This is not to belittle Jack Kirby’s meteoric success in the comics field. The “Simon & Kirby” brand was the most recognizable art credit amongst avid readers during the 1940s, perhaps second only to “Walt Disney,” and certainly rivaled the Superman stamp of “Siegel & Shuster.” During the Marvel ’60s heyday, Kirby’s was a name familiar on college campuses across the country. It seems fair to surmise that, as a partner or on his own, Kirby usually commanded top page rates and, despite sporadic financial hardship through the decades, the Kirby family mostly lived a comfortably middle-class existence, one far removed from his decrepit, poverty-stricken Lower East Side upbringing as a boy. But the captains of the industry for which he so excelled, could be a repellent and vile lot in their dealings with Jack Kirby and his artist and writer peers, sometimes blatantly, at times obliquely. Unlike book publishing, few copyrights were retained by the creators of the material and little in the way of royalties was granted. Famously, Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster were paid $130 for the rights to their creation, the first super-hero, Superman. It would take foresight for the few — consider Bob Kane and William Moulton Marston, respective creators of Batman and Wonder Woman — with the wherewithal and influence to negotiate terms aided by legal representation to strike Comic Book Creator • Spring 2013 • #1
Above: A Kirby family portrait from 1961. From left, Neal, Roz, Barbara (sitting), Susan, and Jack. Below inset: Young Jack Kurtzberg and Rosalind Goldstein out and about in the early ’40s. Below right: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in a ’50s S&K publicity shot. Bottom right: A rare shot of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby together, this from a 1964 National Cartoonist Society function (courtesy of David Folkman).
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