JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR NINETY-ONE
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issue, I, the CRYPTOLOGIST (with the help of FROM THE TOMB editor PETER NORMANTON), have exhumed the worst Horror Comics excesses of the 1950s, Killer “B” movies to die for, and the creepiest, kookiest toys that crossed your boney little fingers as a child! But wait... do you dare enter the House of Usher, or choose sides in the skirmish between the Addams Family and The Munsters?! Can you stand to gaze at Warren magazine frontispieces by this issue’s cover artist BERNIE WRIGHTSON, or spend some Hammer Time with that studio’s most frightening films? And if Atlas pre-Code covers or terrifying science-fiction are more than you can take, stay away! All this, and more, is lurching toward you in TwoMorrows Publishing’s latest, and most decrepit, magazine—just for retro horror fans, and featuring my henchmen WILL MURRAY, MARK VOGER, BARRY FORSHAW, TIM LEESE, PETE VON SHOLLY, and STEVE and MICHAEL KRONENBERG!” (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99
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CRYPTOLOGY #2
CRYPTOLOGY #3
CRYPTOLOGY #4
The Cryptologist and his ghastly little band have cooked up more grisly morsels, including: ROGER HILL’s conversation with our diabolical cover artist DON HECK, severed hand films, pre-Code comic book terrors, the otherworldly horrors of Hammer’s Quatermass, another Killer “B” movie classic, plus spooky old radio shows, and the horror-inspired covers of the Shadow’s own comic book. Start the ghoul-year with retro-horror done right by FORSHAW, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, RICHARD HAND, VON SHOLLY, and editor PETER NORMANTON.
This third wretched issue inflicts the dread of MARS ATTACKS upon you—the banned cards, the model kits, the despicable comics, and a few words from the film’s deranged storyboard artist PETE VON SHOLLY! The chilling poster art of REYNOLD BROWN gets brought up from the Cryptologist’s vault, along with a host of terrifying puppets from film, and more comic books they’d prefer you forget! Plus, more Hammer Time, JUSTIN MARRIOT on obscure ’70s fear-filled paperbacks, another Killer “B” film, and more to satiate your sinister side!
Our fourth putrid tome treats you to ALEX ROSS’ gory lowdown on his Universal Monsters paintings! Hammer Time brings you face-to-face with the “Brides of Dracula”, and the Cryptologist resurrects 3-D horror movies and comics of the 1950s! Learn the origins of slasher films, and chill to the pre-Code artwork of Atlas’ BILL EVERETT and ACG’s 3-D maestro HARRY LAZARUS. Plus, another Killer “B” movie and more awaits retro horror fans, by NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!
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Contents
THE
KIRBY’S GREATEST VICTORIES! UPS AND DOWNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 the editor on Jack’s biggest wins A FANTASTIC FORAY. . . . . . . . . . . . 3 James Van Hise’s Kirby interview
ISSUE #91, FALL 1994-2024
C o l l e c t o r
A PERSONAL LOOK. . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 the 2024 WonderCon Kirby Panel, with Rand Hoppe, John Morrow, Ray Wyman, David Schwartz, Glen David Gold, and Jeremy Kirby THE MAKING OF THE AOJK. . . . . . 17 how Ray Wyman’s Kirby bio came to be JACK FAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Mark Evanier on his superb bio, Kirby: King of Comics KIRBY OBSCURA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 devils, maniacs, and slaughter! PRIVATE VICTORY. . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 the editor shares his personal Kirby successes after 30 years of TJKC ART de TRIOMPHE. . . . . . . . . . . . .38 a gallery of triumphant Kirby art THE AL FATHER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Adam McGovern returns to talk with writer Al Ewing INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY. . . . . 50 the design of Captain Victory JACK KIRBY GETS HIS MARVEL COMICS ARTWORK BACK. . . . . . . 52 and local news was all over the story “DIFFERENT”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 a pivotal Simon & Kirby story KIRBY KINETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 the influence of Golden Age Cap KIRBY’S GREATEST TRIUMPH?. . . 73 you never forget your first COLLECTOR COMMENTS. . . . . . . . 78 Cover inks: VINCE COLLETTA Cover color: GLENN WHITMORE COPYRIGHTS: Big Barda, Blue Beetle, Boy Commandos, Darkseid, Demon, Dr. Fate, Female Furies, Forager, Green Lantern, Guardian, Justice Society of America, Kamandi, Klik-Klak, Mr. Miracle, Mr. Sacker, Newsboy Legion, Orion, Sandman, Scott Free, Shilo Norman, Spirit, Superman, The Losers TM & © DC Comics • Bucky, Captain America, Defenders, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Eternals, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Ikaris, Magneto, Nick Fury, Red Raven, Red Skull, Replicus, Silver Surfer, Skrulls, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Taaia, Thing, Thor, X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Blue Bolt TM & © respective holder • Scooby-Doo TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment • Captain Victory, Egghead, Interpretations of God, Soul Love, Space Collage TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • Ookla, Thundarr the Barbarian, Yay! Team! TM & © Ruby-Spears Productions • “Different”, Black Magic, Boy Explorers, Bulls-Eye, Stuntman, Young Romance TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates
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(above) Page 8 pencils from Captain America #103 (July 1968)—a much better repro than we had back in TJKC #3 in 1994. The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 30, No. 91, Fall 2024. Published quarterly (for 30 years—we made it!) by and © TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $15 postpaid US ($19 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $53 Economy US, $78 International, $19 Digital. Editorial package © TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All Kirby artwork is © Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. Views expressed here are those of the respective authors, and not necessarily those of TwoMorrows Publishing or the Jack Kirby Estate. First printing. PRINTED IN CHINA. ISSN 1932-6912
1
Ups and
Downs by editor John Morrow
W
hen asked who won the Sky Masters lawsuit between Jack Kirby and DC Comics editor Jack Schiff, Wally Wood reportedly said, “Stan Lee.” Indeed, that may well have been Stan’s greatest victory, for if Jack hadn’t been blacklisted at DC and shown up at Marvel when he did, it’s a safe bet the Marvel Universe as we know it today wouldn’t exist. And while we don’t know what Jack would’ve gone on to do instead, he likewise definitely benefited from that happenstance— because at that moment in the comics industry, there weren’t many other avenues for him to pursue. So he knuckled down and gave it his best, as always. There’s a valuable life lesson to be learned there: even in the midst of adversity, if you hang in there, an even greater outcome is often waiting just around the corner. Jack certainly saw that lesson play out a number of times throughout his life: having a stroke of misfortune, followed by an even greater victory. Just reflect a moment on the circumstances that led to what I feel were Jack’s biggest wins:
winning credit for him through an eleventh-hour settlement with Marvel in 2014. It’s hard to believe that was ten years ago. Even harder for me to fathom is that with this issue, I’ve turned the corner on thirty years of producing this publication, doing my best to achieve my goal of celebrating Jack’s life and career, and making sure the world knows what he did. That 2014 legal settlement with Disney was the apotheosis of what I set out to do back in 1994 when I launched the Jack Kirby Collector, and I’m glad my magazine—and I personally, through being deposed, and participating in an amicus brief presented to the US Supreme Court—was able to play a small part in helping Jack finally get creator credit and remuneration for his family. This magazine is the result of a lot of fellow Kirbyphiles who share that same goal, and I’m thankful for every one who contributed to making sure Jack gets his due as the greatest comics creator of all-time, as he so rightly deserves. Each of Jack’s wins had their ups and downs. But his greatest victory—winning the girl of his dreams, Rosalind Goldstein—looks to have been one victory with no downside, as you’ll see in this issue’s recollections of their life together. Expanding his family with the birth of his four children and subsequent grandchildren, as well as widening his ever-growing circle of friends and fans, was a continued blessing his entire life. Getting to spend the last three decades plugging away at this magazine has likewise been one for me, with far more ups than downs. Thanks for taking this wild ride with me, and joining me on this 30th anniversary victory lap! H
• Growing up in poverty in the Lower East Side of New York, he went on to score early hits in comics, first with Captain America, and then following up with another mega-seller, Boy Commandos. • Getting drafted in World War II, he survived combat (and nearly having both feet amputated) before returning home to comics, hitting a wall at Harvey before finding unprecedented success with Joe Simon pioneering romance comics. • Experiencing the heartbreaking failure of Simon & Kirby’s Mainline Comics company, and the aforementioned legal dispute over the Sky Masters newspaper strip, the fallout from which resulted in his co-creating the Marvel Universe in the 1960s. • Dealing with frustrations working with Stan Lee and Martin Goodman at Marvel in the 1960s, which led to him moving to DC Comics to launch the Fourth World, apparently the most creatively fulfilling period of his career. • Having promises broken at DC Comics, his Fourth World epic cancelled, and returning for an anticlimactic stint Marvel in 1975, which resulted in him finding a much more rewarding career in animation, just when he needed it most. • Being mired in a fight with Marvel Comics over the return of his original artwork, while launching Captain Victory and the direct market for comics, getting an opportunity to conclude his Fourth World saga, and seeing a resurgence in support for him and his legacy that played a big part in resolving that original art battle. • Passing away in 1994, which led to a pension from Marvel Comics for wife Roz, and a legacy that continues three decades later, through books and publications like the one you’re reading now, and the creation of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center.
[Throughout this issue, I’m highlighting major victories in all areas of Jack’s life and career. Since winners deserves a trophy, I’ve co-opted the above statuette of Jack, produced by Bowen Designs in 2003, to serve as ours. But for me, the below card Joe Sinnott drew to commemorate receiving my Inkpot Award at the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con, was as good as any award! Jack certainly won big having Sinnott as his inker for so many years, as did I, getting to know a generous, wonderful man like Joe.]
Long after his passing, the ups and downs continued, with Jack’s family fighting a contentious and protracted legal battle with Marvel Comics—including several rulings not going their way—before posthumously 2
A Fantastic Foray
A circa 1986 interview with Jack about the Fantastic Four, conducted by James Van Hise, with thanks to Jim Van Heuklon for supplying the original transcript.
CO-CREATING A UNIVERSE
JAMES VAN HISE: We discussed earlier how you’d made a presentation of the Fantastic Four, the characters, to Stan Lee. JACK KIRBY: Who made the presentation?
you’ve got a good story problem. And in that kind of an atmosphere, you can’t fail, because the person reading it will relate to it, and understand immediately what the problem is. The problem, sometimes, isn’t the super-villain. It’s your own super-strength. It’s your own irritability. The Thing would go berserk as much as the villain. He’d smash everything up. And I’d feel the same way.
VAN HISE: You did. KIRBY: Yes. There was a reason for that, because at the time the big topic was radiation. We had just made a bomb, and at the time I was looking to create [supermen], and you’ll find that in all my work, you’ll see the times are reflected there. I don’t contrive stories. I don’t give you B.S., and I’m not giving you fairy tales. At that time, radiation was the big subject, and the Fantastic Four came out of those times. Actually, it still is the big subject. You got Chernobyl [the Russian nuclear power plant disaster on April 26, 1986]... what’s going to happen with Chernobyl? You got a radiation cloud going all over Europe. Nobody knows the extent of it. Nobody knows the consequences of it. We were faced with the same question. Hiroshima was still fresh. All the bomb experiments were still fresh. They were testing atom bombs.
VAN HISE: In the early stories, you had the Thing a grimmer character, and then his anger seemed to wear off. KIRBY: All right. A few weeks ago, I saw an article where a baby was born with two heads. Now, think of the consternation of these two growing up with one body. VAN HISE: There seems to be a parallel between the relationships between the FF and the work you were doing earlier for DC with the Challengers [of the Unknown]. KIRBY: I try to vary my characters. They may be stock [characters]. I won’t deny that. That may be a formula, a personal formula, that I use, unconsciously, just like you might find them in the Newsboy Legion, or in the Boy Commandos. You’ll find that there’s a tough character, and a handsome character. I feel that we’re basically different, in appearance, certainly not in temperament. We all have the capability of doing what each of us does. In the case of the Fantastic Four, they all adjusted in their own way. Reed Richards was a well-adjusted guy. He could take it in stride. Ben had a different problem. If Reed Richards had been the monster, he might have behaved differently. I can’t share your feelings… I can only feel my own. I can only project my own and hope that other people accept me.
VAN HISE: So once the FF were created, it didn’t deal as much with how their powers were created as with how the powers changed their lives. KIRBY: That’s the idea, to dramatize that kind of a background with good stories. In other words... I did Sky Masters, a daily strip dealing with space. And I had to dramatize prosaic objects. VAN HISE: In the first few issues, you did them as superheroes who were different, in that they didn’t have costumes yet. They were ordinary people with extraordinary powers. KIRBY: I’ve always dealt with ordinary people. Captain America was an ordinary person, until they experimented on him.
VAN HISE: If you were going to encapsulate each of their personalities... KIRBY: [Reed Richards] was scholarly, but he was caught in an extraordinary situation. Of course, he would react in a very scholarly way. He would use his powers as a brainy guy would. Reed Richards was a brain—a very cool character. Ben Grimm couldn’t be cool. He had to handle an extreme position. He had a face that was certainly extraordinary. People react to that. You may be a very nice guy, but if you have a monstrous face, you’re going to make a very poor first impression. Reed would react differently than Ben Grimm, because he had a different problem. He might have almost poked fun at himself. Being able to stretch almost a quarter of a mile… he might have found that amusing. Ben Grimm might have found that annoying.
VAN HISE: But still, those first few issues... KIRBY: Yes... it has to have time to grow. And there are changes to be made. As you take that time, you begin to think about the connotations of what you’re doing, and all these different things begin to enter your stories. You try to make your story saleseffective. You gotta think of sales—not only for good stories, but of sales. You have a duty to the publisher, you have a duty to your own prestige, you have a duty to your own credibility, and I had that duty, just as in any job. The Thing was just an ordinary guy, he went to college, became a flyer, and he had a conventional background, like anybody else. Now he was a Thing. He was a well adjusted Thing, but still, he had the problem of looking and being like a monster, and he had to live with that. And, of course, at times that would irritate him. How’d you like to go into a bowling alley and have the ball crumble in your hands? That would be irritating. If I were super-strong, it might not be all beneficial. And so the Thing had that problem of looking like a monster, and having this super-strength. And therefore,
VAN HISE: In the early days of the FF, before Reed and Sue got married, you had a story going involving the Sub-Mariner. Was there ever any talk of having the relationship go the other way, having Sue and Namor getting more involved, instead of Sue marrying Reed? KIRBY: There were veritable discussions. If 3
Should I go on to the next one...? MORROW: Sure, we’ll do our introductions here. Rand assembled some nice photos for our intros. Jeremy Kirby is Jack’s grandson, and Tracy, whom we just spoke about, is his sister. We’ve got some nice little shots of Jeremy here [left]. Jeremy is gonna talk about some great memories he has of his grandparents. Ray Wyman, Jr., to my left, is the author of The Art of Jack Kirby, a wonderful, and probably the first major Kirby biography that was ever done. That came out in 1989, 1990...? RAY WYMAN, JR: 1992. MORROW: Boy, are my years off! Ray has a lot of memories of the interviews he did with both Jack and Roz to assemble that book. Next up is a very close family friend of the Kirbys, David Schwartz. David will tell you how long he has known them, how he first met them, and some very interesting interactions he’s had with them over the years. Glen David Gold is a great author. He [wrote] a book called Carter Beats the Devil, and I have seen that book appear in the background on more sitcoms, [laughter] when people are doing like, you know, Manhattan apartments for the sets. It’ll be on the bookshelves there, so check it out the next time [you watch New Girl]. Glen is a noted author. He’s also a very well versed Kirby historian and commentator, and has amassed a wonderful bunch of Kirby art over the years. He’s a Kirby art collector, so he’ll have some interesting tales for us as well. And then that’s me, and this gentleman here with a cold, and we’ve got a couple more nice shots with Jack and Roz. And that’s what we wanted to do with this panel today. We called it Jack Kirby: A Personal Look. We’re not here to talk about who did what, and who deserves credit for what, and that kind of thing. We really just want to share personal memories of two wonderful people, Jack and Roz Kirby, who we all just loved. And if you’re in this room, I’m assuming you loved one or both of them as well. HOPPE: This photo was one that we scanned from the family album at Tracy’s house. And then talking to Ray, Ray was like, “Oh, I’ve got some photos, I want to send you some photos.” So here [left] are two photos that look like they’re from the same photo session. Jack’s got a pistol. [laughter] MORROW: That’s his Jimmy Cagney look. HOPPE: And since it’s Easter, there’s at least two photos of Roz giving Jack the bunny ears. [laughter] That one and that one [above]. That’s all the visual accompaniment for this particular show. Thanks, folks. MORROW: To get things rolling, I’d like David to start, if he doesn’t mind. David, what was your first encounter with Jack and/ or Roz? And how in the world did you get from there to here today, knowing him as well as you did? 6
DAVID SCHWARTZ: I met Jack for the first time at a Baycon, actually, which is a San Francisco convention. And I had been talking to, I believe, it was Al Gordon, who’s an artist you may know. Al and I were talking with a group of people, and Jack basically came up and was talking with them. And next thing you know, we were all gonna go to lunch. Jack was saying he was hungry, and we basically all went to lunch. I was probably 19 years old, I could not believe that I was going to lunch with Jack Kirby. I sat next to him throughout the lunch. And that is not at all how I got to know him. [laughter] When I really got to know him, is because I was friends with a couple of people he knew: Mike Thibodeaux, who was his last major inker, on Captain Victory. Mike and I were friends, and Mike was going up there because he was very close with Roz and Jack. So I really got to know him better when I was going up there with Mike over the years. And then I basically was up there every couple of weeks visiting, and eventually became a really good friend of the family. Then after Jack passed away, Roz was concerned, I believe initially, that people would kind of not be interested anymore in knowing her or hanging out with her, a lot of the comic book people. That was not true at all, and we did a lot of visiting and a lot of bringing people up there. If somebody really wanted to meet Roz or wanted to buy some original art, Mike Thibodeaux and I would go up there—because Roz was not comfortable with people she didn’t know, being up there by herself. And that’s really how I became integrated into knowing them, and becoming friends with Jack and Roz during those years.
in there?” [laughter] And I don’t have an answer for that. But that is a good memory that I have, of going up there and going, “This wasn’t here last week.” And that was just a memory of mine. I’m not sure it relates to them, other than it was at their home. MORROW: That’s fascinating. And I know I’ve had enough weird coincidences producing the Kirby Collector for thirty years, that I am just amazed at some of the weird things that show up, out of the blue, at exactly the right time when I need them for something, and it’s just inexplicable. SCHWARTZ: I want to just conclude this thought: at the time, Jack and Roz, from the 1960s, were—if people found them and were interested in Jack’s art, they invited people into their home. And this is long before there was really any benefit to them financially for doing that. People weren’t coming up there to buy original art, they were just coming up there because of their excitement and their thrill of what Jack’s work was doing during those years. And they were so welcoming, and so nice, and there are so many stories of professionals and other people today who went up there, and you know, Roz made them lunch. And they were just such warm and
MORROW: Are there any particularly poignant memories you have of interactions with Jack, or with Roz after Jack was gone? SCHWARTZ: A couple of things about Jack: Jack used to, whenever everybody came up to the house—and as I said, both Mike Thibodeaux and I would bring up people sometimes who were buying art, and they were obviously fascinated with being up there. Jack had a hallway, and the whole house was full of his artwork. And he would take people on this tour where he would basically go through the hallway and everywhere else, and show them the artwork and tell them stories about each piece that he had. And it was usually a pretty similar story, because he was used to culling around and doing it. And I remember, right after Jack passed, when people would come up, I was thinking to myself, “I’ve heard those stories so many times, I can do that tour!” I don’t believe I ever did. But that was something I remember very well. One thing I want to note, which is really just a memory I had. I mean, I don’t believe it’s accurate at this point, because I don’t believe in the supernatural. But after Jack passed, they had a flat file out there in the room that had the artwork in it. I knew that flat file in and out, because I was up there a lot looking through art, and when collectors were maybe interested in buying something, I was looking through it. And for about two years after Jack passed, every time I was up there, I would find at least one, if not more, pieces of artwork in those flat files that I had never seen before; at least, I didn’t remember seeing them. And I always thought to myself, “How are these new pieces getting 7
[above] Jack and David Schwartz in Jack’s studio, early 1980s. [below] We first showed this actual page from the tabloid rag Weekly World News from April 16, 1996, back in TJKC #13. Perhaps this fine piece of journalism explains how Kirby art kept showing up, seemingly from nowhere after Jack’s passing. Do you believe in the supernatural now, David? © The Weekly World News
MORROW: That was an interesting story to tell on Easter morning... [laughter]
we would send a stack of comics around to the different tents and cabins, and I decided that the next year, I was going to add some comics to that pile, so I would participate. I had one dollar, and I bought a Flash 100-Page Super Spectacular, a Superman with a weird cover where there’s eight Supermen hanging by ropes and nooses and stuff. And then there was this kid with a grasshopper. That just seemed really interesting, and so I bought that. And then again, it was a rainy day, and we were listening to the AM radio and reading the comics. And that comic with that grasshopper is just the best thing I’ve ever read. It was, you know, action-packed, and it was emotional. And I mentioned that to my tentmates, and they knew all about Jack, and they just started telling me about all those other comics in that stack with those—you know, this was [when] the Avengers/Defenders War was going on. And they were like, “Yeah, you know, all those super-heroes, Captain America, Fantastic Four, blahblah-blah? Well, that’s all Jack Kirby.” Oh. And then they started telling me about the Fourth World. I was like, “Oh, geez.” So that was [when] I got hit by that lightning bolt—just reading that great Kamandi comic [issue #12, Dec. 1973].
WYMAN: Well no, I thought it was appropriate! MORROW: It was, very appropriate! That’s great. Rand, I know the answer for you. But what was the first story where, you knew, “Okay, I’ve gotta follow this Jack Kirby guy”? HOPPE: Well, I was somewhat aware of Marvel Comics and super-heroes from the [Marvel Super-Heroes] TV show, but I was at summer camp, and we had a giant stack of comics that would go around. It was sleepaway camp, so if it was raining or whatever,
MORROW: The reason I knew Rand’s story, is because that’s the same story for me, the KlikKlak story. When the grasshopper... spoiler alert: he didn’t make it out at the end of that story... that hit me. That was when I knew. And then I went backwards, and found some more Kamandi issues, and there was a story with a character named Flower in there, [Rand concurs] that likewise just threw me for a loop. And I think I was permanently hooked at that point. Jeremy, how about you? Any particularly poignant, personal story from your grandparents? JEREMY: Stories? I have a ton, obviously. I would go back to the war stories. If you want to know what ones were mostly real, firsthand, it would be if he would repeat what they said in German, because he spoke German. If he was telling me a war story, and he said what the person said to him or whatever he overheard, in German, that’s going to be one that’s very much firsthand, something that he would reminisce and remember quite a lot. So I do remember those, because I didn’t know—I don’t speak German, 14
but he did quite well. More so than a memory, I would say one of the things that shows you the type of person he was is that, we’re at a comic-con now, at a panel about Jack Kirby, and we’re not talking about the art, we’re talking about the person. I think that really goes to show the type of person that he was, because there are so many amazing things that you could say about him as a person. And that’s what makes me feel good inside. One day, I hope someone can say a third of the amount of things about me, you know—what else [matters]? To me, that’s my grandfather. MORROW: I think we are almost out of time, but we’re gonna open up the floor real quickly. Do you have any questions? Right here. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can somebody please tell the Wagner story? I didn’t know that one. MORROW: Do we have time for the Wagner story? Real quick? WYMAN: Yeah. The Wagner story is where Jack is being held at gunpoint by three Germans; I think it was three Germans, something like that. And they’re telling him that, “When this guy is done playing Wagner, we shoot you.” [murmurs from audience] He didn’t say this in German, though. [laughter] And so Jack grabs the guy that’s closest to him, shoots him through the head, and then turns the gun on the guy that’s over there and shoots him, and uses the gun to shoot the guy on the piano before he finished Wagner. So he goes, “Yeah, and then I walked out.” [laughter] So that’s the short version. MORROW: This sounds like a great comic book war story. But don’t forget, Jack was in an actual war with live ammo and people shooting at him. So this very well could be absolutely true.
[above] Jack in his art room with Jeremy. Note the manila envelopes full of pencil photocopies. [previous page] Kamandi #12 pencils (Dec. 1973)—an issue that had a big impact on his legacy!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Was there an art room specifically for your grandfather in that house in Thousand Oaks?
were very glad I found. [laughter] It was in with all the xeroxes. And that’s just a random memory I have from back then.
JEREMY: Yeah.
HOPPE: That was not the studio, though. That was the art room; the studio was where the fireplace was, and the window, with the drawing table next to the window.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And was it like a shrine? Or could you guys just go in there?
SCHWARTZ: The art room was not where Jack did his drawing. He did his drawing in the studio room.
JEREMY: It was probably the only door that was locked, [laughter] but we could go in there. And yeah, like David said, there’s this giant, probably two-ton metal monolith that held all the art in it, and then there was a closet. The closet, they would keep me busy, because I was just an annoying brat, like any eight-year-old. They’d have me go in and put all the comic books together. So there’s 1970s Captain America comics, Captain Victory from the ’80s, and then all the DC stuff. So that was the art room.
MORROW: [It was] like a den, I guess. It had a window that looked out over the pool in the backyard. It was a very modest, but very pleasant and comfortable house up in the mountains in Thousand Oaks. The view from the beautiful backyard was amazing. Yes? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’ve always found looking at Jack Kirby’s art, particularly his rendition of 2001, the Eternals, and the Fourth World, to be a very immensely spiritual experience, just looking at it. He was drawing things that were so enormous—even with Galactus, you felt you were in the face of God, right there. And I’m just curious—to anyone who knew Jack Kirby, how did Jack Kirby see his artwork in terms of how it might relate to his spiritual path?
SCHWARTZ: It wasn’t like a museum, it was a functional room where it was storage. Around the house and in the hallway was more like a museum. This was a functional art room where they just had all of the art there. In the closet, there were a bunch of xeroxes, and they were in the manila envelopes that they sent the original art back in, and they had taken the art out for either sales, or somewhere else. And these manila envelopes had xeroxes, and I was going through some of the xeroxes one day, and found the original cover to Captain America #197, [murmurs from audience] which they
WYMAN: I just ran across a quote: “The mind is a very expansive thing.” That’s a Jack Kirby quote. I’m sort of running through my old notes... 15
JACK F.A.Q.s
A column answering asking Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby
A LEGACY WORTH DOCUMENTING
[below] Prior to writing Kirby: King of Comics, Mark first documented Jack’s career on a much smaller scale in the 1971 Kirby Unleashed portfolio, and even earlier in Marvelmania paraphernalia. [next page] Jack’s pencils for page 12 of What If? #11 (Oct. 1978), a fanciful tale wherein the original Marvel Bullpen (Stan Lee, Jack, Flo Steinberg, and Sol Brodsky) became the Fantastic Four. Jack usually only came into the Marvel offices on Fridays in the early 1960s, but he would’ve had ample interaction with those three—more than enough to depict them convincingly. See last issue’s “Incidental Iconography” column for Sean Kleefeld’s analysis of Jack’s ability to capture their likenesses.
Mark Evanier on Kirby: King of Comics [This time around, instead of Mark moderating a panel, TJKC editor John Morrow asks Mark questions about his book Kirby: King of Comics. It stands today as the most authoritative overview of Jack’s life and career (at least, until Mark’s upcoming full Kirby biography is published), and helped cement Kirby’s legacy in the age of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This interview was conducted by e-mail in June 2024.] JOHN MORROW: I’m not sure I’ve ever asked you: What was the first Kirby work you ever saw (even if you didn’t know who he was at the time), and if it’s not the same work, what was the first time you were aware of it being by this guy named “Jack Kirby”? MARK EVANIER: I have no idea. It was either something he did for DC—”Green Arrow” or Challengers—or some of those monster stories he did for books like Tales to Astonish or Strange Tales. I don’t recall being particularly impressed by anything until Fantastic Four came along and I had a name to go with an art style, and then I was able to apply that name to the earlier material. I believe the first Fantastic Four I read was issue #11 with The Impossible Man, and I loved that issue until shortly after, when I picked up the earlier issues in secondhand book shops and realized #11 was one of the weaker ones. But you know how that is. A lot of Jack’s earlier inkers looked fine to us until Sinnott and Giacoia came along. JOHN: Our readers already know that you were Jack’s assistant in the early 1970s and have been a family friend since then. But how did Kirby: King of Comics come about? MARK: Well, almost from the point when I began to see Jack and work with him regularly, he said he expected me to be his biographer. I remember he said I could be his “Boswell” and when he said that, I didn’t know what it meant. I had to go to a library and look it up. I told that to someone a few years later and they said, “He wanted you to be like the guy on Charlie’s Angels who sent the ladies on their missions?” But Jack liked that I was so interested in the history of comics and in the folks who did them. I’ve 18
always been way more interested in the writers and artists than in the characters. The very first time I met Jack, he was impressed that I knew as much about comics as I did. I owe a certain amount of my relationship with him to that. I’ve always been interested in Jack and one day, my friend Charlie Kochman called to say his company, Abrams Books, had a hole in their publishing schedule. I believe a book covering the works of a major artist (not a comic book artist) had fallen out for some reason, and Charlie thought a book full of Jack Kirby art would be a more than adequate replacement. I had been working on my long, long bio on Jack for some time and I knew that for a myriad of reasons, it would be a long time before I could publish it... so an art book with a lot of biographical material seemed like a good stopgap. JOHN: You’ve said Roz gave you access to old files— what depth of research materials did the Kirbys have in those files? Invoices? Receipts? Journals/diaries? I know Dick Ayers kept a very detailed log of all his work over the years; did Jack have anything like that? MARK: Jack, alas, had nothing like that. There were check stubs, notes, some correspondence... stuff like that. In the weeks after Jack’s funeral, I drove out to Thousand Oaks a half-dozen or so times and spent a great many hours helping her with matters she had to handle, including some outreach from Marvel and some of the business matters she had to deal with. I don’t remember which visit it was but she said, “You ought to write that book about him” and she gave me some boxes of stuff to take home and go through on the condition that I would never share them with anyone. I could use them for source material in what I wrote, but that was it. Then she, and later, whoever the family’s lawyer was at the moment, started asking me to delay the book because of then-pending legal matters. But no, there was no list of what he wrote or drew or when he wrote or drew it. I copied what I felt I should copy and returned the materials to her a few weeks later. JOHN: You’ve had access, not just to family members, but to numerous industry figures who worked with Jack, Joe Simon, and Stan Lee over the years. Who were
some of the most influential and helpful in providing details that only “insiders” would know, vs. what the general public knows (or assumes they know) about Jack’s career? And what are some public/ fan perceptions that you were hopefully able to dispel through this book? MARK: Steve Sherman and I made a trip to New York in 1970. We went back a week before that year’s New York Comic Con, which we of course attended, and spent the week visiting people and comic book companies. We were then still working for the Marvelmania outfit, so that gave us access to Marvel, and we were then Jack Kirby’s assistants on his DC work, so that opened doors at DC. Also, Jack arranged for us to spend a day with Steve Ditko and for me to spend a few hours with Wally Wood. It was an amazing week of
information overload. One thing which I think I’ve written about is that before that trip, I was a little, shall we say, “skeptical” when Jack told us, “I created this” or “I actually wrote that.” I’d been around show business enough to know that some people lie or at least exaggerate; that they claim credit for the work of others. I’m not saying I didn’t believe Jack, but this was still early in our relationship, and I hadn’t yet come to appreciate what an honest man he was. He got confused at times about names or dates and he wasn’t always using the same definition of words like “writing” or “creating” that others were, but once you understood the way he spoke, he was pretty damn honest, and I came to realize that on that trip. I talked to—and this is a very partial list—Ditko, Wood, Don Heck, Bill Everett, John Romita, Joe Kubert, Marie Severin, Al Williamson, Larry Lieber, Gene Colan, Carmine Infantino, Nelson Bridwell, Julie Schwartz, Dick Giordano, Joe Sinnott, Jim Steranko, Roy Thomas, John Verpoorten, Murray Boltinoff, Neal Adams, Frank Frazetta, Herb Trimpe, and I’m leaving a lot of people out. Those were just the ones I first met on that trip. And of course, Stan Lee. Absolutely no one had anything bad to say about Jack, and many of them confirmed that Jack had done all those things he told us he’d done. Heck and Everett went on and on about how Jack had helped them in so many ways with the comics they did for Marvel in the Sixties. They believed Jack had done everything he told us he’d done. They were a lot of help in my quest to learn as much as I could about Jack. So were other folks I met later like Don Rico and Gil Kane and Mike Sekowsky and Frank Giacoia. Gil could talk for hours about Jack and the sheer brilliance of the man. And I got to spend a lot of time with Stan Lee and even work with him on some things. I have a great many mixed feelings about Stan but to me, he said a lot of things about Jack that I wish he’d said in public, or at least into a tape recorder. As for dispelling myths, I want people to understand that Jack was not a comic book artist. He was a comic book creator—a writer and artist who sometimes wasn’t allowed to do all the writing or get credit or pay for what he wrote. I sometimes hear people compare what Jack did with the Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four with what John Buscema did with the character in that 1968 comic, and they might say, “Well, I liked what Buscema did better.” That’s fine. I don’t believe in arguing taste. But I don’t think some of those folks understand that Jack and John did not have the exact same job descriptions on those jobs, that there’s a major difference between 19
Private Victory THE MOST DEVOTED FANBASE
[below] Given the choice today, I’m pretty sure I’d opt for the Gil Kane Spidey cover, but at age 8, Scooby ruled! [right] I had no idea who Don Newton was back then, but his interpretation of the JSA helped convince me to ask my mom for the 4th edition of the Comic Book Price Guide. Newton, of course, went on to draw the 1970s post-Kirby revival of the New Gods. [next page] Jack’s pencils from Kamandi #12, page 13. I knew at the time I read that issue it was something special, but had no idea how it’d affect the rest of my life.
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[The Comic Conspiracy—Episode 417 (airing September 3, 2019) presented this talk with TJKC editor John Morrow about his company’s 25th anniversary, Jack Kirby’s Dingbat Love, and Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said. It features Ryan Higgins, Brock Sager, Kevin Sharp, Scott Shea, and Toby Sidler.] RYAN HIGGINS: All right, on the line with us, we have a very special guest. This is author, founder of TwoMorrows Publishing, and huge Jack Kirby fan— obviously, major Jack Kirby fan—John Morrow. JOHN MORROW: Hi guys. It’s a pleasure to be here on the podcast. HIGGINS: Now, Kevin Sharp here has been singing your praises for quite some time. He was very excited to get you on here. Before we go into the meat of our interview, we always like to ask our guests their secret origin for comic books, how you got into comic books, what you were doing as a kid or an adult or whenever you started reading comics, and then kind of how that relates to what you’re doing today. And we’ll definitely talk a lot about TwoMorrows here in a minute. But let’s hear your origin story. I want to know what your earliest comic experiences were. MORROW: My very earliest was from [my hometown] in Alabama, Montgomery, the capital city. I was with my dad heading downtown. He was a pipe smoker and he had to go to the cigar store, or whatever it was, to get some pipe tobacco, and I went in the store with him. I was about [eight] years old and they had these strange little pamphlets on the wall there with all these colorful pictures on them, and I didn’t know what they were. And my dad said, “Go ahead and get one if you want one.” I looked through, and I remember there was a great Gil Kane Spider-Man cover with Spidey sliding down a wall trying to hold on, and the Green Goblin’s there [Amazing SpiderMan #98, July 1971]. So of course, what did I do? I got a Gold Key ScoobyDoo, Where Are
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The editor discusses his personal successes around Jack Kirby and comics on his company’s 25th anniversary in September 2019
You comic, because I was [eight] years old and didn’t know who Spider-Man was! So I got this Scooby-Doo comic book and took it home, read it five times, and it was like, “Wow, this is really neat.” And then I unfortunately loaned it to this friend down the street and found it the next day; it had rained and it was out in his backyard, just waterlogged. The cover was missing. It taught me very early on, never loan your comic books to anybody, even your good friends. [laughs] But beyond that, it was just seeing a few random scattered ones here and there and slowly developing an interest. Every year for Christmas, it seemed like I would ask for some comics. I remember I saw my first Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, I think it was the fourth edition [1974]. I was in some weird little bookstore with my mom, and I’m looking around, I was bored, and I went: “Oh, what is this?” It showed how much comics were worth, and I’m like, “I have some of these comics. I’m going to be rich!” Back then, some were worth 50 cents or 75 cents, and I’d only paid 15 cents or 25 cents for them. So I thought, “Wow, this is a good deal.” But I never did quite cash in on that collection and the price guide prices. HIGGINS: Did they throw all your old comic books away? That’s always the classic story; did you lose some of those? MORROW: No, bless their hearts. My mom was actually pretty supportive of it. Not that she thought it was ever going to amount to anything in my life necessarily, but she wasn’t against me getting comics. I remember I was home sick from school. I had strep throat or something, and she went to the drug store to get my medicine for it, and then came home with a World’s Finest comic [#201, March 1971, right], where Superman and Green Lantern are teamed up, and Dr. Fate’s on the cover, too. I remember she brought this thing home and I’m like, “How in the world did you think to get this cool comic? This is one I would’ve
favorite work. You just don’t know what’s going to hit you at the right time, right? MORROW: I think maybe Roy Thomas figured this out, but it’s whatever you’re reading when you’re 12 years old, that will always be your favorite comic. HIGGINS: Still true. MORROW: Yeah, I think that’s true. When I discovered the New Gods—I mean, before that, my first real Kirby comic was a Kamandi comic [#12, Dec. 1973] that I got around ’73 or so. I got it in a trade with a friend. He didn’t want it. He said, “No, I don’t want it. You have to take it.” I didn’t want it, so I put it on the bottom of the stack that I got from him. I read everything else in the stack I traded for, and I got to the bottom. I didn’t have anything else to read. I said, “Okay, well, I’ll go ahead and read this.” And it was like some kind of weird little switch flipped in my brain. By the time I finished that, it was like, “Wow!” It wasn’t the art style, though. It was the storytelling and the story itself, and how attached I got to these characters. I didn’t know who they were. One of them was a giant grasshopper, and I was just mesmerized by this. And after that I’m like, “Let me look a little more at what this Jack Kirby guy does.” From there I started picking up various things and then discovered the Fourth World, the New Gods stuff. And that is my all-time favorite Kirby work. To this day, I can go back and reread that entire Fourth World series, have a great time doing it, pick up new little tidbits here and there, and still feel just as disappointed at the end of it, that he didn’t get to finish it at the time he was originally doing it. KEVIN SHARP: Now John, there’s no wrong answer to this question, but just to get you on the record, were you a Marvel kid or a DC kid growing up? MORROW: Oh, DC all the way, baby. Yeah, I was then, and I still am now. And don’t get me wrong, I love Marvel comics. Well, most of ’em. But if I go hunting through the dollar bins at a comics convention, I’m not picking up old beatup copies of Seventies’ Marvel comics. I’m picking old beat-up copies of Seventies DC comics, just the oddball weirdo things, old Jimmy Olsen issues or something like that. Even the non-Kirby ones, especially in the Seventies, they had the best covers on the DC books, and invariably you would buy one and get it home and open it up and it’s like, “Ugh, what is this dreck in here?” But the covers were so good on the DC books, so I think Marvel was the exact opposite. The covers, some of ’em were really good, but they didn’t quite have the appeal that DC covers had, I didn’t think. But the interiors on the Marvel stuff was far superior, just quality-wise across the board.
picked out.” And somehow she managed to. I actually still have that comic. I was reminding her of that the other day on the phone, as a matter of fact. How neat it was that she hooked me up there, when I was eight years old. It was great. Comics just kind of always found their way into my hands one way or another. But I can’t say I was ever any kind of Jack Kirby fan early on, though. His stuff was just too ugly. [laughter] The first time I saw Jack Kirby’s [work], I’m like, “Wow, this guy really cannot draw. What is his problem? Lemme get some of this nice Neal Adams art here right now. This guy can draw!” [laughter] I saw the error of my ways shortly thereafter, though. HIGGINS: It took me quite a few years to become a New Gods fan. I just couldn’t understand it for a long time. And now it’s some of my 25
ART DE TRIOMPHE DISPLAYING ARTISTIC MASTERY
Commentary by John Morrow
[left] X-Men #2, page 13 (Nov. 1963) I spent hours going backward by date, starting from the earliest known Kirby margin notes from the “Tales of Asgard” story in Journey Into Mystery #103, to see if there were any even earlier ones. The rest of this X-Men issue has a lot of Stan’s notes to himself (likely made while going over the pages when Jack brought them in), but this page clearly shows Jack’s own notes. Inker Paul Reinman erased really well on pages he worked on, but there’s possibly some more Kirby notes on the bottom right of page 2 of this issue, and there may be others. These are now the earliest Kirby margin notes I’ve found. At top right it says: “Psionic head band magnifies thought waves. Transmit and sends. Distance no object to thought sending.” Jack’s notes at the bottom say: “McDonnell XV-1 Convertiplane put at disposal of X-Men to fly them to Washington.” Stan used that almost verbatim in the bottom panel. So I’m assuming having the artist include margin notes was a time-saving idea of Stan’s, that developed from these early instances of Jack doing them. This way, he wouldn’t have to go over every page that an artist brought in. Daredevil #1 (April 1964) pages show Bill Everett’s margin notes. Even earlier, Dick Ayers was including margin notes in the Human Torch story in Strange Tales #117 (Feb. 1964). This increasing use of margin notes probably led to Stan developing his “Writer’s Test” to try out potential new writers like Roy Thomas, using pages from Fantastic Four Annual #2 with the word balloons whited-out, but Jack’s margin notes included [below].
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VICTORIOUS [left] Captain America #101, page 9 pencils (May 1968) Cap gets his own mag, and Jack finally gets away from having to do lower-paying layouts for others, and just concentrates on three regular titles ( Cap, Thor, and Fantastic Four).
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Jack Kirby Gets His Marvel See the video at: https://shorturl.at/aFGLU
FIGHTING FOR WHAT’S RIGHT
The video was archived as part of the Stan Lee papers donated to the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. The art pictured is just a few of the pages Jack received back from Marvel. Shown are: • Splash page from Incredible Hulk #5 (Jan. 1963). • Cover of Fantastic Four #71 (Feb. 1968). • Splash from FF Annual #2 (1964). • Page from Captain America #108 (Dec. 1968). • Splash from Journey Into Mystery #116 (May 1965). • Cover of Thor #146 (Nov. 1967).
[Newscaster Hal Fishman introduces the segment.] HAL FISHMAN: A man in Thousand Oaks has won a long legal battle involving some well known comic book characters. The man, Jack Kirby, is the artist who brought life to several comic super-heroes, and Sam Chu Lin has this story. SAM CHU LIN: For Jack and Roz Kirby, these boxes of comic book drawings have special meaning. Jack helped create such multi-million dollar characters as Spider-Man, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, and a host of other super-heroes, and helped Marvel Comics to become the giant it is today. For over thirty years, with attorneys, the Kirbys battled Marvel to get back the original artwork to provide a college nestegg for their granddaughter and grandson, and their own retirement. The return of seven boxes of that artwork represents sort of a victory. JACK KIRBY: I’m not a vindictive person. I think what Marvel finally did was a very fine gesture. Sure, it still hurts, and I still feel those hurts, but they’re kind of numb, and I’ve never really allowed them to rule my life or linger in my thoughts. CHU LIN: These boxes of drawings only represent a partial victory for the Kirbys. Jack Kirby would like to receive creative credit. Marvel has given all of the credit to comic book writer Stan Lee for creating many of its super-heroes, when in fact, many comic book readers will say it was both their creative talents. For the Kirbys, it’s not copyrights or ownership. 52
Comics Artwork Back, 1987
Transcript of a television report on KTLA 5 News (Los Angeles), Spring 1987.
Our magazines are no longer at Barnes & Noble or in Apps! But they’re available through comic book shops, subscription, and print & digital editions at www.twomorrows.com PLUS: Check out our new digital storefront and start your permanent digital collection:
ROZ KIRBY: It has nothing to do with money. I’d like my grandchildren to know that it was their grandfather who created and helped create all of these characters. CHU LIN: Jack will soon celebrate his 70th birthday. As for an ideal present, Jack says it would be nice if Marvel imitated the super-heroes he helped create, to right a wrong, and be fair. In Thousand Oaks, this is Sam Chu Lin, Channel 5 News at Ten. H 53
www.comicshistory.org
very same cycle into a melee of Hydra operatives. The moonlit tree in the composition bears an uncanny resemblance to one in the splash from Golden Age issue #4’s story, “Horror Hospital.” 7 My final and most compelling piece of evidence is a Golden Age Cap story, also from issue #10, called “The Phantom Hound of Cardiff Moor.” 8 The double-page spread was an innovation that Kirby had begun to use in issue #6, utilizing various montage elements to foreshadow the story. While the finished art of the remainder of the book would often be completed by assistants, Kirby would nearly always focus his full creative input on these panoramic scenes. This story, clearly inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novel, Hound of the Baskervilles, is a veritable time capsule of Gothic and 1940s period elements, and a perfect visual benchmark for a young fantasy artist to draw inspiration from. Steranko’s obvious homage appeared in the Nick Fury, Agent of Shield #3 story, “Dark Moon Rise, Hell Hound Kill.” 9
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Here, at the story’s climax, was a double-page spread with the fiendish creature and several strategically placed Kirby inspired gnarled trees. Steranko had liberally borrowed ideas present in both the Conan Doyle novel and the S&K comic book dealing with a strange family curse. The stories had also featured the specter of a huge vicious dog covered in luminous paint, prowling a baleful moor in order to frighten and threaten its victims. Steranko had even included the subplot of a hidden Nazi submarine base, giving the story a retro WWII flavor. At that point, it was quite clear to me from the nature of his late ’60s Marvel output, that Steranko was one of many artists who had fallen under Kirby’s Golden Age foundational artistic spell. H
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Kirby’s Greatest Triumph? by Will Murray
SETTING PRECEDENTS
SOURCES: “I Don’t Like to Draw Slingshots, I Like to Draw Cannons.” Shel Dorf. Jack Kirby Collector #37, February 2002. The Comic Book Makers. Joe Simon with Jim Simon. Crestwood/II Publications, 1990. “Kirby on Kirby 1974: An Interview With the King.” Jerry Connelly. Comics Buyer’s Guide #1401, September 22, 2000. “The Legend of Joe Simon.” Will Murray. Comic Book Marketplace #62, August 1990. The Tom Brevoort Experience blog. Lee & Kirby. The 1966 Testimony of Jack Kirby, December 11, 2021.
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ne could argue for Jack Kirby’s greatest triumph in the comic book field being any number of different accomplishments, ranging from the creation of the Marvel Universe via the Fantastic Four, to his pioneering of romance as a successful comic book genre. But I would go back further in time. I feel it may very well be the first character Jack transformed into a sales smash. Prior to Timely’s Captain America Comics, Kirby was just another artist in the burgeoning new comic book field. His style stood out, but so did that of many others, such as Will Eisner, Lou Fine, Bob Kane, and so many more. Kirby had yet to make an impact. Even his early collaborator, Joe Simon, had not yet realized the power of Jack Kirby––at least not as a powerhouse for creating newsstand sales. Although Jack was the original penciler on the Blue Beetle newspaper strip [below], he was replaced by Louis Cazeneuve for reasons that aren’t clear today. It could have been because Kirby’s cinematic style was not thought to be palatable to newspaper reading audiences accustomed to the more sedate and refined fare of Alex Raymond and Hal Foster.
it has been argued that Jack worked on the cover illustration. Simon insisted that the cover [right] was his work. The figure of Red Raven suggests Kirby. It’s possible that Kirby redrew Simon’s original pose. Why would Simon not assign Kirby to the Red Raven feature? For one thing, Kirby was busy doing Simon’s Blue Bolt feature and may not have wanted to lose him on that strip. Perhaps it was for reasons related to why Louis Cazeneuve ended up taking over the Blue Beetle syndicated strip. The failure of Blue Beetle in the newspaper market might have been wrongly seen as an issue of an artist who wasn’t a good fit for that mainstream audience. In 1940, Kirby’s selling power in the comic book field had yet to be established. He had neither created nor been associated with a breakout comics feature. So Louis Cazeneuve who, like Joe Simon, had a newspaper background, once again got the job. According to Simon, after Red Raven folded, Simon created Captain America on his own, designing the original costume. “Kirby didn’t design it,” Simon asserted. “I did that with Martin Goodman. We were passing sketches back and forth before Kirby was even in on it. We just gave Kirby scripts, and layouts. Before Kirby got it, we had the costume and everything. That’s all Kirby got.” While Kirby never confirmed Simon’s recollection and his own statements suggested otherwise, that’s Simon’s story. And I believe it.* The mail shirt was inspired by Fox’s chainmail-clad Blue Beetle, whom both Simon and Kirby had drawn. The round shield came from Simon’s childhood. Neighborhood kids waged mock sword fights using garbage can lids as shields. Simon often recounted how Captain America grew out of his search for a patriotic hero to confront Adolph Hitler. He settled on Hitler and his Nazi agents as the main villains, then worked backward to a suitable hero. Joe Simon told me that his original plan for the first issue of Captain America Comics was to divide the three Captain America stories among three different artists. Since Hitler would be the cover villain, Goodman wanted the book rushed into production. When he learned of Simon’s intentions, Jack Kirby raised objections. “Martin was trying to talk me into doing a great effort on the art,” said Simon, “to try to get the first
According to Simon, publisher Victor Fox syndicated the strip for free through his Fox Features Syndicate, but there were no takers. Contrary to Simon’s recollection, the Boston Transcript ran it in 1940. When Joe Simon packaged his first full comic book for Martin Goodman’s fledgling Timely line, Kirby did not draw the cover feature, “Red Raven,” although 73