing for the comic-book packager Eisner & Iger
, one of a handful of firms creating comics on demand for publishers. Through that company, Kirby did what he remembers as his first comic book work, for Wild Boy Magazine. This included such strips as the science fiction
adventure The Diary of Dr. Hayward (under the pseudonym Curt Davis), the Western crimefighter strip Wilton of the West (as "Fred Sande"), the swashbuckler
strip The Count of Monte Cristo (again as "Jack Curtiss"), and the humor strips Abdul Jones (as "Ted Grey)" and Socko the Seadog (as "Teddy"), all variously for Jumbo Comics and other Eisner-Iger clients. He ultimately settled on the pen name Jack Kirby because it reminded him of actor James Cagney
. However, he took offense to those who suggested he changed his name in order to hide his Jewish heritage.
In the summer of 1940, Kirby and his family moved to Brooklyn. There, Kirby met Rosalind "Roz" Goldstein, who lived in his family's apartment building. The pair began dating soon afterward. Kirby proposed to Goldstein on her eighteenth birthday, and the two became engaged.
, earning a then-reasonable $15 a week salary. He began exploring superhero narrative with the comic strip The Blue Beetle, published January to March 1940, starring a character created by the pseudonymous Charles Nicholas
, a house name that Kirby retained for the three-month-long strip. During this time, Kirby met and began collaborating with cartoonist
and Fox editor
Joe Simon
, who in addition to his staff work continued to freelance. Simon recalled in 1988, "I loved Jack's work and the first time I saw it I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He asked if we could do some freelance work together. I was delighted and I took him over to my little office. We worked from the second issue of Blue Bolt..."
After leaving Fox and landing at pulp magazine
publisher Martin Goodman
's Timely Comics
(the future Marvel Comics
), Simon and Kirby created the patriotic superhero Captain America
in late 1940. Simon cut a deal with Goodman that gave him and Kirby 15 percent of the profits from the feature as well as salaried positions as the company's editor and art director, respectively. The first issue of Captain America Comics, released in early 1941, sold out in days, and the second issue's print run was set at over a million copies. The title's success established the team as a notable creative force in the industry. After the first issue was published, Simon asked Kirby to join the Timely staff as the company's art director.
With the success of the Captain America character, Simon felt that Goodman was not paying the pair the promised percentage of profits, and so sought work for the two of them at National Comics (later named DC Comics
). Kirby and Simon negotiated a deal that would pay them a combined $500 a week, as opposed to the $75 and $85 they respectively earned at Timely. Fearing that Goodman would not pay them if he found out they were moving to National, the pair kept the deal a secret while they continued producing work for the company. Goodman eventually learned of their plans, and Kirby and Simon left after completing their work on Captain America Comics #10.
Kirby and Simon spent their first weeks at National trying to come up with characters while the company sought how best to utilize the pair. After a few failed editor-assigned ghosting assignments, National's Jack Liebowitz
told them to "just do what you want". The pair then revamped the Sandman
feature in Adventure Comics
and created the superhero Manhunter
. In July 1942 they began the Boy Commandos
feature. The ongoing Boy Commandos series, launched later that same year, sold over a million copies a month, becoming National's third best-selling title.
With World War II underway, Liebowitz expected that Simon and Kirby would be drafted, so he asked the artists to create an inventory of material to be published in their absence. The pair hired writers, inkers, letterers, and colorists in order to create a year's worth of material. Kirby was drafted into the U.S. Army on June 7, 1943. After basic training at Camp Stewart, near Atlanta, Georgia
, he was assigned to Company F of the 11th Infantry. He landed on Omaha Beach
in Normandy
on August 23, 1944, two-and-a-half months after D-Day
, though Kirby's reminiscences would place his arrival just 10 days after. Kirby recalled that a lieutenant, learning that comics artist Kirby was in his command, made him a scout who would advance into towns and draw reconnaissance
maps and pictures, an extremely dangerous duty.
Kirby and his wife corresponded regularly by v-mail
, with Roz sending "him a letter a day" while she worked in a lingerie shop and lived with her mother at 2820 Brighton 7th Street in Brooklyn
. During the winter of 1944, Kirby suffered severe frostbite
on his lower extremities and was taken to a hospital in London
, England, for recovery. Doctors considered amputating Kirby's legs, but he eventually recovered from the frostbite. He returned to the United States in January 1945, assigned to Camp Butner
in North Carolina
, where he spent the last six months of his service as part of the motor pool. Kirby was honorably discharged as a Private First Class
on July 20, 1945, having received a Combat Infantryman Badge
and a European/African/Middle Eastern Theater ribbon
with a bronze battle star.
After returning from the army, Kirby's first daughter, Susan, was born on December 6, 1945. Simon arranged for work for Kirby and himself at Harvey Comics
, where, through the early 1950s, the duo created such titles as the kid-gang adventure Boy Explorers Comics, the kid-gang Western
Boys' Ranch
, the superhero comic Stuntman, and, in vogue with the fad for 3-D movies, Captain 3-D
. Simon and Kirby additionally freelanced for Hillman Periodicals
(the crime fiction
comic Real Clue Crime) and for Crestwood Publications
(Justice Traps the Guilty).
The team found its greatest success in the postwar period by creating romance comics
. Simon, inspired by Macfadden Publications
' romantic-confession magazine True Story, transplanted the idea to comic books and with Kirby created a first-issue mock-up of Young Romance
. Showing it to Crestwood general manager Maurice Rosenfeld, Simon asked for 50% of the comic's profits. Crestwood publishers Teddy Epstein and Mike Bleier agreed, stipulating that the creators would take no money up front. Young Romance #1 (cover-date Oct. 1947) "became Jack and Joe's biggest hit in years". Indeed, the pioneering title sold a staggering 92% of its print run, inspiring Crestwood to increase the print run by the third issue to triple the initial number of copies. Initially published bimonthly, Young Romance quickly became a monthly title and produced the spin-off Young Love—together the two titles sold two million copies per month, according to Simon—later joined by Young Brides and In Love, the latter "featuring full-length romance stories". Young Romance spawned dozens of imitators from publishers such as Timely, Fawcett
, Quality
, and Fox Feature Syndicate
. Despite the glut, the Simon & Kirby romance titles continued to sell millions of copies a month, which allowed Kirby to buy a house for his family in Mineola
, Long Island
, New York
.
Kirby's second child, Neal, was born in May 1948. His third child, Barbara, was born in November 1952. Bitter that Timely Comics
' 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics
, had relaunched Captain America in a new series in 1954, Kirby and Simon created Fighting American
. Simon recalled, "We thought we'd show them how to do Captain America". While the comic book initially portrayed the protagonist as anti-Communist
, Simon and Kirby turned the series into a superhero satire with the second issue, in the aftermath of the Army-McCarthy hearings
and the public backlash against the Red-baiting McCarthy.
At the urging of a Crestwood salesman, Kirby and Simon launched their own comics company, Mainline Publications
, securing a distribution deal with Leader News in late 1953 or early 1954, subletting space from their friend Al Harvey's Harvey Publications at 1860 Broadway
. Mainline, which existed from 1954 to 1955, published four titles: the Western
Bullseye: Western Scout; the war comic
Foxhole, since EC Comics
and Atlas Comics
were having success with war comics, but promoting theirs as as being written and drawn by actual veterans; In Love, since their earlier romance comic Young Love
was still being widely imitated; and the crime comic Police Trap, which claimed to be based on genuine accounts by law-enforcement officials. After the duo rearranged and republished artwork from an old Crestwood story in In Love, Crestwood refused to pay Simon and Kirby. After reviewing Crestwood's finances, the pair's attorney's stated that the company owed them $130,000 over the past seven years. Crestwood paid them $10,000 in addition to their recent delayed payments. However, the partnership between Kirby and Simon had become strained. Simon left the industry for a career in advertising, while Kirby continued to freelance. "He wanted to do other things and I stuck with comics," Kirby recalled in 1971. "It was fine. There was no reason to continue the partnership and we parted friends."
At this point in the mid-1950s, Kirby made a temporary return to the former Timely Comics
, now known as Atlas Comics
, the direct predecessor of Marvel Comics
. Inker Frank Giacoia
had approached editor-in-chief Stan Lee for work and suggested he could "get Kirby back here to pencil some stuff." While also freelancing for National Comics, the future DC Comics
, Kirby drew 20 stories for Atlas from 1956 to 1957: Beginning with the five-page "Mine Field" in Battleground #14 (Nov.1956), Kirby penciled and in some cases also inked
(with his wife, Roz) and wrote stories of the Western
hero Black Rider
, the Fu Manchu
-like Yellow Claw
, and more. But in 1957, distribution troubles caused the "Atlas implosion" that resulted in several series being dropped and no new material being assigned for many months. It would be the following year before Kirby returned to the nascent Marvel.
For DC around this time, Kirby co-created with writers Dick and Dave Wood the non-superpowered adventuring quartet the Challengers of the Unknown
in Showcase
#6 (Feb. 1957), while also contributing to such anthologies as House of Mystery
. During 30 months freelancing for DC, Kirby drew slightly more than 600 pages, which included 11 six-page Green Arrow
stories in World's Finest Comics
and Adventure Comics
that, in a rarity, Kirby inked himself. Kirby recast the archer as a science-fiction hero, moving him away from his Batman-formula roots, but in the process alienating Green Arrow co-creator Mort Weisinger
.
He also began drawing a newspaper comic strip
, Sky Masters of the Space Force, written by the Wood brothers and initially inked by the unrelated Wally Wood
. Kirby left National Comics due largely to a contractual dispute in which editor Jack Schiff, who had been involved in getting Kirby and the Wood brothers the Sky Masters contract, claimed he was due royalties from Kirby's share of the strip's profits. Schiff successfully sued Kirby. Some DC editors also had criticized him over art details, such as not drawing "the shoelaces on a cavalry
man's boots" and showing a Native American
"mounting his horse from the wrong side."
Several months later, after his split with DC, Kirby began freelancing regularly for Atlas. Because of the poor page rates, Kirby would spend 12 to 14 hours daily at his drawing table at home, producing eight to ten pages of artwork a day. His first published work at Atlas was the cover of and the seven-page story "I Discovered the Secret of the Flying Saucers" in Strange Worlds
#1 (Dec. 1958). Initially with Christopher Rule
as his regular inker, and later Dick Ayers
, Kirby drew across all genres, from romance comics
to war comics
, crime stories to Western
s, but made his mark primarily with a series of supernatural
-fantasy
and science fiction
stories featuring giant, drive-in movie-style monsters with names like Groot
, the Thing from Planet X; Grottu, King of the Insects; and Fin Fang Foom
for the company's many anthology series, such as Amazing Adventures
, Strange Tales
, Tales to Astonish
, Tales of Suspense
, and World of Fantasy
. His bizarre designs of powerful, unearthly creatures proved a hit with readers. Additionally, he also freelanced for Archie Comics
' around this time, reuniting briefly with Joe Simon to help develop the series The Fly
and The Double Life of Private Strong. He also drew some issues of Classics Illustrated
.
It was at Marvel, however, with writer and editor-in-chief Lee, that Kirby hit his stride once again in superhero comics, beginning with The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961). The landmark series became a hit that revolutionized the industry with its comparative naturalism
and, eventually, a cosmic purview informed by Kirby's seemingly boundless imaginationone well-matched with the consciousness-expanding youth culture of the 1960s.
For almost a decade, Kirby provided Marvel's house style, co-creating with Stan Lee many of the Marvel characters and designing their visual motifs. At Lee's request, he often provided new-to-Marvel artists "breakdown" layouts, over which they would pencil in order to become acquainted with the Marvel look. As artist Gil Kane
described:
Highlights other than the Fantastic Four include: Thor
, the Hulk
, Iron Man
, the original X-Men
, the Silver Surfer
, Doctor Doom
, Galactus
, Uatu the Watcher
, Magneto
, Ego the Living Planet
, the Inhumans
and their hidden city of Attilan, and the Black Panther
comics' first known black
superheroand his African nation of Wakanda
. Simon and Kirby's Captain America was also incorporated into Marvel's continuity with Kirby approving Lee's idea of partially remaking the character as a man out of his time and regretting the death of his sidekick.
In 1968 and 1969, Joe Simon was involved in litigation with Marvel Comics over the ownership of Captain America, initiated by Marvel after Simon registered the copyright renewal for Captain America in his own name. According to Simon, Kirby agreed to support the company in the litigation and, as part of a deal Kirby made with publisher Martin Goodman, signed over to Marvel any rights he might have had to the character.
Kirby continued to expand the medium's boundaries, devising photo-collage
covers and interiors, developing new drawing techniques such as the method for depicting energy fields now known as "Kirby Dots
", and other experiments. Yet he grew increasingly dissatisfied with working at Marvel. There have been a number of reasons given for this dissatisfaction, including resentment over Stan Lee's increasing media prominence, a lack of full creative control, anger over breaches of perceived promises by publisher Martin Goodman, and frustration over Marvel's failure to credit him specifically for his story plotting and for his character creations and co-creations. He began to both script and draw some secondary features for Marvel, such as "The Inhumans" in Amazing Adventures
, as well as horror stories for the anthology title Chamber of Darkness
, and received full credit for doing so; but he eventually left the company in 1970 for rival DC Comics, under editorial director Carmine Infantino
.
Kirby spent nearly two years negotiating a deal to move to DC Comics, where in late 1970 he signed a three-year contract with an option for two additional years. He produced a series of interlinked titles under the blanket sobriquet "The Fourth World", which included a trilogy of new titles — New Gods
, Mister Miracle
, and The Forever People — as well as the extant Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. Kirby picked the latter book because the series was without a stable creative team and he did not want to cost anyone a job. The central villain of the Fourth World series, Darkseid
, and some of the Fourth World concepts, appeared in Jimmy Olsen before the launch of the other Fourth World books, giving the new titles greater exposure to potential buyers.
Kirby later produced other DC features such as OMAC
, Kamandi
, The Demon, "The Losers", "Dingbats of Danger Street
", Kobra
and, together with former partner Joe Simon for one last time, a new incarnation of the Sandman
.
used a Fantastic Four
panel discussion to announce that Kirby was returning to Marvel after having left in 1970 to work for DC Comics
. Lee wrote in his monthly column, "Stan Lee's Soapbox", that, "I mentioned that I had a special announcement to make. As I started telling about Jack's return, to a totally incredulous audience, everyone's head started to snap around as Kirby himself came waltzin' down the aisle to join us on the rostrum! You can imagine how it felt clownin' around with the co-creator of most of Marvel's greatest strips once more."
Back at Marvel, Kirby both wrote and drew Captain America and created the series The Eternals
, which featured a race of inscrutable alien giants, the Celestials
, whose behind-the-scenes intervention in primordial humanity would eventually become a core element of Marvel Universe
continuity. Kirby's other Marvel creations in this period include Devil Dinosaur
, Machine Man
, and an adaptation and expansion of the movie
2001: A Space Odyssey
, as well as an abortive attempt to do the same for the classic television series, The Prisoner. He also wrote and drew Black Panther
and did numerous covers across the line.
and other animated
television
series. He also worked on The Fantastic Four cartoon show, reuniting him with scriptwriter Stan Lee
. He illustrated an adaptation of the Walt Disney movie The Black Hole
for Walt Disney’s Treasury of Classic Tales
syndicated comic strip in 1979-80.
In 1979, Kirby drew concept art for film producer
Barry Geller's script treatment adapting Roger Zelazny
's science fiction novel, Lord of Light, for which Geller had purchased the rights. In collaboration, Geller commissioned Kirby to draw set designs that would also be used as architectural renderings for a Colorado
theme park to be called Science Fiction Land; Geller announced his plans at a November press conference attended by Kirby, former NFL
American football
star Rosey Grier
, writer Ray Bradbury
, and others. While the film did not come to fruition, Kirby's drawings were used for the C.I.A.'s "Canadian caper
", in which some members of the U.S. embassy in Tehran
, Iran
, who had avoided capture in the Iran hostage crisis
, were able to escape the country posing as members of a movie location-scouting crew.
In the early 1980s, Pacific Comics
, a new, non-newsstand comic book publisher, made a then-groundbreaking deal with Kirby to publish a creator-owned series Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers
, and a six-issue mini-series called Silver Star
which was collected in hardcover format in 2007. This, together with similar actions by other independent comics publishers as Eclipse Comics
(where Kirby co-created Destroyer Duck
in a benefit comic-book series published to help Steve Gerber
fight a legal case versus Marvel), helped establish a precedent to end the monopoly of the work for hire
system, wherein comics creators, even freelancers, had owned no rights to characters they created.
Though estranged from Marvel, Kirby continued to do periodic work for DC Comics during the 1980s, including a brief revival of his "Fourth World" saga in the 1984 and 1985 Super Powers
mini-series and the 1985 graphic novel The Hunger Dogs. And in 1987, under much industry pressure, Marvel finally returned much of Kirby's original art to him.
Kirby also retained ownership of characters used by Topps Comics
beginning in 1993, for a set of series in what the company dubbed "The Kirbyverse". These titles were derived mainly from designs and concepts that Kirby had kept in his files, some intended initially for the by-then-defunct Pacific Comics, and then licensed to Topps for what would become the "Jack Kirby's Secret City Saga
" mythos. Marvel posthumously published a "lost" Kirby/Lee Fantastic Four
story, Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure (April 2008), with unused pages Kirby had originally drawn for Fantastic Four 108 (March 1971).
On February 6, 1994, Kirby died at age 76 of heart failure in his Thousand Oaks, California
home. He was buried at the Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park, Westlake Village, California
.
imprint
, a six-issue limited series
, Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters, featuring characters and concepts created by her father for Captain Victory. The series, scripted by Lisa Kirby, Robertson, Thibodeaux, and Richard French, with pencil art by Jack Kirby and Thibodeaux, and inking by Scott Hanna and Karl Kesel
primarily, ran an initial five issues (Sept. 2006 - Jan. 2007) and then a later final issue (Sept. 2007). The series was collected in hardcover (ISBN 0-7851-2628-7) in 2007, and in trade paperback
(ISBN 0-7851-2629-5) the following year.
On September 16, 2009, the Kirby estate also served notices of termination to Walt Disney Pictures
, 20th Century Fox
, Universal Pictures
, Paramount Pictures
, and Sony Pictures to attempt to regain control of various Silver Age Marvel characters. Marvel is seeking to invalidate these claims. However, in mid-March 2010 Kirby's estate "sued Marvel to terminate copyrights and gain profits from [Kirby's] comic creations." On July 28, 2011, the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, ruled a summary judgment
in favor of Marvel in the case "Marvel Worldwide, Inc., Marvel Characters, Inc. and MVL Rights, LLC, against Lisa R. Kirby, Barbara J. Kirby, Neal L. Kirby and Susan M. Kirby".
Dynamite Entertainment
said in July 2010 that it would publish in 2011 Kirby: Genesis, an eight-issue miniseries by writer Kurt Busiek
and artist Alex Ross
, using Kirby-owned characters previously published by Pacific Comics
and Topps Comics
.
, in a Sunday op-ed
piece written more than a decade after his death, said of Kirby:
Michael Chabon
, in his afterword to his Pulitzer Prize
-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
, a fictional account of two early comics pioneers, wrote, "I want to acknowledge the deep debt I owe in this and everything else I've ever written to the work of the late Jack Kirby, the King of Comics."
Several Kirby images are among those on the "Marvel Super Heroes" set of commemorative stamp
s issued by the U.S. Postal Service on July 27, 2007. Ten of the stamps are portraits of individual Marvel characters and the other 10 stamps depict individual Marvel Comic book covers. According to the credits printed on the back of the pane, Kirby's artwork is featured on: Captain America, The Thing, Silver Surfer, The Amazing Spider-Man #1, The Incredible Hulk #1, Captain America #100, The X-Men #1, and The Fantastic Four #3.
Various comic-book and cartoon creators have done homages to Kirby. Examples include the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Mirage Comics series ("Kirby and the Warp Crystal" in Donatello #1, and its animated counterpart, "The King", from the 2003 cartoon series
) and Superman: The Animated Series
' character Dan Turpin
.
for Best Pencil Artist. The following year he was runner-up behind Jim Steranko
. His other Alley Awards were:
Kirby won a Shazam Award for Special Achievement by an Individual in 1971 for his "Fourth World" series in Forever People, New Gods, Mister Miracle, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. He was inducted into the Shazam Awards Hall of Fame in 1975. In 1987 he was an inaugural inductee into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. He received the 1993 Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award at that year's Eisner Award
s.
His work was honored posthumously in 1998: The collection of his New Gods material, Jack Kirby's New Gods, edited by Bob Kahan, won both the Harvey Award
for Best Domestic Reprint Project, and the Eisner Award for Best Archival Collection/Project.
The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor.
With Will Eisner
, Robert Crumb
, Harvey Kurtzman
, Gary Panter
and Chris Ware
, Kirby was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum
in New York City, New York, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007.
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium.
Growing up poor in New York City, Kurtzberg entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s. He drew various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon
Joe Simon
Joseph Henry "Joe" Simon is an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s-1940s Golden Age of Comic Books and served as the first editor of Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into Marvel Comics.With his...
created the highly successful superhero
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
character Captain America
Captain America
Captain America is a fictional character, a superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 , from Marvel Comics' 1940s predecessor, Timely Comics, and was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby...
for Timely Comics
Timely Comics
Timely Comics, an imprint of Timely Publications, was the earliest comic book arm of American publisher Martin Goodman, and the entity that would evolve by the 1960s to become Marvel Comics....
, predecessor of Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
. During the 1940s, Kirby, generally teamed with Simon, created numerous characters for that company and for the company that would become 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...
.
After serving in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Kirby returned to comics and worked in a variety of genres. He contributed to a number of publishers, including DC, Harvey Comics
Harvey Comics
Harvey Comics was an American comic book publisher, founded in New York City by Alfred Harvey in 1941, after buying out the small publisher Brookwood Publications. His brothers Robert B...
, Hillman Periodicals
Hillman Periodicals
Hillman Periodicals, Inc. was an American magazine and comic book publishing company founded in 1938 by Alex L. Hillman, a former New York City book publisher...
and Crestwood Publications
Crestwood Publications
Crestwood Publications, also known as Feature Publications, was a magazine publisher that also published comic books from the 1940s through the 1960s. Its title Prize Comics contained what is considered the first ongoing horror comic-book feature, Dick Briefer's "Frankenstein"...
, where he and Simon created the genre of romance comics
Romance comics
Romance comics is a comics genre depicting romantic love and its attendant complications such as jealousy, marriage, divorce, betrayal, and heartache. The term is generally associated with an American comic books genre published through the first three decades of the Cold War...
. He and Simon also launched their own short-lived comic company, Mainline Publications
Mainline Publications
Mainline Publications, also called Mainline Comics, was a short-lived, 1950s American comic book publisher established and owned by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon.-Foundation:...
. Kirby ultimately found himself at Timely's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics
Atlas Comics (1950s)
Atlas Comics is the term used to describe the 1950s comic book publishing company that would evolve into Marvel Comics. Magazine and paperback novel publisher Martin Goodman, whose business strategy involved having a multitude of corporate entities, used Atlas as the umbrella name for his comic...
, later to be known as Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
. There, in the 1960s, he and writer-editor Stan Lee
Stan Lee
Stan Lee is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics....
co-created many of Marvel's major characters, including the Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four
The Fantastic Four is a fictional superhero team appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The group debuted in The Fantastic Four #1 , which helped to usher in a new level of realism in the medium...
, the X-Men
X-Men
The X-Men are a superhero team in the . They were created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, and first appeared in The X-Men #1...
, and the Hulk
Hulk (comics)
The Hulk is a fictional character, a superhero in the . Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #1 ....
. Despite the high sales and critical acclaim of the Lee-Kirby titles, however, Kirby felt treated unfairly, and left the company in 1970 for rival DC.
There Kirby created his Fourth World saga, which spanned several comics titles. While these series proved commercially unsuccessful and were canceled, several of their characters and the Fourth World mythos have continued as a significant part of the DC Comics universe. Kirby returned to Marvel briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s, then ventured into television animation and independent comics. In his later years, Kirby, who has been likened to "the William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
of comics", began receiving great recognition in the mainstream press for his career accomplishments, and in 1987, he, along with Carl Barks
Carl Barks
Carl Barks was an American Disney Studio illustrator and comic book creator, who invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck , Gladstone Gander , the Beagle Boys , The Junior Woodchucks , Gyro Gearloose , Cornelius Coot , Flintheart Glomgold , John D...
and Will Eisner
Will Eisner
William Erwin "Will" Eisner was an American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit; for his use of comics as an...
, was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor.
Early life (1917–1935)
Jack Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg on August 28, 1917, in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. His parents, Rose and Benjamin Kurtzberg, were Austrian Jewish immigrants, and his father earned a living as a garment factory worker. Growing up on Suffolk Street, Kirby was often involved in street fights with other kids, later saying that "fighting became second nature. I began to like it." Through his youth, Kirby desired to escape his neighborhood. He liked to draw and sought out places he could learn more about art. Essentially self-taught, Kirby cited among his influences the 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....
artists Milton Caniff
Milton Caniff
Milton Arthur Paul Caniff was an American cartoonist famous for the Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips.-Biography:...
, Hal Foster, and Alex Raymond
Alex Raymond
Alexander Gillespie "Alex" Raymond was an American cartoonist, best known for creating Flash Gordon for King Features in 1934...
, as well as such editorial cartoonists as C. H. Sykes, "Ding" Darling, and Rollin Kirby
Rollin Kirby
Rollin Kirby was an American political cartoonist. In 1922 he was chronologically the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, an honor that he would receive three times....
. He was rejected by the Educational Alliance because he drew "too fast with charcoal", according to Kirby. He later found an outlet for his skills by drawing cartoons for the newspaper of the Boys Brotherhood Republic, a "miniature city" on East 3rd Street where street kids ran their own government.
Kirby enrolled at the Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, at what he said was age 14, leaving after a week. "I wasn't the kind of student that Pratt was looking for. They wanted people who would work on something forever. I didn't want to work on any project forever. I intended to get things done".
Entry into comics (1936–1940)
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 strips and on single-panel advice cartoons such as Your Health Comes First!!! (under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Jack Curtiss). He remained until late 1939, when he began working for the movie
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
company Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios, Inc., was an American corporation which originated as an Animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York...
as an inbetweener (an artist who fills in the action between major-movement frames) on Popeye
Popeye
Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929...
cartoons. "I went from Lincoln to Fleischer," he recalled. "From Fleischer I had to get out in a hurry because I couldn't take that kind of thing," describing it as "a factory in a sense, like my father's factory. They were manufacturing pictures."
Around that time, the American comic book industry was booming. Kirby began writing and drawing for the comic-book packager Eisner & Iger
Eisner & Iger
Eisner & Iger was a comic book "packager" that produced comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium during the late-1930s and 1940s period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books...
, one of a handful of firms creating comics on demand for publishers. Through that company, Kirby did what he remembers as his first comic book work, for Wild Boy Magazine. This included such strips as the science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
adventure The Diary of Dr. Hayward (under the pseudonym Curt Davis), the Western crimefighter strip Wilton of the West (as "Fred Sande"), the swashbuckler
Swashbuckler
Swashbuckler or swasher is a term that emerged in the 16th century and has been used for rough, noisy and boastful swordsmen ever since. A possible explanation for this term is that it derives from a fighting style using a side-sword with a buckler in the off-hand, which was applied with much...
strip The Count of Monte Cristo (again as "Jack Curtiss"), and the humor strips Abdul Jones (as "Ted Grey)" and Socko the Seadog (as "Teddy"), all variously for Jumbo Comics and other Eisner-Iger clients. He ultimately settled on the pen name Jack Kirby because it reminded him of actor James Cagney
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth...
. However, he took offense to those who suggested he changed his name in order to hide his Jewish heritage.
In the summer of 1940, Kirby and his family moved to Brooklyn. There, Kirby met Rosalind "Roz" Goldstein, who lived in his family's apartment building. The pair began dating soon afterward. Kirby proposed to Goldstein on her eighteenth birthday, and the two became engaged.
Partnership with Joe Simon (1940–1942)
Kirby moved on to comic-book publisher and newspaper syndicator Fox Feature SyndicateFox Feature Syndicate
Fox Feature Syndicate was a comic book publisher from early in the period known to fans and historians as the Golden Age of Comic Books. Founded by entrepreneur Victor S...
, earning a then-reasonable $15 a week salary. He began exploring superhero narrative with the comic strip The Blue Beetle, published January to March 1940, starring a character created by the pseudonymous Charles Nicholas
Charles Nicholas (comics)
"Charles Nicholas" is the pseudonymous house name of three early creators of American comic books for the Fox Feature Syndicate and Fox Comics....
, a house name that Kirby retained for the three-month-long strip. During this time, Kirby met and began collaborating with cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
and Fox editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
Joe Simon
Joe Simon
Joseph Henry "Joe" Simon is an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s-1940s Golden Age of Comic Books and served as the first editor of Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into Marvel Comics.With his...
, who in addition to his staff work continued to freelance. Simon recalled in 1988, "I loved Jack's work and the first time I saw it I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He asked if we could do some freelance work together. I was delighted and I took him over to my little office. We worked from the second issue of Blue Bolt..."
After leaving Fox and landing at pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
publisher Martin Goodman
Martin Goodman (publisher)
Martin Goodman born on was an American publisher of pulp magazines, paperback books, men's adventure magazines, and comic books, launching the company that would become Marvel Comics....
's Timely Comics
Timely Comics
Timely Comics, an imprint of Timely Publications, was the earliest comic book arm of American publisher Martin Goodman, and the entity that would evolve by the 1960s to become Marvel Comics....
(the future Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
), Simon and Kirby created the patriotic superhero Captain America
Captain America
Captain America is a fictional character, a superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 , from Marvel Comics' 1940s predecessor, Timely Comics, and was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby...
in late 1940. Simon cut a deal with Goodman that gave him and Kirby 15 percent of the profits from the feature as well as salaried positions as the company's editor and art director, respectively. The first issue of Captain America Comics, released in early 1941, sold out in days, and the second issue's print run was set at over a million copies. The title's success established the team as a notable creative force in the industry. After the first issue was published, Simon asked Kirby to join the Timely staff as the company's art director.
With the success of the Captain America character, Simon felt that Goodman was not paying the pair the promised percentage of profits, and so sought work for the two of them at National Comics (later named 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...
). Kirby and Simon negotiated a deal that would pay them a combined $500 a week, as opposed to the $75 and $85 they respectively earned at Timely. Fearing that Goodman would not pay them if he found out they were moving to National, the pair kept the deal a secret while they continued producing work for the company. Goodman eventually learned of their plans, and Kirby and Simon left after completing their work on Captain America Comics #10.
Kirby and Simon spent their first weeks at National trying to come up with characters while the company sought how best to utilize the pair. After a few failed editor-assigned ghosting assignments, National's 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:...
told them to "just do what you want". The pair then revamped the Sandman
Sandman (Wesley Dodds)
Sandman , is a fictional superhero appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. The first of several DC characters to bear the name, he was created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Bert Christman....
feature in Adventure Comics
Adventure Comics
Adventure Comics was a comic book series published by DC Comics from 1935 to 1983 and then revamped from 2009 to 2011. In its first era, the series ran for 503 issues , making it the fifth-longest-running DC series, behind Detective Comics, Action Comics, Superman, and Batman...
and created the superhero Manhunter
Manhunter (comics)
-Golden Age:The first of DC's Manhunters was a non-costumed independent investigator, Paul Kirk, who helped police solve crimes during the early 1940s. Though the series was titled "Paul Kirk, Manhunter", Kirk didn't use the Manhunter name as an alias...
. In July 1942 they began the Boy Commandos
Boy Commandos
Boy Commandos was a 1940s comic book series created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for DC Comics. A combination of "kid gang" comics and war comics, the title starred an international cast of little tough guys fighting the Nazis — or in their own parlance, "the Ratzies".-Creation:Simon & Kirby, hired...
feature. The ongoing Boy Commandos series, launched later that same year, sold over a million copies a month, becoming National's third best-selling title.
Marriage and World War II (1943–1945)
Kirby married Roz Goldstein on May 23, 1942. The same year that he married, he changed his name legally from Jacob Kurtzberg to Jack Kirby.With World War II underway, Liebowitz expected that Simon and Kirby would be drafted, so he asked the artists to create an inventory of material to be published in their absence. The pair hired writers, inkers, letterers, and colorists in order to create a year's worth of material. Kirby was drafted into the U.S. Army on June 7, 1943. After basic training at Camp Stewart, near Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...
, he was assigned to Company F of the 11th Infantry. He landed on Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach is the code name for one of the five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, during World War II...
in Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
on August 23, 1944, two-and-a-half months after D-Day
D-Day
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...
, though Kirby's reminiscences would place his arrival just 10 days after. Kirby recalled that a lieutenant, learning that comics artist Kirby was in his command, made him a scout who would advance into towns and draw reconnaissance
Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is the military term for exploring beyond the area occupied by friendly forces to gain information about enemy forces or features of the environment....
maps and pictures, an extremely dangerous duty.
Kirby and his wife corresponded regularly by v-mail
V-mail
V-mail, short for Victory Mail, is a hybrid mail process used during the Second World War in America as the primary and secure method to correspond with soldiers stationed abroad...
, with Roz sending "him a letter a day" while she worked in a lingerie shop and lived with her mother at 2820 Brighton 7th Street in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. During the winter of 1944, Kirby suffered severe frostbite
Frostbite
Frostbite is the medical condition where localized damage is caused to skin and other tissues due to extreme cold. Frostbite is most likely to happen in body parts farthest from the heart and those with large exposed areas...
on his lower extremities and was taken to a hospital in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England, for recovery. Doctors considered amputating Kirby's legs, but he eventually recovered from the frostbite. He returned to the United States in January 1945, assigned to Camp Butner
Camp Butner
Camp Butner was a United States Army installation in Butner, North Carolina during World War II. It was named after Army General Henry W. Butner....
in North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, where he spent the last six months of his service as part of the motor pool. Kirby was honorably discharged as a Private First Class
Private First Class
Private First Class is a military rank held by junior enlisted persons.- Singapore :The rank of Private First Class in the Singapore Armed Forces lies between the ranks of Private and Lance-Corporal . It is usually held by conscript soldiers midway through their national service term...
on July 20, 1945, having received a Combat Infantryman Badge
Combat Infantryman Badge
The Combat Infantryman Badge is the U.S. Army combat service recognition decoration awarded to soldiers—enlisted men and officers holding colonel rank or below, who personally fought in active ground combat while an assigned member of either an infantry or a Special Forces unit, of brigade size...
and a European/African/Middle Eastern Theater ribbon
European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal
The European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal is a military decoration of the United States armed forces which was first created on November 6, 1942 by issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt...
with a bronze battle star.
Postwar career (1946–1955)
Harvey Comics
Harvey Comics was an American comic book publisher, founded in New York City by Alfred Harvey in 1941, after buying out the small publisher Brookwood Publications. His brothers Robert B...
, where, through the early 1950s, the duo created such titles as the kid-gang adventure Boy Explorers Comics, the kid-gang Western
Western comics
Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier and typically set during the late nineteenth century...
Boys' Ranch
Boys' Ranch
Boys' Ranch was a six-issue American comic book series created by the veteran writer-artist team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for Harvey Comics in 1950...
, the superhero comic Stuntman, and, in vogue with the fad for 3-D movies, Captain 3-D
Captain 3-D
Captain 3-D was a Harvey Comics character who appeared in one issue of his own eponymous title, dated December 1953, a few years before the beginning of the Silver Age of Comic Books...
. Simon and Kirby additionally freelanced for Hillman Periodicals
Hillman Periodicals
Hillman Periodicals, Inc. was an American magazine and comic book publishing company founded in 1938 by Alex L. Hillman, a former New York City book publisher...
(the crime fiction
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
comic Real Clue Crime) and for Crestwood Publications
Crestwood Publications
Crestwood Publications, also known as Feature Publications, was a magazine publisher that also published comic books from the 1940s through the 1960s. Its title Prize Comics contained what is considered the first ongoing horror comic-book feature, Dick Briefer's "Frankenstein"...
(Justice Traps the Guilty).
The team found its greatest success in the postwar period by creating romance comics
Romance comics
Romance comics is a comics genre depicting romantic love and its attendant complications such as jealousy, marriage, divorce, betrayal, and heartache. The term is generally associated with an American comic books genre published through the first three decades of the Cold War...
. Simon, inspired by Macfadden Publications
Macfadden Publications
Macfadden Communications Group is a publisher of business magazines. It has a historical link with a company started in 1898 by Bernarr Macfadden that was one of the largest magazine publishers of the twentieth century.-Macfadden Publications:...
' romantic-confession magazine True Story, transplanted the idea to comic books and with Kirby created a first-issue mock-up of Young Romance
Young Romance
Young Romance is a comic book series created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for the Crestwood Publications imprint Prize Comics in 1947. Generally considered the first romance comic, the series ran for 124 consecutive issues under Prize imprint, and a further 84 published by DC Comics after Crestwood...
. Showing it to Crestwood general manager Maurice Rosenfeld, Simon asked for 50% of the comic's profits. Crestwood publishers Teddy Epstein and Mike Bleier agreed, stipulating that the creators would take no money up front. Young Romance #1 (cover-date Oct. 1947) "became Jack and Joe's biggest hit in years". Indeed, the pioneering title sold a staggering 92% of its print run, inspiring Crestwood to increase the print run by the third issue to triple the initial number of copies. Initially published bimonthly, Young Romance quickly became a monthly title and produced the spin-off Young Love—together the two titles sold two million copies per month, according to Simon—later joined by Young Brides and In Love, the latter "featuring full-length romance stories". Young Romance spawned dozens of imitators from publishers such as Timely, Fawcett
Fawcett Comics
Fawcett Comics, a division of Fawcett Publications, was one of several successful comic book publishers during the Golden Age of Comic Books in the 1940s...
, Quality
Quality Comics
Quality Comics was an American comic book publishing company that operated from 1939 to 1956 and was an influential creative force in what historians and fans call the Golden Age of comic books....
, and Fox Feature Syndicate
Fox Feature Syndicate
Fox Feature Syndicate was a comic book publisher from early in the period known to fans and historians as the Golden Age of Comic Books. Founded by entrepreneur Victor S...
. Despite the glut, the Simon & Kirby romance titles continued to sell millions of copies a month, which allowed Kirby to buy a house for his family in Mineola
Mineola, New York
Mineola is a village in Nassau County, New York, USA. The population was 18,799 at the 2010 census. The name is derived from a Native American word meaning a "pleasant place"....
, Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
Kirby's second child, Neal, was born in May 1948. His third child, Barbara, was born in November 1952. Bitter that Timely Comics
Timely Comics
Timely Comics, an imprint of Timely Publications, was the earliest comic book arm of American publisher Martin Goodman, and the entity that would evolve by the 1960s to become Marvel Comics....
' 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics
Atlas Comics (1950s)
Atlas Comics is the term used to describe the 1950s comic book publishing company that would evolve into Marvel Comics. Magazine and paperback novel publisher Martin Goodman, whose business strategy involved having a multitude of corporate entities, used Atlas as the umbrella name for his comic...
, had relaunched Captain America in a new series in 1954, Kirby and Simon created Fighting American
Fighting American
Fighting American is a patriotic comic book character created in 1954 by writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby, published by Crestwood Publication / Prize Comics and, against normal industry practices of the time, creator-owned...
. Simon recalled, "We thought we'd show them how to do Captain America". While the comic book initially portrayed the protagonist as anti-Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
, Simon and Kirby turned the series into a superhero satire with the second issue, in the aftermath of the Army-McCarthy hearings
Army-McCarthy Hearings
The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations between April 1954 and June 1954. The hearings were held for the purpose of investigating conflicting accusations between the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy...
and the public backlash against the Red-baiting McCarthy.
After Simon (1956–1957)
Mainline Publications
Mainline Publications, also called Mainline Comics, was a short-lived, 1950s American comic book publisher established and owned by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon.-Foundation:...
, securing a distribution deal with Leader News in late 1953 or early 1954, subletting space from their friend Al Harvey's Harvey Publications at 1860 Broadway
Broadway (New York City)
Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...
. Mainline, which existed from 1954 to 1955, published four titles: the Western
Western comics
Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier and typically set during the late nineteenth century...
Bullseye: Western Scout; the war comic
War comics
War comics is a genre of comic books that gained popularity in English-speaking countries following World War II.-American war comics:Shortly after the birth of the modern comic book in the mid- to late 1930s, comics publishers began including stories of wartime adventures in the multi-genre...
Foxhole, since EC Comics
EC Comics
Entertaining Comics, more commonly known as EC Comics, was an American publisher of comic books specializing in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, notably the Tales from the Crypt series...
and Atlas Comics
Atlas Comics (1950s)
Atlas Comics is the term used to describe the 1950s comic book publishing company that would evolve into Marvel Comics. Magazine and paperback novel publisher Martin Goodman, whose business strategy involved having a multitude of corporate entities, used Atlas as the umbrella name for his comic...
were having success with war comics, but promoting theirs as as being written and drawn by actual veterans; In Love, since their earlier romance comic Young Love
Young Love (comic)
Young Love was one of the earliest romance comics titles, published by Crestwood/Prize, and later sold to DC Comics.-History:After the Sept/Oct 1947 release of Crestwood/Prize's genre-launching Young Romance comic, , by the prolific team of Simon & Kirby sold "millions of copies", the company ...
was still being widely imitated; and the crime comic Police Trap, which claimed to be based on genuine accounts by law-enforcement officials. After the duo rearranged and republished artwork from an old Crestwood story in In Love, Crestwood refused to pay Simon and Kirby. After reviewing Crestwood's finances, the pair's attorney's stated that the company owed them $130,000 over the past seven years. Crestwood paid them $10,000 in addition to their recent delayed payments. However, the partnership between Kirby and Simon had become strained. Simon left the industry for a career in advertising, while Kirby continued to freelance. "He wanted to do other things and I stuck with comics," Kirby recalled in 1971. "It was fine. There was no reason to continue the partnership and we parted friends."
At this point in the mid-1950s, Kirby made a temporary return to the former Timely Comics
Timely Comics
Timely Comics, an imprint of Timely Publications, was the earliest comic book arm of American publisher Martin Goodman, and the entity that would evolve by the 1960s to become Marvel Comics....
, now known as Atlas Comics
Atlas Comics (1950s)
Atlas Comics is the term used to describe the 1950s comic book publishing company that would evolve into Marvel Comics. Magazine and paperback novel publisher Martin Goodman, whose business strategy involved having a multitude of corporate entities, used Atlas as the umbrella name for his comic...
, the direct predecessor of Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
. Inker Frank Giacoia
Frank Giacoia
Frank Giacoia was an American comic book artist known primarily as an inker. He sometimes worked under the name Frank Ray, and to a lesser extent Phil Zupa, and the single moniker Espoia .-Early life and career:Frank Giacoia studied at Manhattan's School of...
had approached editor-in-chief Stan Lee for work and suggested he could "get Kirby back here to pencil some stuff." While also freelancing for National Comics, the future 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...
, Kirby drew 20 stories for Atlas from 1956 to 1957: Beginning with the five-page "Mine Field" in Battleground #14 (Nov.1956), Kirby penciled and in some cases also inked
Inker
The inker is one of the two line artists in a traditional comic book or graphic novel. After a pencilled drawing is given to the inker, the inker uses black ink to produce refined outlines over the pencil lines...
(with his wife, Roz) and wrote stories of the Western
Western comics
Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier and typically set during the late nineteenth century...
hero Black Rider
Black Rider (comics)
The Black Rider is a fictional Western character in comic books published by Marvel Comics. He first appeared in All-Western Winners #2 , from the company's 1940s forerunner, Timely Comics.-Publication history:...
, the Fu Manchu
Fu Manchu
Dr. Fu Manchu is a fictional character introduced in a series of novels by British author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the 20th century...
-like Yellow Claw
Yellow Claw
The Yellow Claw is a fictional comic book supervillain in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Al Feldstein and artist Joe Maneely, the character first appeared in Yellow Claw #1 , published by Atlas Comics, the 1950s predecessor of Marvel.-Publication history:While the...
, and more. But in 1957, distribution troubles caused the "Atlas implosion" that resulted in several series being dropped and no new material being assigned for many months. It would be the following year before Kirby returned to the nascent Marvel.
For DC around this time, Kirby co-created with writers Dick and Dave Wood the non-superpowered adventuring quartet the 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...
in Showcase
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...
#6 (Feb. 1957), while also contributing to such anthologies as House of Mystery
House of Mystery
The House of Mystery is the name of several horror-mystery-suspense anthology comic book series. It had a companion series, House of Secrets.-Genesis:...
. During 30 months freelancing for DC, Kirby drew slightly more than 600 pages, which included 11 six-page Green Arrow
Green Arrow
Green Arrow is a fictional superhero that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp, he first appeared in More Fun Comics #73 in November 1941. His secret identity is Oliver Queen, billionaire and former mayor of fictional Star City...
stories in World's Finest Comics
World's Finest Comics
World's Finest Comics was an American comic book series published by DC Comics from 1941 to 1986. The series was initially titled World's Best Comics for its first issue; issue #2 switched to the more familiar name...
and Adventure Comics
Adventure Comics
Adventure Comics was a comic book series published by DC Comics from 1935 to 1983 and then revamped from 2009 to 2011. In its first era, the series ran for 503 issues , making it the fifth-longest-running DC series, behind Detective Comics, Action Comics, Superman, and Batman...
that, in a rarity, Kirby inked himself. Kirby recast the archer as a science-fiction hero, moving him away from his Batman-formula roots, but in the process alienating Green Arrow co-creator Mort Weisinger
Mort Weisinger
Mortimer Weisinger was an American magazine and comic book editor best known for editing DC Comics' Superman during the mid-1950s to 1960s, in the Silver Age of comic books...
.
He also began drawing a newspaper 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....
, Sky Masters of the Space Force, written by the Wood brothers and initially 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...
. Kirby left National Comics due largely to a contractual dispute in which editor Jack Schiff, who had been involved in getting Kirby and the Wood brothers the Sky Masters contract, claimed he was due royalties from Kirby's share of the strip's profits. Schiff successfully sued Kirby. Some DC editors also had criticized him over art details, such as not drawing "the shoelaces on a cavalry
Cavalry
Cavalry or horsemen were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback. Cavalry were historically the third oldest and the most mobile of the combat arms...
man's boots" and showing a Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
"mounting his horse from the wrong side."
Marvel Comics in the Silver Age (19581970)
Strange Worlds
Strange Worlds was the name of two American, science-fiction anthology comic book series of the 1950s, the first published by Avon Comics, the second by a Marvel Comics predecessor, Atlas Comics...
#1 (Dec. 1958). Initially with Christopher Rule
Christopher Rule
Christopher Rule was an American comic book artist active from the 1940s through at least 1960, and best known as the first regular Marvel Comics inker for comics artist Jack Kirby during the period fans and historians call the Silver Age of Comic Books.-Early life and career:After driving an...
as his regular inker, and later 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...
, Kirby drew across all genres, from romance comics
Romance comics
Romance comics is a comics genre depicting romantic love and its attendant complications such as jealousy, marriage, divorce, betrayal, and heartache. The term is generally associated with an American comic books genre published through the first three decades of the Cold War...
to war comics
War comics
War comics is a genre of comic books that gained popularity in English-speaking countries following World War II.-American war comics:Shortly after the birth of the modern comic book in the mid- to late 1930s, comics publishers began including stories of wartime adventures in the multi-genre...
, crime stories to Western
Western comics
Western comics is a comics genre usually depicting the American Old West frontier and typically set during the late nineteenth century...
s, but made his mark primarily with a series of supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
-fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
and science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
stories featuring giant, drive-in movie-style monsters with names like Groot
Groot
Groot is a fictional character, an extraterrestrial in the and member of the Guardians of the Galaxy.-Publication history:Groot first appeared in Tales to Astonish vol...
, the Thing from Planet X; Grottu, King of the Insects; and Fin Fang Foom
Fin Fang Foom
Fin Fang Foom is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Strange Tales #89 Fin Fang Foom is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Strange Tales #89 Fin Fang...
for the company's many anthology series, such as Amazing Adventures
Amazing Adventures
Amazing Adventures is the name of several anthology comic book series, all but one published by Marvel Comics.The earliest Marvel series of that name introduced the company's first superhero of the late-1950s to early-1960s period fans and historians call the Silver Age of Comic Books...
, Strange Tales
Strange Tales
Strange Tales is the name of several comic book anthology series published by Marvel Comics. It introduced the features "Doctor Strange" and "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.", and was a showcase for the science fiction/suspense stories of artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and for the...
, Tales to Astonish
Tales to Astonish
Tales to Astonish is the name of two American comic book series and a one-shot comic published by Marvel Comics.The primary title bearing that name was published from 1959-1968...
, Tales of Suspense
Tales of Suspense
Tales of Suspense is the name of an American comic book series and two one-shot comics published by Marvel Comics. The first, which ran from 1959 to 1968, began as a science-fiction anthology that served as a showcase for such artists as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Don Heck, then featured...
, and World of Fantasy
World of Fantasy
World of Fantasy was a science fiction/fantasy comic book anthology series published by Marvel Comics' 1950s predecessor company, Atlas Comics. Lasting from 1956 to 1959, it included the work of several notable comics artists, including industry legends Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Bill Everett.The...
. His bizarre designs of powerful, unearthly creatures proved a hit with readers. Additionally, he also freelanced for Archie Comics
Archie Comics
Archie Comics is an American comic book publisher headquartered in the Village of Mamaroneck, Town of Mamaroneck, New York, known for its many series featuring the fictional teenagers Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle and Jughead Jones. The characters were created by...
' around this time, reuniting briefly with Joe Simon to help develop the series The Fly
The Fly (Archie Comics)
The Fly is a fictional comic book superhero published by Red Circle Comics. He was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby as part of Archie's "Archie Adventure Series" and later camped up as part of the company's Mighty Comics line...
and The Double Life of Private Strong. He also drew some issues of Classics Illustrated
Classics Illustrated
Classics Illustrated is a comic book series featuring adaptations of literary classics such as Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Iliad. Created by Albert Kanter, the series began publication in 1941 and finished its first run in 1971, producing 169 issues. Following the series' demise, various companies...
.
It was at Marvel, however, with writer and editor-in-chief Lee, that Kirby hit his stride once again in superhero comics, beginning with The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961). The landmark series became a hit that revolutionized the industry with its comparative naturalism
Naturalism
Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances wherein all phenomena or hypotheses, commonly labeled as supernatural, are either false or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses.Naturalism may also refer to:-In the arts:...
and, eventually, a cosmic purview informed by Kirby's seemingly boundless imaginationone well-matched with the consciousness-expanding youth culture of the 1960s.
For almost a decade, Kirby provided Marvel's house style, co-creating with Stan Lee many of the Marvel characters and designing their visual motifs. At Lee's request, he often provided new-to-Marvel artists "breakdown" layouts, over which they would pencil in order to become acquainted with the Marvel look. As artist Gil Kane
Gil Kane
Eli Katz who worked under the name Gil Kane and in one instance Scott Edward, was a comic book artist whose career spanned the 1940s to 1990s and every major comics company and character.Kane co-created the modern-day versions of the superheroes Green Lantern and the Atom for DC Comics, and...
described:
Highlights other than the Fantastic Four include: Thor
Thor (Marvel Comics)
Thor is a fictional superhero who appears in publications published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Journey into Mystery #83 and was created by editor-plotter Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, and penciller Jack Kirby....
, the Hulk
Hulk (comics)
The Hulk is a fictional character, a superhero in the . Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #1 ....
, Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man is a fictional character, a superhero in the . The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee, developed by scripter Larry Lieber, and designed by artists Don Heck and Jack Kirby, first appearing in Tales of Suspense #39 .A billionaire playboy, industrialist and ingenious engineer,...
, the original X-Men
X-Men
The X-Men are a superhero team in the . They were created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, and first appeared in The X-Men #1...
, the Silver Surfer
Silver Surfer
The Silver Surfer is a Marvel Comics superhero created by Jack Kirby. The character first appears in Fantastic Four #48 , the first of a three-issue arc that fans call "The Galactus Trilogy"....
, Doctor Doom
Doctor Doom
Victor von Doom is a fictional character who appears in Marvel Comics publications . Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in Fantastic Four #5 wearing his trademark metal mask and green cloak...
, Galactus
Galactus
Galactus is a fictional character appearing in comic books and other publications published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist and co-plotter Jack Kirby, the character debuted in Fantastic Four #48 , the first of a three-issue story later known as "The Galactus...
, Uatu the Watcher
Uatu
Uatu, often simply known as The Watcher, is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and designed by artist Jack Kirby, he first appeared in The Fantastic Four #13 ....
, Magneto
Magneto (comics)
Magneto is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. He is the central villain of the X-Men comic, as well as the TV show and the films. The character first appears in X-Men #1 , and was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby...
, Ego the Living Planet
Ego the Living Planet
Ego the Living Planet is a fictional character, a supervillain in the Marvel Comics Universe. The character first appeared in Thor #132 and was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby.-Publication history:...
, the Inhumans
Inhumans
The Inhumans are a fictional race of superhumans, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This race appears in various comic book series published by Marvel Comics and exists in that company's shared universe, known as the Marvel Universe....
and their hidden city of Attilan, and the Black Panther
Black Panther (comics)
The Black Panther is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and penciller-co-plotter Jack Kirby, he first appeared in Fantastic Four #52...
comics' first known black
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
superheroand his African nation of Wakanda
Wakanda (comics)
Wakanda is a fictional nation in the Marvel Universe. It is the most prominent of several fictional African nations in the Marvel Universe. Wakanda is located in Northeastern Africa, although its exact location has varied throughout the nation's publication history: some sources place Wakanda in...
. Simon and Kirby's Captain America was also incorporated into Marvel's continuity with Kirby approving Lee's idea of partially remaking the character as a man out of his time and regretting the death of his sidekick.
In 1968 and 1969, Joe Simon was involved in litigation with Marvel Comics over the ownership of Captain America, initiated by Marvel after Simon registered the copyright renewal for Captain America in his own name. According to Simon, Kirby agreed to support the company in the litigation and, as part of a deal Kirby made with publisher Martin Goodman, signed over to Marvel any rights he might have had to the character.
Kirby continued to expand the medium's boundaries, devising photo-collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
covers and interiors, developing new drawing techniques such as the method for depicting energy fields now known as "Kirby Dots
Kirby dots
Kirby dots are an artistic convention in superhero and science fiction comic books and similar illustrations: a field of black, roughly circular dots that are used to represent negative space around unspecified kinds of energy...
", and other experiments. Yet he grew increasingly dissatisfied with working at Marvel. There have been a number of reasons given for this dissatisfaction, including resentment over Stan Lee's increasing media prominence, a lack of full creative control, anger over breaches of perceived promises by publisher Martin Goodman, and frustration over Marvel's failure to credit him specifically for his story plotting and for his character creations and co-creations. He began to both script and draw some secondary features for Marvel, such as "The Inhumans" in Amazing Adventures
Amazing Adventures
Amazing Adventures is the name of several anthology comic book series, all but one published by Marvel Comics.The earliest Marvel series of that name introduced the company's first superhero of the late-1950s to early-1960s period fans and historians call the Silver Age of Comic Books...
, as well as horror stories for the anthology title Chamber of Darkness
Chamber of Darkness
Chamber of Darkness was a horror/fantasy anthology comic book published bi-monthly by Marvel Comics that under this and a subsequent name ran from 1969-1974...
, and received full credit for doing so; but he eventually left the company in 1970 for rival DC Comics, under editorial director Carmine Infantino
Carmine Infantino
Carmine Infantino Carmine Infantino Carmine Infantino (born May 24, 1925, in Brooklyn, New York is an American comic book artist and editor who was a major force in the Silver Age of Comic Books...
.
DC Comics and the Fourth World saga (1971–1975)
New Gods
The New Gods are a fictional race appearing in publications by DC Comics, as well as the title for four series of comic books about those characters. They first appeared in New Gods #1 , and were created and designed by Jack Kirby....
, Mister Miracle
Mister Miracle
Mister Miracle is a fictional superhero published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Mister Miracle #1 and was created by Jack Kirby.-Publication history:...
, and The Forever People — as well as the extant Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. Kirby picked the latter book because the series was without a stable creative team and he did not want to cost anyone a job. The central villain of the Fourth World series, Darkseid
Darkseid
Darkseid is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appeared in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #134 and was created by writer-artist Jack Kirby....
, and some of the Fourth World concepts, appeared in Jimmy Olsen before the launch of the other Fourth World books, giving the new titles greater exposure to potential buyers.
Kirby later produced other DC features such as OMAC
One-Man Army Corps
OMAC is a superhero comic book created in 1974 by Jack Kirby and published by DC Comics. The character was created towards the end of Kirby's contract with the publisher, following the cancellation of Kirby's New Gods, and was reportedly developed strictly due to Kirby needing to fill his...
, Kamandi
Kamandi
Kamandi is an American comic book character, created by artist Jack Kirby and published by DC Comics. The bulk of Kamandi's appearances occurred in the comic series Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, which ran from 1972 to 1978....
, The Demon, "The Losers", "Dingbats of Danger Street
Dingbats of Danger Street
The Dingbats of Danger Street are a fictional comic book gang of kids published by DC Comics. The Dingbats debuted in 1st Issue Special #6 , and were created by Jack Kirby.-Publication history:...
", Kobra
Kobra (comics)
Kobra is the name used by two fictional supervillains published by DC Comics. The Jeffrey Burr Kobra first appeared in Kobra #1 , and was created by Martin Pasko, Steve Sherman, Jack Kirby, and Pablo Marcos...
and, together with former partner Joe Simon for one last time, a new incarnation of the Sandman
Sandman (DC Comics)
Sandman is the name of seven fictional characters, superheroes appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. All are connected in one way or the other, though there are three largely dissimilar concepts, with two or three persons having served in each role various times...
.
Return to Marvel (1976–1978)
At the comic book convention Marvelcon '75, in spring 1975, Stan LeeStan Lee
Stan Lee is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics....
used a Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four
The Fantastic Four is a fictional superhero team appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The group debuted in The Fantastic Four #1 , which helped to usher in a new level of realism in the medium...
panel discussion to announce that Kirby was returning to Marvel after having left in 1970 to work 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...
. Lee wrote in his monthly column, "Stan Lee's Soapbox", that, "I mentioned that I had a special announcement to make. As I started telling about Jack's return, to a totally incredulous audience, everyone's head started to snap around as Kirby himself came waltzin' down the aisle to join us on the rostrum! You can imagine how it felt clownin' around with the co-creator of most of Marvel's greatest strips once more."
Back at Marvel, Kirby both wrote and drew Captain America and created the series The Eternals
Eternals (comics)
The Eternals are a fictional race of superhumans in the Marvel Comics universe. They are described as an offshoot of the evolutionary process that created sentient life on Earth. The original instigators of this process, the alien Celestials, intended the Eternals to be the defenders of Earth which...
, which featured a race of inscrutable alien giants, the Celestials
Celestial (comics)
The Celestials are a group of fictional characters that appear in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The characters first appear in Eternals #1 and were created by writer-artist Jack Kirby....
, whose behind-the-scenes intervention in primordial humanity would eventually become a core element of Marvel Universe
Marvel Universe
The Marvel Universe is the shared fictional universe where most comic book titles and other media published by Marvel Entertainment take place, including those featuring Marvel's most familiar characters, such as Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, and the Avengers.The Marvel Universe is further...
continuity. Kirby's other Marvel creations in this period include Devil Dinosaur
Devil Dinosaur
Devil Dinosaur is a Marvel Comics character who resembles a red Tyrannosaurus rex. He first appeared in Devil Dinosaur #1...
, Machine Man
Machine Man
Machine Man is a fictional character, an android superhero in the Marvel Comics Universe. The character was created by Jack Kirby for 2001: A Space Odyssey #8 , a comic written and drawn by Kirby featuring concepts based on the eponymous Stanley Kubrick film and Arthur C. Clarke novel...
, and an adaptation and expansion of the movie
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (comics)
2001: A Space Odyssey was the name of an oversized comic book adaptation of the 1968 film of the same name as well as a monthly series, lasting ten issues, which expanded upon the concepts presented in the Stanley Kubrick film and the novel by Arthur C. Clarke...
, as well as an abortive attempt to do the same for the classic television series, The Prisoner. He also wrote and drew Black Panther
Black Panther (comics)
The Black Panther is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and penciller-co-plotter Jack Kirby, he first appeared in Fantastic Four #52...
and did numerous covers across the line.
Film and animation (1979–1980)
Still dissatisfied with Marvel's treatment of him, and with the company's refusal to provide health and other employment benefits, Kirby left Marvel to work in animation. In that field, he did designs for Turbo Teen, Thundarr the BarbarianThundarr the Barbarian
Thundarr the Barbarian is a Saturday morning animated television series, created by Steve Gerber and produced by Ruby-Spears Productions. The series ran 2 seasons, 1980-1981 and 1981-1982...
and other animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
series. He also worked on The Fantastic Four cartoon show, reuniting him with scriptwriter Stan Lee
Stan Lee
Stan Lee is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics....
. He illustrated an adaptation of the Walt Disney movie The Black Hole
The Black Hole
The Black Hole is a 1979 American science fiction film directed by Gary Nelson for Walt Disney Productions. The film stars Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins, and Ernest Borgnine, while the voices of the main robot characters are provided by Roddy...
for Walt Disney’s Treasury of Classic Tales
Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales
Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales is an American Sunday comic strip, which ran in newspapers from 13 July 1952 until 15 February 1987. Each story adapted a different Disney film, such as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, or Davy Crockett. Most stories ran for 13 weeks...
syndicated comic strip in 1979-80.
In 1979, Kirby drew concept art for film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
Barry Geller's script treatment adapting Roger Zelazny
Roger Zelazny
Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for his The Chronicles of Amber series...
's science fiction novel, Lord of Light, for which Geller had purchased the rights. In collaboration, Geller commissioned Kirby to draw set designs that would also be used as architectural renderings for a Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
theme park to be called Science Fiction Land; Geller announced his plans at a November press conference attended by Kirby, former NFL
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...
American football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
star Rosey Grier
Rosey Grier
Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier is an American actor, singer, Christian minister, and former professional American football player. He was a notable college football player for Pennsylvania State University who earned a retrospective place in the National Collegiate Athletic Association 100th anniversary...
, writer Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
, and others. While the film did not come to fruition, Kirby's drawings were used for the C.I.A.'s "Canadian caper
Canadian caper
The "Canadian Caper" was the popular name given to the covert rescue by the Government of Canada of six American diplomats who evaded capture during the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran, Iran and taking of embassy personnel as hostages by the Iranians on November 4, 1979.- Sanctuary...
", in which some members of the U.S. embassy in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, who had avoided capture in the Iran hostage crisis
Iran hostage crisis
The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian...
, were able to escape the country posing as members of a movie location-scouting crew.
Final years and death (1981–1994)
Pacific Comics
Pacific Comics was an independent comic book publisher that flourished from 1981-1984. It was also a chain of comics shops and a distributor. It began out of a San Diego, California, comic book shop owned by brothers Bill and Steve Schanes...
, a new, non-newsstand comic book publisher, made a then-groundbreaking deal with Kirby to publish a creator-owned series Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers
Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers
Captain Victory was a comic book created, written and drawn by Jack Kirby. It was first published by Pacific Comics in 1981.-Publication history:One of Pacific Comics first titles, it lasted thirteen issues, plus a special, through January, 1984....
, and a six-issue mini-series called Silver Star
Silver Star (comics)
Silver Star is a comic book created, written, and drawn by Jack Kirby, originally published by Pacific Comics in 1983.-Publication History:The concept for Silver Star began in the mid-1970s as a movie screenplay by Jack Kirby and Steve Sherman...
which was collected in hardcover format in 2007. This, together with similar actions by other independent comics publishers as Eclipse Comics
Eclipse Comics
Eclipse Comics was an American comic book publisher, one of several independent publishers during the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1978, it published the first graphic novel intended for the newly created comic book specialty store market...
(where Kirby co-created Destroyer Duck
Destroyer Duck
Destroyer Duck was an anthology comic book published by Eclipse Comics in 1982, as well as the title of its primary story, written by Steve Gerber and featuring artwork by Jack Kirby....
in a benefit comic-book series published to help Steve Gerber
Steve Gerber
Stephen Ross "Steve" Gerber was an American comic book writer best known as co-creator of the satiric Marvel Comics character Howard the Duck....
fight a legal case versus Marvel), helped establish a precedent to end the monopoly of the work for hire
Work for hire
A work made for hire is an exception to the general rule that the person who actually creates a work is the legally recognized author of that work...
system, wherein comics creators, even freelancers, had owned no rights to characters they created.
Though estranged from Marvel, Kirby continued to do periodic work for DC Comics during the 1980s, including a brief revival of his "Fourth World" saga in the 1984 and 1985 Super Powers
Super Powers Collection
The Super Powers Collection was a line of action figures based on DC Comics superheroes and supervillains that was created by Kenner Products in the 1980s.-History of the Line:...
mini-series and the 1985 graphic novel The Hunger Dogs. And in 1987, under much industry pressure, Marvel finally returned much of Kirby's original art to him.
Kirby also retained ownership of characters used by Topps Comics
Topps Comics
Topps Comics is a division of the American trading card publisher and gum/candy distributor the Topps Company, Inc. that published comic books from 1993–1998, beginning its existence during a short comics-industry boom that attracted many investors and new companies...
beginning in 1993, for a set of series in what the company dubbed "The Kirbyverse". These titles were derived mainly from designs and concepts that Kirby had kept in his files, some intended initially for the by-then-defunct Pacific Comics, and then licensed to Topps for what would become the "Jack Kirby's Secret City Saga
Secret City Saga
Secret City Saga is a concept and collection of various comic book titles created by influential writer-artist Jack Kirby, and published by the short-lived Topps Comics, an off-shoot of the popular Topps Trading Card company...
" mythos. Marvel posthumously published a "lost" Kirby/Lee Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four
The Fantastic Four is a fictional superhero team appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The group debuted in The Fantastic Four #1 , which helped to usher in a new level of realism in the medium...
story, Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure (April 2008), with unused pages Kirby had originally drawn for Fantastic Four 108 (March 1971).
On February 6, 1994, Kirby died at age 76 of heart failure in his Thousand Oaks, California
Thousand Oaks, California
Thousand Oaks is a city in southeastern Ventura County, California, in the United States. It was named after the many oak trees that grace the area, and the city seal is adorned with an oak....
home. He was buried at the Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park, Westlake Village, California
Westlake Village, California
Westlake Village is a planned community that straddles the Los Angeles and Ventura county line. The eastern portion is the incorporated city Westlake Village, located on the western edge of Los Angeles County, California. The city, located in the region known as the Conejo Valley, encompasses half...
.
Kirby's estate
Kirby's daughter, Lisa Kirby, announced in early 2006 that she and co-writer Steve Robertson, with artist Mike Thibodeaux, planned to publish via the Marvel Comics IconIcon Comics
Icon Comics is an imprint of Marvel Comics for creator-owned titles, designed to keep select "A-list" creators producing for Marvel rather than seeing them take creator-owned work to other publishers.-History:...
imprint
Imprint
In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...
, a six-issue limited series
Limited series
A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....
, Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters, featuring characters and concepts created by her father for Captain Victory. The series, scripted by Lisa Kirby, Robertson, Thibodeaux, and Richard French, with pencil art by Jack Kirby and Thibodeaux, and inking by Scott Hanna and Karl Kesel
Karl Kesel
Karl Kesel is an American comics writer and inker whose works have primarily been under contract for DC Comics...
primarily, ran an initial five issues (Sept. 2006 - Jan. 2007) and then a later final issue (Sept. 2007). The series was collected in hardcover (ISBN 0-7851-2628-7) in 2007, and in trade paperback
Trade paperback (comics)
In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...
(ISBN 0-7851-2629-5) the following year.
On September 16, 2009, the Kirby estate also served notices of termination to Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...
, 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
, Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
, Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, and Sony Pictures to attempt to regain control of various Silver Age Marvel characters. Marvel is seeking to invalidate these claims. However, in mid-March 2010 Kirby's estate "sued Marvel to terminate copyrights and gain profits from [Kirby's] comic creations." On July 28, 2011, the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, ruled a summary judgment
Summary judgment
In law, a summary judgment is a determination made by a court without a full trial. Such a judgment may be issued as to the merits of an entire case, or of specific issues in that case....
in favor of Marvel in the case "Marvel Worldwide, Inc., Marvel Characters, Inc. and MVL Rights, LLC, against Lisa R. Kirby, Barbara J. Kirby, Neal L. Kirby and Susan M. Kirby".
Dynamite Entertainment
Dynamite Entertainment
Dynamite Entertainment is an American comic book company that primarily publishes licensed franchises of adaptations of other media. These include adaptations of film properties such as Army of Darkness, Terminator and RoboCop, literary properties such as Zorro, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Alice in...
said in July 2010 that it would publish in 2011 Kirby: Genesis, an eight-issue miniseries by writer Kurt Busiek
Kurt Busiek
Kurt Busiek is an American comic book writer notable for his work on the Marvels limited series, his own title Astro City, and his four-year run on Avengers.-Early life:...
and artist Alex Ross
Alex Ross
Nelson Alexander "Alex" Ross is an American comic book painter, illustrator, and plotter. He is praised for his realistic, human depictions of classic comic book characters. Since the 1990s he has done work for Marvel Comics and DC Comics Nelson Alexander "Alex" Ross (born January 22, 1970) is an...
, using Kirby-owned characters previously published by Pacific Comics
Pacific Comics
Pacific Comics was an independent comic book publisher that flourished from 1981-1984. It was also a chain of comics shops and a distributor. It began out of a San Diego, California, comic book shop owned by brothers Bill and Steve Schanes...
and Topps Comics
Topps Comics
Topps Comics is a division of the American trading card publisher and gum/candy distributor the Topps Company, Inc. that published comic books from 1993–1998, beginning its existence during a short comics-industry boom that attracted many investors and new companies...
.
Legacy
The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, in a Sunday op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
piece written more than a decade after his death, said of Kirby:
Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon born May 24, 1963) is an American author and "one of the most celebrated writers of his generation", according to The Virginia Quarterly Review....
, in his afterword to his Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a 2000 novel by American author Michael Chabon that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. The novel follows the lives of two Jewish cousins before, during, and after World War II. They are a Czech artist named Joe Kavalier and a Brooklyn-born...
, a fictional account of two early comics pioneers, wrote, "I want to acknowledge the deep debt I owe in this and everything else I've ever written to the work of the late Jack Kirby, the King of Comics."
Several Kirby images are among those on the "Marvel Super Heroes" set of commemorative stamp
Commemorative stamp
A commemorative stamp is a postage stamp, often issued on a significant date such as an anniversary, to honor or commemorate a place, event or person. The subject of the commemorative stamp is usually spelled out in print, unlike definitive stamps which normally depict the subject along with the...
s issued by the U.S. Postal Service on July 27, 2007. Ten of the stamps are portraits of individual Marvel characters and the other 10 stamps depict individual Marvel Comic book covers. According to the credits printed on the back of the pane, Kirby's artwork is featured on: Captain America, The Thing, Silver Surfer, The Amazing Spider-Man #1, The Incredible Hulk #1, Captain America #100, The X-Men #1, and The Fantastic Four #3.
Various comic-book and cartoon creators have done homages to Kirby. Examples include the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a fictional team of four teenage anthropomorphic turtles, who were trained by their anthropomorphic rat sensei in the art of ninjutsu and named after four Renaissance artists...
Mirage Comics series ("Kirby and the Warp Crystal" in Donatello #1, and its animated counterpart, "The King", from the 2003 cartoon series
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003 TV series)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is an American animated series, mainly set in New York City. It first aired on February 8, 2003 and ended on November 21, 2009...
) and Superman: The Animated Series
Superman: The Animated Series
Superman: The Animated Series is an American animated television series starring DC Comics' flagship character, Superman. The series was produced by Warner Bros. Animation and aired on The WB from September 6, 1996 to February 12, 2000. Warner Bros...
' character Dan Turpin
Dan Turpin
Daniel "Terrible" Turpin is a character published by DC Comics. He first appeared as Brooklyn in Detective Comics #64 , and first appeared as Dan Turpin in New Gods #5 .-Publication history:...
.
Awards and honors
Jack Kirby received a great deal of recognition over the course of his career, including the 1967 Alley AwardAlley Award
The Alley Award was an American series of comic book fan awards, first presented in 1962 for comics published in 1961. Officially organized under the aegis of the Academy of Comic Book Arts and Sciences, under executive secretary Jerry Bails, and later Paul Gambaccini and David Kaler, the award...
for Best Pencil Artist. The following year he was runner-up behind Jim Steranko
Jim Steranko
James F. Steranko is an American graphic artist, comic book writer-artist-historian, magician, publisher and film production illustrator....
. His other Alley Awards were:
- 1963: Favorite Short Story - "The Human Torch Meets Captain America", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Strange TalesStrange TalesStrange Tales is the name of several comic book anthology series published by Marvel Comics. It introduced the features "Doctor Strange" and "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.", and was a showcase for the science fiction/suspense stories of artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and for the...
#114 - 1964:
- Best Novel - "Captain America Joins the Avengers", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, from The AvengersAvengers (comics)The Avengers is a fictional team of superheroes, appearing in magazines published by Marvel Comics. The team made its debut in The Avengers #1 The Avengers is a fictional team of superheroes, appearing in magazines published by Marvel Comics. The team made its debut in The Avengers #1 The Avengers...
#4 - Best New Strip or Book - "Captain AmericaCaptain AmericaCaptain America is a fictional character, a superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 , from Marvel Comics' 1940s predecessor, Timely Comics, and was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby...
", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, in Tales of SuspenseTales of SuspenseTales of Suspense is the name of an American comic book series and two one-shot comics published by Marvel Comics. The first, which ran from 1959 to 1968, began as a science-fiction anthology that served as a showcase for such artists as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Don Heck, then featured...
- Best Novel - "Captain America Joins the Avengers", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, from The Avengers
- 1965: Best Short Story - "The Origin of the Red Skull", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Tales of Suspense #66
- 1966: Best Professional Work, Regular Short Feature - "Tales of Asgard" by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, in The Mighty ThorThor (Marvel Comics)Thor is a fictional superhero who appears in publications published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Journey into Mystery #83 and was created by editor-plotter Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, and penciller Jack Kirby....
- 1967: Best Professional Work, Regular Short Feature - (tie) "Tales of Asgard" and "Tales of the InhumansInhumansThe Inhumans are a fictional race of superhumans, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This race appears in various comic book series published by Marvel Comics and exists in that company's shared universe, known as the Marvel Universe....
", both by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, in The Mighty Thor - 1968:
- Best Professional Work, Best Regular Short Feature - "Tales of the Inhumans", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, in The Mighty Thor
- Best Professional Work, Hall of Fame - Fantastic Four, by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby; Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., by Jim Steranko
Kirby won a Shazam Award for Special Achievement by an Individual in 1971 for his "Fourth World" series in Forever People, New Gods, Mister Miracle, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. He was inducted into the Shazam Awards Hall of Fame in 1975. In 1987 he was an inaugural inductee into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. He received the 1993 Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award at that year's Eisner Award
Eisner Award
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, and sometimes referred to as the Oscar Awards of the Comics Industry, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books. The Eisner Awards were first conferred in 1988, created in response to the...
s.
His work was honored posthumously in 1998: The collection of his New Gods material, Jack Kirby's New Gods, edited by Bob Kahan, won both the Harvey Award
Harvey Award
The Harvey Awards, named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman and founded by Gary Groth, President of the publisher Fantagraphics, are given for achievement in comic books. The Harveys were created as part of a successor to the Kirby Awards which were discontinued after 1987.The Harvey Awards are...
for Best Domestic Reprint Project, and the Eisner Award for Best Archival Collection/Project.
The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor.
With Will Eisner
Will Eisner
William Erwin "Will" Eisner was an American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit; for his use of comics as an...
, Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
, Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic...
, Gary Panter
Gary Panter
Gary Panter is an illustrator, painter, designer and part-time musician. Panter's work is representative of the post-underground, new wave comics movement that began with the end of Arcade: The Comics Revue and the initiation of RAW, one of the second generation in American underground comix...
and Chris Ware
Chris Ware
Franklin Christenson Ware , is an American comic book artist and cartoonist, widely known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, he resides in the Chicago area, Illinois...
, Kirby was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum
Jewish Museum (New York)
The Jewish Museum of New York, an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, is the leading Jewish museum in the United States. With over 26,000 objects, it contains the largest collection of art and Jewish culture outside of museums in Israel. The museum is housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in...
in New York City, New York, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007.
External links
- The Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center
- POV Online: "Jack Kirby", by Mark Evanier (includes Jack Kirby FAQ)
- "Jack Kirby Heroes Thrive in Comic Books and Film", by Elvis Mitchell, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, August 27, 2003 - "Roz Kirby Interview Excerpts", The Jack Kirby Collector #10, April 1966
- Creations of Jack Kirby at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe
- The Monsters of Jack Kirby