Jack Kirby
Jacob Kurtzberg arrived at 147 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on the 28th of August 1917. His parents Rose and Benjamin were Austrian-Jewish immigrants who struggled to make ends meet as garment factory workers. The boy grew up in a cramped neighborhood where he learned to draw by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons. He sought out places to learn more about art but faced rejection from the Educational Alliance for drawing too fast with charcoal. At age 14 he enrolled at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn but left after just one week. I was not the kind of student that Pratt was looking for, Kirby later recalled. They wanted people who would work on something forever. I didn't want to work on any project forever.
Kirby joined the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate in 1936 working on newspaper comic strips under the pseudonym Jack Curtiss. He moved to Fleischer Studios in 1935 to animate Popeye cartoons before leaving during the strike. In 1940 he met Joe Simon at Fox Feature Syndicate earning a weekly salary of fifteen dollars. Simon loved Kirby's work immediately and asked if they could do freelance work together. They created Captain America for Timely Comics in late 1940. The first issue released in early 1941 sold out within days. The second issue print run reached over one million copies. Simon negotiated a deal giving them twenty-five percent of profits from the feature. Goodman eventually discovered their plan to leave and told them to exit after finishing Captain America Comics number ten.
Kirby was drafted into the U.S. Army on the 7th of June 1943. He landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy on the 23rd of August 1944 months after D-Day. A lieutenant made him a scout who advanced into towns drawing reconnaissance maps and pictures. During the winter of 1944 he suffered severe frostbite and was taken to a hospital in London for recovery. Doctors considered amputating his legs which had turned black but he eventually recovered. He returned to the United States in January 1945 assigned to Camp Butner in North Carolina. After the war Simon arranged work for Kirby at Harvey Comics creating titles like Boy Explorers Comics. They also freelanced for Hillman Periodicals and Crestwood Publications. Their greatest success came with Young Romance number one cover-dated October 1947. The first title sold ninety-two percent of its print run inspiring Crestwood to triple initial copy numbers by issue three.
Kirby began freelancing regularly for Atlas despite harboring negative sentiments about Stan Lee whom he found annoying. His first published work at Atlas appeared as the cover of Strange Worlds number one dated December 1958. He drew across all genres from romance comics to war comics to crime comics to Western comics. The landmark series Fantastic Four number one released in November 1961 became a hit that revolutionized the industry. For almost a decade Kirby provided Marvel's house style creating many characters including Ant-Man the Avengers Black Panther the Hulk Iron Man Thor and the X-Men. He designed their visual motifs and often provided new-to-Marvel artists breakdown layouts over which they would pencil. The story frequently cited as Lee and Kirby's finest achievement is The Galactus Trilogy in Fantastic Four issues forty-eight through fifty dated March through May 1966. It chronicled the arrival of Galactus a cosmic giant who wanted to devour the planet and his herald the Silver Surfer.
In late 1970 Kirby signed a three-year contract with DC Comics under editorial director Carmine Infantino. He produced interlinked titles under the blanket sobriquet The Fourth World including New Gods Mister Miracle and The Forever People. He also took over Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen because the series lacked a stable creative team. Kirby was editor writer and artist on each of these series. The central villain Darkseid appeared in Jimmy Olsen before the launch of other books giving them greater exposure. In 2007 comics writer Grant Morrison commented that Kirby's dramas were staged across Jungian vistas of raw symbol and storm. The scope of his vision has endured despite commercial failure. Infantino and company were not receptive to Kirby's proposals for square-bound trade paperback formats. He later produced Spirit World and In the Days of the Mob one-shot black-and-white magazines edited written and drawn by himself.
Kirby defined comics in two periods his work in early 1940s with Joe Simon on Captain America and then his superhero comics of 1960s and early 1970s. He drew at least twenty thousand three hundred eighteen pages of published art and another thirteen hundred eighty-five covers in his career. He published eleven hundred fifty-eight pages in 1962 alone. His style captured energy and motion within the image synergizing with text to serve narrative. He broke up pages in new ways introducing splash panels stretching across two pages. I found myself competing with the movie camera, Kirby said. I tore my characters out of panels. I made them jump all over page. Panels overlapped and he found new ways to arrange them. He developed a talent for creating collages initially utilizing them within Fantastic Four pages. He introduced Negative Zone as place illustrated via collage but discarded use due to low page rates. He also created Kirby Krackle field of black pseudo-fractal images representing negative space around unspecified kinds of energy.
In 1985 Marvel issued a release demanding Kirby affirm that his art was created for hire allowing Marvel to retain copyright in perpetuity. The company offered him eighty-eight pages of his art less than one percent of total output if he signed agreement. After Kirby publicly slammed Marvel calling them thugs they finally returned approximately nineteen hundred or two thousand one hundred pages of estimated ten thousand to thirteen thousand drawn. In September 2009 Kirby's four children served notices of termination to Disney Studios 20th Century Fox Universal Pictures Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures. They sued Marvel to terminate copyrights and gain profits from comic creations. A settlement reached on the 26th of September 2014 dismissed the petition. Kirby died of heart failure on the 6th of February 1994 aged seventy-six in Thousand Oaks California. He was buried at Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village. In 2017 he was posthumously named a Disney Legend for creations forming basis for Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise.
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Common questions
When and where was Jack Kirby born?
Jacob Kurtzberg arrived at 147 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on the 28th of August 1917. His parents Rose and Benjamin were Austrian-Jewish immigrants who struggled to make ends meet as garment factory workers.
What did Jack Kirby do during World War II?
Kirby was drafted into the U.S. Army on the 7th of June 1943 and landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy on the 23rd of August 1944 months after D-Day. A lieutenant made him a scout who advanced into towns drawing reconnaissance maps and pictures before he suffered severe frostbite and recovered in London.
Which characters did Jack Kirby create for Marvel Comics?
For almost a decade Kirby provided Marvel's house style creating many characters including Ant-Man the Avengers Black Panther the Hulk Iron Man Thor and the X-Men. He designed their visual motifs and often provided new-to-Marvel artists breakdown layouts over which they would pencil.
What major contract dispute happened between Jack Kirby and DC Comics?
In late 1970 Kirby signed a three-year contract with DC Comics under editorial director Carmine Infantino and produced interlinked titles under the blanket sobriquet The Fourth World including New Gods Mister Miracle and The Forever People. Infantino and company were not receptive to Kirby's proposals for square-bound trade paperback formats.
When did Jack Kirby die and where is he buried?
Kirby died of heart failure on the 6th of February 1994 aged seventy-six in Thousand Oaks California. He was buried at Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village.