Entry into comics (1936–1941) d March 1941); cover art by Kirby and
Joe Simon Kirby joined the
Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate in 1936, working there on newspaper comic strips and on single-panel advice cartoons such as
Your Health Comes First!!! (under the
pseudonym Jack Curtiss). He remained until late 1939, when he began working for the theatrical animation company
Fleischer Studios as an
inbetweener (an artist who fills in the action between major-movement frames) on
Popeye cartoons at the same time in 1935. He left the studio before the Fleischer strike in 1937. "I went from Lincoln to Fleischer," he recalled. "From Fleischer I had to get out in a hurry because I couldn't take that kind of thing," describing it as "a factory in a sense, like my father's factory. They were manufacturing pictures." Around that time, the American comic book industry was booming. Kirby began writing and drawing for the
comic book packager Eisner & Iger, one of a handful of firms creating comics on demand for publishers. Through that company, Kirby did what he remembered as his first comic book work, for
Wild Boy Magazine. This included such strips as the science fiction adventure "The Diary of Dr. Hayward" (under the pseudonym
Curt Davis), the
Western crimefighter feature "Wilton of the West" (as
Fred Sande), the
swashbuckler adventure "The Count of Monte Cristo" (again as Jack Curtiss), and the humor features "Abdul Jones" (as
Ted Grey) and "Socko the Seadog" (as
Teddy), all variously for
Jumbo Comics and other Eisner-Iger clients. For
Robert W. Farrell's Associated Features Syndicate, he first used the surname Kirby as the pseudonymous
Lance Kirby in the comic strip ''Lightnin' and the Lone Rider,'' written by Farrell in 1939 and later reprinted in
Eastern Color Printing's
Famous Funnies (1939-1940). After leaving Fox and collaborating on the premiere issue of
Fawcett Comics'
Captain Marvel Adventures ([March] 1941), the first solo title for the previously introduced superhero, and for which Kirby was told to mimic creator
C.C. Beck's drawing style, the duo were hired on staff at
pulp magazine publisher
Martin Goodman's
Timely Comics (later to become Marvel Comics). There Simon and Kirby created the patriotic superhero
Captain America in late 1940. Simon, who became the company's editor, with Kirby as art director, said he negotiated with Goodman to give the duo 25 percent of the profits from the feature. The first issue of
Captain America Comics, released in early 1941, sold out in days, and the second issue's print run was set at over a million copies. The title's success established the team as a notable creative force in the industry. After the first issue was published, Simon asked Kirby to join the Timely staff as the company's art director. With the success of the Captain America character, Simon said he felt that Goodman was not paying the pair the promised percentage of profits, and so sought work for the two of them at
National Comics Publications (later renamed
DC Comics). Kirby and Simon negotiated a deal that would pay them a combined $500 a week, as opposed to the $75 and $85 they respectively earned at Timely. The pair feared Goodman would not pay them if he found they were moving to National, but many people knew of their plan, including Timely editorial assistant
Stan Lee. When Goodman eventually discovered it, he told Simon and Kirby to leave after finishing work on
Captain America Comics #10. Kirby was bitterly convinced it was specifically Lee who betrayed them, ignoring Simon's willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt. Kirby and Simon spent their first weeks at National trying to devise new characters while the company sought how best to utilize the pair. After a few failed editor-assigned ghosting assignments, National's
Jack Liebowitz told them to "just do what you want". The pair then revamped the
Sandman feature in
Adventure Comics and created the superhero
Manhunter. In July 1942 they began the
Boy Commandos feature. The ongoing "kid gang" series of the same name, launched later that same year, was the creative team's first National feature to graduate into its own title. It sold over a million copies a month, becoming National's third best-selling title. They scored a hit with the homefront kid-gang team, the
Newsboy Legion, featuring in
Star-Spangled Comics. In 2010, DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed that "Like
Jerry Siegel and
Joe Shuster, the creative team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby was a mark of quality and a proven track record."
World War II (1943–1945) With World War II underway, Liebowitz expected that Simon and Kirby would be
drafted, so he asked the artists to create an inventory of material to be published in their absence. The pair hired writers, inkers, letterers, and colorists in order to create a year's worth of material. Kirby was drafted into the
U.S. Army on June 7, 1943. After basic training at
Camp Stewart, near Savannah, Georgia, he was assigned to Company F of the
11th Infantry Regiment. He landed on
Omaha Beach in
Normandy on August 23, 1944, months after
D-Day, although Kirby's reminiscences would place his arrival just 10 days after. Kirby recalled that a lieutenant, learning that comics artist Kirby was in his command, made him a scout who would advance into towns and draw
reconnaissance maps and pictures, an extremely dangerous duty.
Postwar career (1946–1955) After the war, Simon arranged work for Kirby and himself at
Harvey Comics, where, through the early 1950s, the duo created such titles as the kid-gang adventure
Boy Explorers Comics, the kid-gang
Western ''
Boys' Ranch, the superhero comic Stuntman
, and, in vogue with the fad for 3-D movies, Captain 3-D. Simon and Kirby additionally freelanced for Hillman Periodicals (the crime-fiction comic Real Clue Crime
) and for Crestwood Publications (Justice Traps the Guilty''). Showing it to Crestwood general manager Maurice Rosenfeld, Simon asked for 50% of the comic's profits. Crestwood publishers Teddy Epstein and Mike Bleier agreed, Initially published bimonthly,
Young Romance quickly became a monthly title and produced the spin-off
Young Love—together the two titles sold two million copies per month, according to Simon—later joined by
Young Brides. securing a distribution deal with Leader News in late 1953 or early 1954, subletting space from their friend
Al Harvey's
Harvey Publications at 1860 Broadway. Mainline, which existed from 1954 to 1955, published four titles: the Western
Bullseye: Western Scout; the
war comic Foxhole because
EC Comics and
Atlas Comics were having success with war comics, but promoting theirs as being written and drawn by actual veterans;
In Love because their earlier
romance comic Young Love was still being widely imitated; and the
crime comic Police Trap, which claimed to be based on genuine accounts by law-enforcement officials. After the duo rearranged and republished artwork from an old Crestwood story in
In Love, Crestwood refused to pay the team, who sought an audit of Crestwood's finances. Upon review, the pair's attorneys stated the company owed them $130,000 for work done over the past seven years. Crestwood paid them $10,000 in addition to their recent delayed payments. The partnership between Kirby and Simon had become strained. Simon left the industry for a career in advertising, while Kirby continued to freelance. "He wanted to do other things and I stuck with comics," Kirby recalled in 1971. "It was fine. There was no reason to continue the partnership and we parted friends." At this point in the mid-1950s, Kirby made a temporary return to the former
Timely Comics, now known as Atlas Comics, the direct predecessor of
Marvel Comics. Inker
Frank Giacoia had approached editor-in-chief
Stan Lee for work and suggested he could "get Kirby back here to pencil some stuff. While freelancing for National Comics Publications, the future
DC Comics, Kirby drew 20 stories for Atlas from 1956 to 1957: Beginning with the five-page "Mine Field" in
Battleground #14 (Nov. 1956), Kirby penciled and in some cases inked (with his wife,
Roz) and wrote stories of the
Western hero
Black Rider, the
Fu Manchu-like
Yellow Claw, and more. But in 1957, distribution troubles caused the "Atlas implosion" that resulted in several series being dropped and no new material being assigned for many months. The next year Kirby returned to the nascent Marvel. For DC around that time, Kirby co-created with writers Dick and Dave Wood the non-superpowered adventuring quartet the
Challengers of the Unknown in
Showcase #6 (Feb. 1957), while contributing to such anthologies as
House of Mystery. Kirby recast the archer as a science-fiction hero, moving him away from his Batman-formula roots, but, in the process, alienating Green Arrow co-creator
Mort Weisinger. He began drawing
Sky Masters of the Space Force, a newspaper comic strip, written by the Wood brothers and initially inked by the unrelated
Wally Wood. Kirby left National Comics Publications due largely to a contractual dispute in which editor
Jack Schiff, who had been involved in getting Kirby and the Wood brothers the
Sky Masters contract, claimed he was due royalties from Kirby's share of the strip's profits. Schiff successfully sued Kirby. Some DC editors had criticized him over art details, such as not drawing "the shoelaces on a cavalryman's boots" and showing a Native American "mounting his horse from the wrong side."
Marvel Comics in the Silver Age (1958–1970) on the cover of
Strange Tales #89, pencils by Kirby Several months later, after his split with DC, Kirby began freelancing regularly for Atlas despite harboring negative sentiments about Stan Lee (the cousin of Timely publisher Martin Goodman's wife), whom Kirby had always found annoying on top of his aforementioned betrayal he suspected in the 1940s. Because of the poor page rates, Kirby would spend 12 to 14 hours daily at his drawing table at home, producing four to five pages of artwork a day. His first published work at Atlas was the cover of and the seven-page story "I Discovered the Secret of the Flying Saucers" in
Strange Worlds #1 (Dec. 1958). Initially with
Christopher Rule as his regular inker, and later
Dick Ayers, Kirby drew across all genres, from romance comics to war comics to crime comics to Western comics, but made his mark primarily with a series of supernatural-fantasy and science fiction stories featuring giant,
drive-in movie-style monsters with names like
Groot, the Thing from Planet X; Grottu, King of the Insects; and
Fin Fang Foom for the company's many anthology series, such as
Amazing Adventures, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, and
World of Fantasy. and
The Double Life of Private Strong. Additionally, Kirby drew some issues of
Classics Illustrated. which some have observed, shares many elements of Kirby's
Challengers of the Unknown. The landmark series became a hit that revolutionized the industry with its comparative
naturalism and, eventually, a cosmic purview informed by Kirby's seemingly boundless imaginationone well-matched with the consciousness-expanding
youth culture of the 1960s. For almost a decade, Kirby provided Marvel's house style, creating many of the Marvel characters and designing their visual motifs. At the editor-in-chief's request, he often provided new-to-Marvel artists "breakdown" layouts, over which they would pencil in order to become acquainted with the Marvel style of story-telling. As artist
Gil Kane described: Highlights of Kirby's tenure also include the
Hulk,
Thor, the
X-Men and
Magneto,
Doctor Doom,
Uatu the Watcher,
Ego the Living Planet, the
Inhumans and their hidden city of Attilan, and the
Black Panther (comics' first black superhero) and his
Afrofuturist nation,
Wakanda. Kirby initially was assigned to pencil the first
Spider-Man story, but when he showed Lee the first six pages, Lee recalled, "I
hated the way he was doing it! Not that he did it badly—it just wasn't the character I wanted; it was too heroic". Lee then turned to
Steve Ditko to draw the story that would appear in
Amazing Fantasy #15, for which Kirby nonetheless penciled the cover. Lee and Kirby gathered several of their newly created characters together into the team title
The Avengers and brought back old characters from the 1940s such as the
Sub-Mariner, Captain America and
Ka-Zar. In later years, Lee and Kirby disputed over who deserved credit for such creations as
The Fantastic Four. '' #72 (March 1968). Cover art by Kirby and
Joe Sinnott, illustrating
Kirby Krackle The story frequently cited as Lee and Kirby's finest achievement is "
The Galactus Trilogy" in
Fantastic Four #48–50 (March–May 1966), chronicling the arrival of
Galactus, a cosmic giant who wanted to devour the planet, and his herald, the
Silver Surfer.
Fantastic Four #48 was chosen as #24 in the 100 Greatest Marvels of All Time poll of Marvel's readers in 2001. Editor
Robert Greenberger wrote in his introduction to the story that "As the fourth year of the
Fantastic Four came to a close, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby seemed to be only warming up. In retrospect, it was perhaps the most fertile period of any monthly title during the Marvel Age." Comics historian
Les Daniels noted that "[t]he mystical and metaphysical elements that took over the saga were perfectly suited to the tastes of young readers in the 1960s", and Lee soon discovered that the story was a favorite on college campuses. Kirby continued to expand the medium's boundaries, devising photo-collage covers and interiors, developing new drawing techniques such as the method for depicting energy fields now known as "
Kirby Krackle", and other experiments. In 1968 and 1969, Joe Simon was involved in litigation with Marvel Comics over the ownership of Captain America, initiated by Marvel after Simon registered the copyright renewal for Captain America in his own name. According to Simon, Kirby agreed to support the company in the litigation and, as part of a deal Kirby made with publisher Martin Goodman, signed over to Marvel any rights he might have had to the character. At the same time, Kirby grew increasingly dissatisfied with working at Marvel, for reasons Kirby biographer Mark Evanier has suggested include resentment over Lee's media prominence, a lack of full creative control, anger over breaches of perceived promises by publisher Martin Goodman, and frustration over Marvel's failure to credit him specifically for his story plotting and for his character creations and co-creations. He began to both write and draw some secondary features for Marvel, such as "The Inhumans" in
Amazing Adventures volume two, as well as horror stories for the anthology title
Chamber of Darkness, and received full credit for doing so; but in 1970, Kirby was presented with a contract that included unfavorable terms such as a prohibition against legal retaliation. When Kirby objected, the management refused to negotiate any contract changes, bluntly dismissing his contribution to Marvel's success since they considered Lee solely responsible. Kirby, although he was earning $35,000 a year freelancing for the company (adjusted for inflation it was the equivalent of over $271,000 in 2024), then left Marvel in 1970 for rival DC Comics, under editorial director
Carmine Infantino.
DC Comics and the Fourth World saga (1971–1975) '' #1 (March 1971) Cover art by Kirby and
Don Heck. Kirby spent nearly two years negotiating a deal to move to DC Comics, where in late 1970 he signed a three-year contract with an option for two additional years. He produced a series of interlinked titles under the blanket
sobriquet "
The Fourth World", which included a trilogy of new titles—
New Gods, Mister Miracle, and
The Forever People—as well as the extant ''
Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen.'' Kirby picked the latter book because the series was without a stable creative team and he did not want to cost anyone a job. Kirby was editor, writer and artist on each of these series. The three books Kirby originated dealt with aspects of mythology he had previously touched upon in
Thor.
The New Gods would establish this new mythos, while in
The Forever People Kirby would attempt to mythologize the lives of the young people he observed around him. The third book,
Mister Miracle was more of a personal myth. The title character was an escape artist, which Mark Evanier suggests Kirby channeled his feelings of constraint into, although others have pointed out that it may have been based on comic book artist and escape artist Jim Steranko. Mister Miracle's wife was based in character on Kirby's wife Roz, and he even caricatured Stan Lee within the pages of the book as
Funky Flashman, a depiction Lee found hurtful while Kirby tried to downplay the insult when confronted about it by Lee's protege,
Roy Thomas, who was similarly insulted with Flashman's sidekick, Houseroy. The central villain of the Fourth World series,
Darkseid, and some of the Fourth World concepts, appeared in
Jimmy Olsen before the launch of the other Fourth World books, giving the new titles greater exposure to potential buyers. The Superman figures and Jimmy Olsen faces drawn by Kirby were redrawn by
Al Plastino, and later by
Murphy Anderson. In 2007, comics writer
Grant Morrison commented that "Kirby's dramas were staged across Jungian vistas of raw symbol and storm ... The Fourth World saga crackles with the voltage of Jack Kirby's boundless imagination let loose onto paper." In addition to his artistic efforts, Kirby proposed a variety of new formats for comics such as planning to collect his published Fourth World stories into square-bound books, a format that would later be called the
trade paperback, which would eventually become standard practice in the industry. However, Infantino and company were not receptive and Kirby's proposals only went as far as producing the one-shot black-and-white magazines
Spirit World and
In the Days of the Mob in 1971, edited, written and drawn by Kirby. Kirby later produced other DC series including
OMAC,
Kamandi,
The Demon, and
Kobra as well as working on such extant features as "
The Losers" in
Our Fighting Forces. Together with former partner Joe Simon for one last time, he worked on a new incarnation of the
Sandman. Kirby produced three issues of the
1st Issue Special anthology series and created
Atlas the Great, a new
Manhunter, and the
Dingbats of Danger Street. Kirby's production assistant of the time,
Mark Evanier, recounted that DC's policies of the era were not in sync with Kirby's creative impulses. Also Evanier said that he was often forced to work on characters and projects which he did not like. Meanwhile, some artists at DC did not want Kirby there, as he threatened their positions in the company; they also had bad blood from previous competition with Marvel and legal problems with him. Since he was working from California, they were able to undermine his work through redesigns in the New York office.
Return to Marvel (1976–1978) At the
comic book convention Marvelcon '75, in 1975, Stan Lee used a Fantastic Four panel discussion to announce that Kirby was returning to Marvel after having left in 1970 to work for DC Comics. Lee wrote in his monthly column, "Stan Lee's Soapbox", "I mentioned that I had a special announcement to make. As I started telling about Jack's return, to a totally incredulous audience, everyone's head started to snap around as Kirby himself came waltzin' down the aisle to join us on the rostrum! You can imagine how it felt clownin' around with the co-creator of most of Marvel's greatest strips once more." Back at Marvel, Kirby both wrote and drew the monthly
Captain America series as well as the ''Captain America's Bicentennial Battles
one-shot in the oversized treasury format. He created the series The Eternals, which featured a race of inscrutable alien giants, the Celestials, whose behind-the-scenes intervention in primordial humanity would eventually become a core element of Marvel Universe continuity. He produced an adaptation and expansion of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as an abortive attempt to do the same for the classic television series The Prisoner. He wrote and drew Black Panther'' and drew numerous covers across the line. and
Devil Dinosaur. Kirby's final comics collaboration with Stan Lee,
The Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience, was published in 1978 as part of the
Marvel Fireside Books series and is considered Marvel's first
graphic novel.
Film and animation (1979–1980) Still dissatisfied with Marvel's treatment of him, and with an offer of employment from
Hanna-Barbera, a job located in nearby Hollywood, Kirby left Marvel to work in animation. In that field for
Ruby-Spears Productions he did designs for
Turbo Teen,
Thundarr the Barbarian and other animated series for television. He worked on
The New Fantastic Four animated series, reuniting him with scriptwriter Stan Lee and they kept their relations sufficiently cordial on a professional level. He illustrated an adaptation of the
Walt Disney movie
The Black Hole for ''
Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales'' syndicated comic strip in 1979–80. In 1979, Kirby drew concept art for film producer Barry Geller's script treatment adapting
Roger Zelazny's science fiction novel,
Lord of Light, for which Geller had purchased the rights. In collaboration, Geller commissioned Kirby to draw set designs that would be used as architectural renderings for a Colorado
theme park to be called Science Fiction Land; Geller announced his plans at a November press conference attended by Kirby, former American football star
Rosey Grier, writer
Ray Bradbury, and others. While the film did not come to fruition, Kirby's drawings were used for the
CIA's "
Canadian Caper", in which some members of the
U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, who had avoided capture in the
Iran hostage crisis, were able to escape the country posing as members of a movie location-scouting crew.
Final years (1981–1994) In the early 1980s, Kirby and
Pacific Comics, a new, non-newsstand comic-book publisher, made one of the industry's earliest deals for
creator-owned series, resulting in
Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers, and the six-issue miniseries
Silver Star (later collected in hardcover format in 2007). This, together with similar actions by other
independent comics publishers as
Eclipse Comics (where Kirby co-created the character
Destroyer Duck in a benefit comic-book series published to help
Steve Gerber fight a legal case against Marvel), helped establish a precedent to end the monopoly of the work-for-hire system, wherein comics creators, even freelancers, had owned no rights to characters they created. In 1983 Richard Kyle commissioned Kirby to create a 10-page autobiographical strip, "
Street Code", which became one of the last works published in Kirby's lifetime. It was published in 1990, in the second issue of Kyle's revival of
Argosy. Kirby continued to do periodic work for DC Comics during the 1980s, including a brief revival of his "Fourth World" saga in the 1984 and 1985
Super Powers miniseries and the 1985 graphic novel
The Hunger Dogs. DC executives
Jenette Kahn and
Paul Levitz had Kirby re-design the Fourth World characters for the
Super Powers toyline as a way of entitling him to royalties for several of his DC creations. In 1985, Kirby and
Gil Kane helped to create the concept and designs for the
Ruby-Spears animated television series
The Centurions. A comic-book series based on the show was published by DC and a toy line produced by
Kenner. In the twilight of his life, Kirby spent a great deal of time sparring with Marvel executives over the ownership rights of his original page boards. At Marvel, many of these pages owned by the company (due to outdated and legally dubious copyright claims) were given away as promotional gifts to Marvel clients or simply stolen from company warehouses. After the passage of the
Copyright Act of 1976, which greatly expanded artist copyright capabilities, comics publishers began to return original art to creators, but in Marvel's case only if they signed a release reaffirming Marvel's ownership of the copyright. In 1985, Marvel issued a release that demanded Kirby affirm that his art was created for hire, allowing Marvel to retain copyright in perpetuity, in addition to demanding that Kirby forego all future royalties. Marvel offered him 88 pages of his art (less than 1% of his total output) if he signed the agreement, but reserved the right to reclaim the art if Kirby violated the deal. After Kirby publicly slammed Marvel, calling the company thugs and claiming they were arbitrarily holding his creations, Marvel finally returned (after two years of deliberations) approximately 1,900 or 2,100 pages of the estimated 10,000 to 13,000 Kirby drew for the company. For the producer
Charles Band, Jack Kirby made concept art for the films
Doctor Mortalis and
Mindmaster, which were later released as
Doctor Mordrid (1992) and
Mandroid (1993), respectively.
Doctor Mordrid began as a planned adaptation of the Marvel Comics character
Dr. Strange, but Band's option expired. For
Topps Comics, founded in 1993, Kirby retained ownership of characters used in multiple series of what the company dubbed "
The Kirbyverse". These titles were derived mainly from designs and concepts Kirby had kept in his files, some intended initially for the by-then-defunct Pacific Comics, and then licensed to Topps for what became the "
Jack Kirby's Secret City Saga" mythos.
Phantom Force was the last comic book Kirby worked on before his death. The story was co-written by Kirby with Michael Thibodeaux and Richard French, based on an eight-page pitch for an unused
Bruce Lee comic in 1978. Issues #1 and 2 were published by
Image Comics with various Image artists inking over Kirby's pencils. Issue #0 and issues #3–8 were published by Genesis West, with Kirby providing pencils for issues #0 and 4. Thibodeaux provided the art for the remaining issues of the series after Kirby died. ==Personal life and death==