Jack Kirby Totally Explained

Everything about Jack Kirby totally explained

Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg, August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994) was an American comic book artist, writer and editor.
Widely recognized as one of the most influential, recognizable, and prolific artists in comics, Kirby was the co-creator of such enduring characters and popular culture icons as the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America, and hundreds of others stretching back to the earliest days of the medium. His most common nickname is "The King," and Kirby was inducted into comic books' Shazam Awards Hall of Fame in 1975. The Jack Kirby Award for achievement in comic books was named in his honor. The New York Times, in a Sunday op-ed piece written more than a decade after his death, said Kirby
His output was legendary, with one count estimating that he produced over 25,000 pages, as well as hundreds of comic strips and sketches. He also produced paintings, and worked on concept illustrations for a number of Hollywood films.

Biography

Early life

Born to Jewish Austrian parents in New York City, he grew up on Suffolk Street in New York's Lower East Side Delancey Street area, attending elementary school at P.S. 20. His father, Benjamin, a garment-factory worker, was a Conservative Jew, and Jacob attended Hebrew school. Jacob's one sibling, a brother five years younger, predeceased him. After a rough-and-tumble childhood with much fighting among the kind of kid gangs he'd render more heroically in his future comics (Fantastic Four's Jewish Ben Grimm was raised on rough-and-tumble Yancy Street, and was predeceased by his older brother; in addition to sharing Kirby's father's first name, his middle name is Jacob, Kirby's first name at birth). 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".
Essentially self-taught, Kirby cited among his influences the comic strip artists Alex Raymond and Milton Caniff.

The Golden Age of Comics

Per his own 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, then worked 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'd 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 first American comic books appeared. Initially consisting solely of reprints of newspaper comic strips, these tabloid-size, 10-inch by 15-inch publications soon began to include original material in comic-strip form. 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. Kirby was also helpful beyond his artwork when he once frightened off a mobster who was strong-arming Eisner for their building's towel service.
Kirby moved on to comic-book publisher and newspaper syndicator Fox Feature Syndicate, earning a then-reasonable $15 a week salary. He began exploring superhero narrative with the comic strip The Blue Beetle (January–March 1940), starring a character created by the pseudonymous Charles Nicholas, a house name that Kirby retained for the three-month-long strip.

Simon & Kirby

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. Speaking at a 1998 Comic-Con International panel in San Diego, California, Simon recounted the meeting:
and remained a team across the next two decades. In the early 2000s, original art for an unpublished, five-page Simon & Kirby collaboration titled "Daring Disc", which may predate the duo's Blue Bolt, surfaced. Simon published the story in the 2003 updated edition of his autobiography, The Comic Book Makers.
   After leaving Fox and landing at pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman's Timely Comics (the future Marvel Comics), the new Simon & Kirby team created the seminal patriotic hero Captain America in late 1940. Their dynamic perspectives, groundbreaking use of centerspreads, cinematic techniques and exaggerated sense of action made the title an immediate hit and rewrote the rules for comic book art.
   Captain America became the first and largest of many hit characters the duo would produce. The Simon & Kirby name soon became synonymous with exciting superhero comics, and the two became industry stars whose readers followed them from title to title.
   A financial dispute with Goodman led to their accepting an offer from Jack Liebowitz's National Comics, one of the precursors of DC Comics. Working on new ideas for National while still producing Captain America, the two left after finishing ten issues of that title, and moved to National fulltime. Given a lucrative contract at their new home (although initially National seemed unsure how best to utilise their talents), Simon & Kirby took over the Sandman in Adventure Comics, and scored their next hits with the "kid gang" teams the Newsboy Legion and the Boy Commandos (evoking their Sentinels of Liberty gang from Captain America), and the superhero Manhunter.

Family and World War II

Kirby married Rosalind "Roz" Goldstein (September 25, 1922–December 22, 1998) on May 23, 1942. Kirby met his future wife when the two families became neighbors in Brooklyn in the Summer of 1940. The two began dating shortly after, and Jack proposed on her 18th birthday. for publishers including Harvey, Hillman Comics and Crestwood/Prize.
They are credited with the creation of the first romance title, Young Romance at Crestwood Publications, also known as Prize Comics. In fact in July 1947, the two had created a (children's) romance story for Hillman Comics' My Date #1, which inspired Crestwood/Prize publishers Teddy Epstein and Paul Blyer (or "Bleier") to offer Simon and Kirby 50% of profits if they'd produce their follow-up for their company. September/October 1947's Young Romance "became Jack and Joe's biggest hit in years," selling "millions of copies" and inspiring Crestwood to print triple the number of copies and produce the spin-off Young Love (both titles would later be sold to DC Comics). Romance comics would reinvigorate the comics industry (and, supposedly, appeal to a much broader - for example female - audience) over the next few years. Kick-starting a whole genre of comics, Young Romance spawned dozens of imitators from publishers such as "Timely, Fawcett, Quality, and even Fox Features Syndicate [who] delivered knockoffs like Love Confessions, Romance Tales, True Stories of Romance, and My Love Secret. Kirby recast the Emerald 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 largely due 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 sued Kirby and was successful at trial.

Stan Lee and Marvel Comics

Kirby returned to work with Stan Lee on the cusp of the company's evolution from its 1950s incarnation as Atlas Comics (previously Timely Comics) to become Marvel. Inker Frank Giacoia approached Lee for work, but when informed that Atlas artists inked their own pencils, suggested he could "get Kirby back here to pencil some stuff".}}
Highlights besides the Fantastic Four include Thor, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, the original X-Men, the Silver Surfer, Doctor Doom, Galactus, The Watcher, Magneto, Ego the Living Planet, the Inhumans and their hidden city of Attilan, and the Black Panther — comics' first known Black superhero — and his African nation of Wakanda. Simon & Kirby's Captain America was also incorporated into Marvel's continuity.
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. 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 titles such as OMAC, Kamandi, The Demon, and, together with former partner Joe Simon for one last time, a new incarnation of the Sandman. Several characters from this period have since become fixtures in the DC Universe, including the demon Etrigan and his human counterpart Jason Blood; Scott Free (Mister Miracle), and the cosmic villain Darkseid.

Return to Marvel

Kirby then returned to Marvel Comics where he 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 influenced the evolution of life on Earth. Kirby’s other Marvel creations in this period include Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man, and an adaptation and expansion of the movie . He also wrote and drew The Black Panther and did numerous covers across the line.
Still dissatisfied with Marvel's treatment of him, and their refusal to provide health and other employment benefits, Kirby left Marvel to work in animation, where he did designs for Turbo Teen, Thundarr the Barbarian 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.

Independent comics

In the early 1980s, Pacific Comics, a new, non-newsstand comic book publisher, made a then-groundbreaking deal with Kirby to publish his series Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers: Kirby would retain copyright over his creation and receive royalties on it. This, together with similar actions by other independent comics publishers as Eclipse Comics, 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.
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.
Kirby died at age 76 of heart failure in his Thousand Oaks, California home.

Awards and honors

Jack Kirby received a great deal of recognition over the course of his career, including the 1967 Alley Award for Best Pencil Artist. The following year he was runner-up behind Jim Steranko. His other Alley Awards were:

1963: Favorite Short Story - "The Human Torch Meets Captain America,", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Strange Tales #114

1964: Best Novel - "Captain America Joins the Avengers", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, from The Avengers #4

1964: Best New Strip or Book - "Captain America", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, in Tales of Suspense

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 Thor

1967: Best Professional Work, Regular Short Feature - (tie) "Tales of Asgard" and "Tales of the Inhumans", 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

1968: 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.
His work was honored posthumously with the 1998 Harvey Award for Best Domestic Reprint Project, for Jack Kirby's New Gods by Jack Kirby, edited by Bob Kahan.
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 Sept. 16, 2006 to Jan. 28, 2007.

Legacy

The rooftop fighting and urban action were common in Kirby's superhero comics. They were drawn from Kirby's Depression-era youth on New York’s Lower East Side. In an interview, Kirby related that the conflict among rival gangs was incessant. The fighting was often staged up and down the tenement fire escapes, as well as in running battles across the neighborhood rooftops.
   The most imitated aspect of Kirby's work has been his exaggerated perspectives and dynamic energy. Less easy to imitate have been the expressive body language of his characters, who embrace each other and charge into everything from battle to pancakes with unselfconscious exuberance; and such constantly forward-looking innovations as the then cutting-edge photomontages he often used. The "Kirby Crackle" is the often imitated technique of visually depicting crackling energy using an arrangement of black dots. He (along with fellow Marvel creator Steve Ditko) pioneered the use of visible minority characters in comic books, and Kirby co-created the first black superhero at Marvel (the African prince the Black Panther) and created DC's first two black superheroes: Vykin the Black in The Forever People #1 (March 1971) and the Black Racer in The New Gods #3 (July 1971).
   Kirby’s daughter, Lisa Kirby, announced in early 2006 that she and co-writer Steve Robertson, with artist Mike Thibodeaux, plan to publish via the Marvel Comics Icon imprint, a six-issue miniseries, Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters, featuring characters and concepts created by her father.
   Comics historian and Kirby friend Mark Evanier wrote in February 2007 that his long-in-progress Kirby biography would be broken into at least two books, with the first of these to be an art book, Kirby: King of Comics, scheduled for publication October 2007 by publisher Harry N. Abrams.
   Several Kirby images are among those on the "Marvel Super Heroes" set of commemorative stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service on 27 July 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, Jack Kirby's artwork is featured on: Captain America, The Thing, Silver Surfer, Amazing Spider-Man #1, The Incredible Hulk #1, Captain America #100, X-Men #1, and Fantastic Four #3.

Homages

In the episode "The Forever War" of the 1998-1999 Fox Kids animated television series The Silver Surfer, an alien general offers the Surfer a beverage "made from the finest grapes in the Kirby Cluster."

Jacob Krigstein, a character in The Authority comic books, is inspired by Jack Kirby.

Rock group Monster Magnet referenced Kirby's cultural impact in their song, "Melt", which includes the lyrics, "I was thinking how the world should have cried/On the day Jack Kirby died."

Jazz percussionist Gregg Bendian's group Interzone recorded a tribute album, Requiem for Jack Kirby, in 2001.

In Fantastic Four #511 (May 2004), when the team went to Heaven, God — depicted as an artist sitting at a drawing board — closely resembled Jack Kirby, the characters' co-creator.

The mid-1980s independent comic Boris the Bear satirized the conflict between Kirby and Marvel Comics over the rights to Kirby's creations. The eponymous Boris was given the "Cosmic Can Opener of Kir-By" with instructions to right the wrongs done against an entity known as "The King". Boris confronts "Jim Spouter" (a parody of Jim Shooter, then editor-in-chief at Marvel), who sets The King's own creations against Boris. Spouter, eventually defeated sets off in a huff to create "the "Phew Universe", over which The King would have no control.

In the animated television series,, the supporting character Dan Turpin, created by Kirby in the comic book New Gods, is modeled visually after Kirby. Episodes #38-39, titled "Apokolips Now," were dedicated to Kirby's memory.

The 1986 comic Donatello #1, a one shot centering around the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character Donatello told the story of "Kirby and the Warp Crystal". It featured a character, based on Jack Kirby, whose drawings came to life. When Donatello goes into this artist's fantasy world, he finds characters based on the New Gods. The comic was made into an episode of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003 animated series, "The King" which was also dedicated to him.

Also, in a proposal for a character in the fourth live action TMNT movie (which was never produced), a fifth Turtle named Kirby was designed, who was named after Jack.

In the fourth volume of Mirage's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles there's a hospital called Kurtzburg Memorial Hospital which caters specifically to super beings, mutants and other special cases. It is said in one issue that some of the super beings refer to Kurtzburg as the "father of us all".

In Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a supplement for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, an example alternate dimension has a man named Kirby with a pen that gives him the ability to draw creations that come to life.

In Kurt Busiek's comic-book series Astro City, many Kirby references and tributes appear, such as a mountain called Mount Kirby, and the character Silver Agent, who a pastiche of Captain America, the Guardian, and Silver Star.

Alan Moore's final storyline in Supreme: The Return features a character known as King, an inhabitant of Idea Space, who is clearly modeled after Kirby and is heralded by Kirby dots. The storyline features tributes to characters Kirby created or had a hand in defining, such as the Newsboy Legion, Guardian, the New Gods, and Doctor Doom.

In the series Mage one of the supporting characters is named "Kirby Hero".

The look of the adult swim animated television series Minoriteam is an homage to Kirby's art style. He is credited as "The King" in the show's end credits.

In the Batman Animated series Etrigan the Demon allies with Batman and during a battle scene the window to KIRBY'S BAKERY is smashed.

The 1995 movie Crimson Tide features a scene in which submarine sailors brawl over a disagreement as to whether the Silver Surfer as drawn by Kirby was better than the version drawn by Moebius. Second-in-command Ron Hunter (played by Denzel Washington) finally announces, "Now, everyone who reads comic books knows that the Kirby Silver Surfer is the only true Silver Surfer. Now, am I right or wrong?"

Episodes late in the 2006-2007 season of the NBC superhero TV series Heroes include New York City scenes set at the fictional Kirby Plaza.

Kirby appeared in an episode of Sabrina, the Animated Series, in which he's idolized by Sabrina's friend Harvey. Harvey meets "Jack" at a comic book convention.

He appeared in an episode of the TV series "The Incredible Hulk" as a sketch artist at a police station. He does a sketch of the Hulk as described by an eyewitness, and of course the drawing he does looks like one of his early illustrations of the character.

In the Marvel title She-Hulk, the titular character is employed in her civilian identity by the law firm Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway, Kurtzburg being the birth surname of Jack Kirby.

In the 2003 film Daredevil, a forensic analyst by the name of Jack Kirby is portrayed by Daredevil comic author Kevin Smith.

The Freedom Force (2002 video game) franchise of video & computer games features characters designed in the style of Jack Kirby's art.

Quotes

Al Williamson: "If you told me or most of my buddies to draw fifty spaceships, they'd all look like they were built in the same plant. If Jack drew fifty spaceships, they'd look like they were built by fifty different alien races." Joe Simon: "My favorite artist was Lou Fine. He was also Jack Kirby's favorite artist. I know that Jack was a fan of and greatly influenced by Fine’s work."

Selected bibliography

Marvel

Captain America Comics (Golden Age) #1–10 (1941-1942)

Various issues of "pre-superhero Marvel" science-fiction/fantasy stories in Amazing Adventures, Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, Strange Worlds and World of Fantasy (1958 to early 1960s)

Fantastic Four #1–102 (1961-1970)

Incredible Hulk #1–5 (1962-1963)

X-Men #1–17 + Annual 1 (1963-1965)

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1–7 (1963-1964)

Avengers #1–8 (1963-1964), #14–17 (1965)

The Mighty Thor #126–177,179 (1966-70; continued from Journey into Mystery)

Captain America (modern) #100–109 (1968-1969; continued from Tales of Suspense), #193–214 (1976-1977)

The Eternals #1–19 (1976-1978)

The Black Panther #1–12 (1977-1978)

Devil Dinosaur #1–9 (1978)

Machine Man #1–9 (1978)

#1–10 (1976)

DC

Challengers of the Unknown #1–8 (May 1958 - July 1959)

Adventure Comics #250–256 (July 1958 - January 1959)

World's Finest #96–99 (September 1958 - February 1959)

Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #133–148 (1970-1972)

Forever People #1–11 (1971-1972)

New Gods #1–11 (1971-1972)

Mister Miracle #1–18 (1971-1974)

The Demon #1–16 (1972-1974)

Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth #1–40 (1972-1976)

The Sandman #1–6 (1974-1976)

OMAC #1–8 (1974)

Justice, Inc. #2–4 (July-November 1975)

1st Issue Special #1, 5-6 (April, Aug.-Sept. 1975)
Audio

Audio of Merry Marvel Marching Society record, including voice of Jack KirbyFurther Information
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