Jacob Kurtzberg, known to the world as Jack “The King” Kirby, was the unappreciated artistic genius and innovator. I hold him in the same regard as the equally legendary Osamu Tezuka, kamisama no manga (god of comics)/godfather of anime/Japanese Walt Disney. Both men revolutionized their respective fields, inspired and continue to inspire many generations.
Joe Simon and Jack created Captain America (the first Avenger) and the Cap Parody, Fighting American. Kirby created Nick Fury, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, Black Panther, the X-Men, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers with Stanley Lieber, known to the world as Smiling Stan Lee. OMAC, Silver Surf, Kamandi, The Last Boy On Earth, X-51, the Eternals, Devil Dinosaur, Etrigan the Demon, Challengers Of The Unknown, Kobra, and the entire Fourth World mythology were his solo creations. The King was responsible for the character design of Thundarr the Barbarian and Goldie Gold & Action Jack.
As a wee lad, I was captivated by his level of detail and imagination. Now that I am in my 30’s, I continue to appreciate his work and be perpetually in awe of how his work showed that he wasn’t afraid to dream big. I am delighted to see the Kurtzberg Legacy live on through books Godland by Joe Casey, Tom Scioli and the epic yet short-lived Jersey Gods by Glen Brunswick and Dan McDaid, and Kirby Genesis by Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross And Jackson Herbert.
Below is Mark Waid and the late Mike Wieringo’s tribute to Jack during their Fantastic Four.
Here are some examples of the King’s work.
Here are some examples of the work inspired by him.
Jack’s cameo on the Incredible Hulk
Here is one Kirby Documentary
Through the Shattered Lens 
Thanks for this post. The King was the real force behind the “Marvel revolution.” Stan Lee was a hack who filled in word balloons while Jack and Ditko and a couple other artists did all the plotting as well as drawing, but nobody could match Kirby for output, creativity, and sheer vision. His treatment by Marvel was shameful. Stan Lee has laughed all the way to the bak while Jack’s estate gets a pittance for anything featuring Captain America, and that’s it. He created about 75% of the Marvel universe from whole cloth and they treated him like garbage in life and continue to do so in death. This is why I won’t be seeing “The Avengers,” or any other Marvel product for the forseeable future. They literally owe Jack Kirby everything, and have been trying, largely unsuccessfully, to duplicate his work ever since he left. This man is called The King of Comics for a reason — he was. It’s well past time the corporate suits at Marvel gave this man and his heirs the financial compensation they deserve. I hope people who choose to see “The Avengers” enjoy it, but know everything you’re seeing was either directly stolen from Jack, or copied from ideas he originally had and got paid no more than $20 a page for, while Marvel has raked in hundreds of millions. All Hail The King!
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I definitely agree with everything you said about Kirby, I chose to not mention them less it turn into an attack on Funky Flashman and Disnvel Comics.
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It’s you’re right not to watch The Avengers, but I think diminishing what Stan Lee contributed as a work of a hack is a bit much. A comic book is a collaborative work and people tend to focus a lot of the visuals. The look of the Avengers and most of the core characters of Marvel (and some of DC) Comics do come from the magic that Kirby, Ditko and the artists the company hired in the 60’s and 70’s, but it still took a writer like Lee, Miller and, much later, like Claremont, Byrne, Brubaker, Millar, Bendis, Ennis and I can go on and on.
Actually when one looks at thing now it’s the writers who now hold sway over the comic book industry.
I won’t defend Stan Lee’s actions in the past and present, but I will acknowledge the fact that he had a hand in the creation and growth of the characters imagined and brought to visual life by Kirby and other artists of his era. I’m all for decrying Lee’s behavior in regards to the Kirby question, but I won’t ever call the man a hack or diminish his contribution. Such name-calling tend to put the Kirby supporters in a bad light when they should be concentrating on pushing Kirby into the forefront without giving the person everyone blames for his misfortunes more attention.
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My issue is how this humble & talented man was mistreated & brutalized by the industry. My expectation that a former partner/colleague would have Jack’s back since they collaborated so often is the cause of my shock. I expected more from the “nice old dude” that hosted the 80’s Spider-Man cartoon & the 90’s Marvel Action Hour that I fondly remembered from my youth.
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I don’t think calling Stan Lee a hack in at all unfair, frankly. This is a guy who by his own admission in the late 60s “co-wrote” his books with Kirby, Ditko, and all his artists — the “Marvel style” of writing he came up with facilitated his ability to write 15 or 20 books a month, and simply broke down to — writer submits a one- or two-page outline, artist then draws the entire thing and paces it out accordingly, leaves room for word and thought balloons, and the writer goes back and fills them in with dialogue or thoughts. Stan had a little bit of sensationalistic flair in his style, but it’s still a hack style developed for the purposes of moving product. It’s not like being a hack is some huge insult, some hacks do good work. Kirby’s contract specified that he produce at hack-like rates — often 15 to 20 pages per week — but his work always had a singular, individualistic style and dynamism to it. The vanguardism of the early Marvel books, the sock-you-in-the-jaw dynamism of it, the eternal optimism and youthful vibrancy of it — that’s all down to Jack’s visualizations. If you look at a Ditko book written by Lee, the tone is inevitably more somber and matter-of-fact. Not a knock on Ditko, whose early work I quite like, but it has a different dynamic to it, and Stan’s writing was toned down accordingly, which rather lends credence to the theory that the artists were the driving forces behind these books and Stan just filled in the blank spaces with words.And Mr. Geekus is right — if you want to see what Stan Lee was really all about, just read the Kirby Fourth World books featuring the “Funky Flashman” character, since he was directly inspired by Mr. Lee. And to watch him publicly pissing on Kirby’s grave even to this point? Sorry, but while anyone has the right to admire Lee’s work, despite what I and others have pointed out about it, admiring him as a person at this point is just plain impossible. The guy wasn’t simply content to earn a fortune, apparently, off the work of others, he has to now insult their memory, as well. Finally, the best test about who the real creative genius in the Lee/Kirby partnership was is a pretty easy one — just take a look at Stan’s work without Jack and Jack’s work without Stan and tell me which one is more interesting, vibrant, dynamic, and frankly often even breathtaking. It’s no contest.
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Like I said, I’m not here to defend what Lee has done. If he doesn’t want to give Kirby his due that’s on him but I still say he had a hand in helping Marvel grow.
I find it interesting that when writers are asked the Kirby question they’re not as vehement in their disgust with Lee like how artists are when asked the same.
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Oh, and one last postscript to my rant — I’ve seen several people on twitter excited about the possibility that the success of The Avengers may give Marvel studips the wherewithal to buy buck some of the rights to their characters like Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, etc. from other studios. I say to heck with that, Marvel should use that money to finally adequately compensate the estate of Jack Kirby, or donate it to the brick-and-mortar fund for the Kirby museum, or both. It’s way past time to finally give this man his due. A simple “co-creator” credit that runs at the end of the current Avengers film is so much less than Jack deserves, and it sounds like Lee didn’t even want to give him that much.
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I don’t see Fox, Sony, Universal and other rights holders to Marvel characters giving up those rights unless billions are involved. As long as the studios think they can squeeze some sort of profit (big or small) from their own Marvel films theyll hold onto them.
Sony pretty much went the desperate route in rebooting Spider-Man just so they could put a film into production before 2010 per their licensing agreement w/ Marvel. The same goes for FF and mutant properties.
The success of The Avengers means opposite in that these studios will hold into these properties even tighter.
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I think you’re probably right. That being said, the Spider-Man reboot looks like a big gamble at this point. I love the trailers, it looks much more dark and atmospheric than Raimi’s spider-flicks, but it’s going to lose some of the family adience appeal because of that. I predict a solid though not overwhleming box office performance for it, a la Nolan’s fist Batman film.
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