Irony (A Prologue) f there was a secret to his greatness, it was probably rage. In the Lower East Side of New York, you needed anger to survive. You needed even more to transcend. Jack Kirby’s fury might have come from his childhood, or even from some previous incarnation, some past life. It wasn’t important. What mattered was the energy he drew from it. The King of all comic book artists was a short, cantankerous man who rose from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, one of the toughest and most overcrowded neighborhoods America has ever produced. The millions of immigrants who poured through Ellis Island at the turn of the last century and filled the Lower East Side, Kirby’s parents among them, endured some of the most abject conditions that overpopulation and neglect had ever contrived anywhere. At that time the Lower East Side was the densest neighborhood on Earth, the densest in history—half a million people in a square mile, with anywhere from 1,500 to 1,800 people crammed into a single block. The young Jacob Kurtzberg, as he was then known, came of age during the Great Depression when the idea of making a living as an artist was an unrealistic and impractical notion. Fighting bullies, rival gang members and anti-Semites all through his formative years made him tough, temperamental and full of fury. He eventually channeled his rage into the most powerful action art anyone had ever seen. When we see superhero art today, no matter who rendered it, we’re looking at some variant of Jack Kirby’s anger: teeth-gnashing, forward-thrusting characters, brutal punches and bodies hurtling through space. From any angle, it all channels back to one man. Stan Lee, the son of two Jewish-Romanian immigrants, grew up wanting to write The Great American Novel. All his life he was agonizingly sensitive, desperate for approval and easily influenced by others. Fresh out of high school, he lucked into a cush, well-paying job in a relative’s magazine firm—just until he could launch a career as a “serious” writer, he told himself. By 1940, both Lee and Kirby were working for Martin Goodman’s Timely Comics where Stan prospered and quickly moved up the corporate ladder. Kirby, on the other hand, managed to get himself fired in less than two years. Shortly thereafter, when America entered World War II, both Jack and Stan patriotically volunteered for the Army. There is no greater analogy to underscore the contrasting fortunes of these two men than their wartime experiences. When Stan told his commanding officer he worked in the comic book industry, Lee was assigned to draw cartoon training manuals and venereal disease awareness posters. When Kirby mentioned that he had drawn Captain America prior to the war, his C.O. ordered him to become an advance scout, and draw reconnaissance maps detailing German artillery points. It was one of the most dangerous jobs in the military. So instead of drawing posters, Kirby dodged bullets and almost had his feet amputated as a result of hypothermia. Lee on the other hand remained stateside the entire war, and supplemented his military paycheck by writing for Goodman through the mail. At one point Stan was arrested and jailed for breaking into the mailroom to procure a writing assignment. Lee was facing court martial and prison time in Leavenworth, but in the end the eternally lucky Stan Lee was freed with no consequences. After the war Kirby continued to battle his way through the comic book industry, creating new genres and pissing off publishers. Out of necessity, sixteen years after being fired by Martin Goodman, Kirby had to swallow his pride and ask Stan if he could come back and work for him. At this point Timely Comics (now called “Atlas”) was teetering on the cusp of insolvency, and Goodman was ready to jump ship at the next sign of trouble. This is when irony reared its absurd head. Lee and Kirby both had proletarian Jewish backgrounds. They were both fast, indefatigable workers who could produce stories of remarkable quality and quantity without ever missing a deadline. Other than that, they were diametrically opposite in every possible way. Fate brought them together because Lee was about the only editor who would hire Kirby, and Jack was about the only good artist Stan could afford. They joined forces at midlife, at the nadirs of their careers, and against all odds their contrasting personalities and talents coalesced—creating a synergy that eventually made the comic book medium (this page) Lee (top) and Kirby in their WWII uniforms, early 1940s.
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