Jack Kirby sometimes just doesn’t get the recognition that he deserves. On of the reasons I created this fansite is that I’d had my comments deleted on more than one occasion by AICN (Aint It Cool News) and SUPERHEROHYPE.com … Regarding the later was a paticular comment I posted in response to a number of uninformed trolls ripping the Kirby Estate for suing Marvel Comics and parties involved.
I don’t know who these faceless people were but I was alarmed that the lack of knowledge about what Kirby means to the modern CBM & a good chuck of pop culture was being missed.
His name may not be familiar with people outside of BABY Boomers to Generation Xers … Some people don’t realize his art, his story telling voice and his blue collar lineage revolutionized the medium. Kirby was always about the “story”. Everything he illustrated was in service of advancing the narrative. Unlike today, if you saw a BIG FLASY SPLASH PAGE …it was meant to convey a sense of the fantastic, meant to be BIGGER than LIFE.
Kirby didn’t have the “self promotional” skills or moxie of STAN LEE (Who married into Timely Comics which would later become MARVEL.). Jack was a literal meat-in-potatoes type worker who could crank out twenty-four pages after being given a three line narrative.
JACK KIRBY is the FATHER of the MODERN COMIC BOOK.
Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994), born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor. Growing up poor in New York City, Kurtzberg entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s. He drew various comic strips under different pen names, ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1941, Kirby and writer Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby would create a number of comics for various publishers, often teaming with Simon.
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 Archie Comics and DC Comics, but ultimately found himself at Timely's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, later to be known as Marvel Comics. In the 1960s, Kirby co-created many of Marvel Comics' major characters, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Hulk, along with writer-editor Stan Lee. Despite the high sales and critical acclaim of the Lee-Kirby titles, Kirby felt treated unfairly, and left the company in 1970 for rival DC Comics.
While working for DC, Kirby created his Fourth World saga, which spanned several comics titles. While these and other titles 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 received great recognition for his career accomplishments, and is regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium.
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 superhero — and 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.
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 and 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.
In 1979, 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 Barbarian and other animated television series. He also worked on The Fantastic Four cartoon show, reuniting him with scriptwriter Stan Lee.
In 1987, Kirby, along with Carl Barks and Will Eisner, was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
. . . Jack was the single most influential figure in the turnaround in Marvel's fortunes from the time he rejoined the company ... It wasn't merely that Jack conceived most of the characters that are being done, but ... Jack's point of view and philosophy of drawing became the governing philosophy of the entire publishing company and, beyond the publishing company, of the entire field ... [Marvel took] Jack and use[d] him as a primer. They would get artists ... and they taught them the ABCs, which amounted to learning Jack Kirby. ... Jack was like the Holy Scripture and they simply had to follow him without deviation. That's what was told to me ... It was how they taught everyone to reconcile all those opposing attitudes to one single master point of view
Quote: Gil Kane (Re: Jack Kirby)
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.
[Kirby]... created a new grammar of storytelling and a cinematic style of motion. Once-wooden characters cascaded from one frame to another — or even from page to page — threatening to fall right out of the book into the reader's lap. The force of punches thrown was visibly and explosively evident. Even at rest, a Kirby character pulsed with tension and energy in a way that makes movie versions of the same characters seem static by comparison.
Op-ed piece (New York Times on Kirby’s Death)
"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."
Michael Chabon, (After word to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.)
Stan Lee (Keeping it Real)
Jacob Kurtzberg ( Jack Kirby)
(August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994)
!! DEDICATED TO THE KING!!