Jack Kirby

Lore & Background

Jack Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg on August 28, 1917, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to Austrian-Jewish immigrant parents. He learned to draw by tracing comic strips and editorial cartoons, and after a brief enrollment at the Pratt Institute, he entered the comics industry in the 1930s, working under various pen names including Jack Curtiss. In 1940, with writer-editor Joe Simon, he created Captain America for Timely Comics, which sold out in days. The duo later moved to National Comics Publications (later DC Comics), where they created the Boy Commandos and other features.

After serving in World War II, Kirby worked for several publishers and, with Simon, created the romance comics genre. In the 1960s at Marvel Comics, he co-created many major characters including Ant-Man, the Avengers, the Black Panther, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Iron Man, the Silver Surfer, Thor, and the X-Men. In 1970, feeling unfairly treated over authorship credit and creators' rights, he left for DC Comics, where he created the Fourth World saga. He returned to Marvel briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s, then worked in television animation and independent comics.

Reader's Guide

Jack Kirby's significance lies in his vast and influential body of work that shaped the superhero genre and the comic book medium. He co-created many of Marvel's most enduring characters, which later formed the basis for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a major media franchise for The Walt Disney Company. His Fourth World saga at DC Comics introduced the New Gods, which remained a significant part of the DC Universe. Kirby's titles garnered high sales and critical acclaim, and he is known among comics fans as 'The King' for his many influential contributions. In 1987, he was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, and in 2017 he was posthumously named a Disney Legend. The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor.

Did You Know?

• Kirby learned to draw by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons.
• He was rejected by the Educational Alliance because he drew 'too fast with charcoal'.
• He and Joe Simon created the genre of romance comics at Crestwood Publications.
• Kirby was married to Rosalind Goldstein in 1942 and remained married until his death.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"I feel that story, first. I know those people, first.

When I put them down they've already lived." — Jack Kirby "Darkseid considers anything evil that's going to stop him. If you stop me, I consider you evil." — Jack Kirby "I wasn't the kind of student that Pratt was looking for. They wanted people who would work on something forever. I didn't want to work on any project forever. I intended to get things done." — Jack Kirby "I was a young man. I was still growing out of the East Side. The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." — Jack Kirby