Beginnings Upon graduation in 1932, Simon was hired by
Rochester Journal-American art director Adolph Edler as an assistant, replacing Simon's future comics colleague Al Liederman, who had quit. Between production duties, he did occasional sports and
editorial cartoons for the paper. Two years later, Simon took an art job at the
Syracuse Herald in
Syracuse, New York, for $45 a week, supplying sports and editorial cartoons there as well. Shortly thereafter, for $60 a week, he succeeded Liederman as art director of a paper whose name Simon recalled in his 1990 autobiography as the
Syracuse Journal American, although the
Syracuse Journal and the
Syracuse Sunday American, were the separate weekday and Sunday papers, respectively. The paper soon closed, and Simon, at 23, ventured to New York City. There, Simon took a room at the boarding house Haddon Hall, in the
Morningside Heights neighborhood of
Manhattan, near
Columbia University. At the suggestion of the art director of the
New York Journal American, he sought and found freelance work at
Paramount Pictures, working above the
Paramount Theatre on Broadway, retouching the
movie studio's publicity photos. He also found freelance work at
Macfadden Publications, doing illustrations for
True Story and other magazines. Sometime afterward, his boss, art director Harlan Crandall, recommended Simon to
Lloyd Jacquet, head of
Funnies, Inc., one of that era's comic-book "packagers" that supplied comics content on demand to publishers testing the new medium. That day, Simon received his first comics assignment, a seven-page
Western. Four days later, Jacquet asked Simon, at the behest of
Timely Comics publisher
Martin Goodman, to create a flaming superhero like Timely's successful character the
Human Torch. From this came Simon's first comic-book hero, the
Fiery Mask.
Simon and Kirby program, reprinting Simon's original 1940 sketch of Captain America. During this time, Simon met
Fox Feature Syndicate comics artist
Jack Kirby, with whom he would soon have a storied collaboration lasting a decade-and-a-half. Speaking at a 1998
San Diego Comic-Con panel, Simon recounted the meeting: and remained a team across the next two decades. In the early 2000s, original art for an unpublished, five-page Simon and Kirby collaboration titled "Daring Disc", which may predate the duo's
Blue Bolt, surfaced. Simon published the story in the 2003 updated edition of his autobiography,
The Comic Book Makers, co-authored with his son,
Jim. After leaving Fox and landing at
pulp magazine publisher
Martin Goodman's
Timely Comics (the future
Marvel Comics), where Simon became the company's first editor, the Simon and Kirby team created the seminal patriotic hero
Captain America.
Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941), going on sale in December 1940 – a year before the
bombing of Pearl Harbor but already showing the hero punching
Hitler in the jaw – sold nearly one million copies. They remained on the hit series as a team through issue #10, and were established 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. Despite the success of the Captain America character, Simon felt Goodman was not paying the pair the promised percentage of profits, and so sought work for the two of them at National Comics, (later named
DC Comics). Simon and Kirby negotiated a deal that would pay them a combined $500 a week, as opposed to the $75 and $85 they respectively earned at Timely. Fearing that Goodman would not pay them if he found out they were moving to National, the pair kept the deal a secret while they continued producing work for the company. At some point during this time, the duo also produced
Fawcett Comics'
Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (1941), the first complete comic book starring
Captain Marvel following the character's run as star of the superhero anthology
Whiz Comics. 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
Boy Commandos, launched later that same year, was the 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 also scored a hit with the homefront kid-gang team, the
Newsboy Legion 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." Harry Mendryk, art restorer on
Titan Books' Simon and Kirby series of hardcover collections, believes Simon used the pseudonym
Glaven on at least two covers during this time: those of
Harvey Comics'
Speed Comics #22 and
Champ Comics #22 (both Sept. 1942), though the
Grand Comics Database does not independently confirm this. Mendryk also believes that both Kirby and Simon used the pseudonym
Jon Henri on a handful of other 1942 Harvey comics, as does ''Who's Who in American Comic Books 1929–1999''. Simon enlisted in the
U.S. Coast Guard during
World War II. He said in his 1990 autobiography that he was first assigned to the Mounted Beach Patrol at
Long Beach Island, off
Barnegat, New Jersey, for a year before being sent to boot camp near Baltimore, Maryland, for basic training. Afterward, he reported for duty with the Combat Art Corps in Washington, D.C., part of the Coast Guard Public Information Division. He was stationed there in 1944 when he met
New York Post sports columnist
Milt Gross, who was with the Coast Guard Public Relations Unit, and the two became roommates in civilian housing. Pursuant to his unit's mission to publicize the Coast Guard, Simon created a true-life Coast Guard comic book that DC agreed to publish, followed by versions syndicated nationally by
Parents magazine in Sunday newspaper comics sections, under the title
True Comics. This led to his being assigned to create a comic book aimed at driving Coast Guard recruitment. With Gross as his writer collaborator, Simon produced
Adventure Is My Career, distributed by
Street and Smith Publications for sale at newsstands. Returning to New York City after his discharge as a
petty officer 2nd class, Simon married Harriet Feldman,
Crestwood, Black Magic and romance comics As superhero comics waned in popularity after the end of
World War II, Simon and Kirby began producing a variety of stories in many genres. In partnership with
Crestwood Publications, they developed the
imprint Prize Group, through which they published ''
Boys' Ranch and launched an early horror comic, the atmospheric and non-gory series Black Magic. The team also produced crime and humor comics, and are credited as well with publishing the first romance comics title, Young Romance'', starting a successful trend. At the urging of a Crestwood salesman, Kirby and Simon launched their own comics company,
Mainline Publications, in late 1953 or early 1954, subletting space from their friend
Al Harvey's
Harvey Publications at 1860
Broadway. While the comic book initially portrayed the protagonist as an anti-Communist dramatic hero, Simon and Kirby turned the series into a superhero satire with the second issue, in the aftermath of the
Army-McCarthy hearings and the public backlash against the Red-baiting
U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. The partnership ended in 1955 with the comic book industry beset by self-imposed censorship, negative publicity, and a slump in sales. Simon "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." Simon turned primarily to advertising and
commercial art, while dipping back into comics on occasion. The Simon and Kirby team reunited briefly in 1959 with Simon writing and collaborating on art for
Archie Comics, where the duo updated the superhero the
Shield in the two-issue
The Double Life of Private Strong (June–Aug. 1959), and Simon created the superhero the
Fly; they went on to collaborate on the first two issues of
The Adventures of the Fly (Aug.–Sept. 1959), and Simon and other artists, including
Al Williamson,
Jack Davis, and
Carl Burgos, did four issues before Simon moved on to work in commercial art.
Silver Age of Comics and later Through the 1960s, Simon produced promotional comics for the advertising agency Burstein and Newman, becoming art director of Burstein, Phillips and Newman from 1964 to 1967. Concurrently, in 1960, he founded the
satirical magazine
Sick, a competitor of
Mad magazine, and edited and produced material for it for over a decade. During this period, known to fans and historians as the
Silver Age of Comic Books, Simon and Kirby again reteamed for
Harvey Comics in 1966, updating Fighting American for a single issue (Oct. 1966). Simon, as owner, packager, and editor, also helped launch Harvey's original superhero line, with
Unearthly Spectaculars #1–3 (Oct. 1965 – March 1967) and
Double-Dare Adventures #1–2 (Dec. 1966 – March 1967), the latter of which introduced the influential writer-artist
Jim Steranko to comics. In 1968, Simon created the two-issue
DC Comics series
Brother Power the Geek, about a
mannequin given a semblance of life who wanders philosophically through 1960s
hippie culture.
Superman editor
Mort Weisinger harbored an admitted dislike for the hippie subculture of the 1960s and felt that Simon portrayed them too sympathetically which helped to bring a quick end to the title. Simon and artist
Jerry Grandenetti then created DC's four-issue
Prez (Sept. 1973 – March 1974), about America's first teen-age president and the three-issue
Champion Sports (Nov. 1973 – March 1974). Simon and Grandenetti then created the
Green Team: Boy Millionaires in the DC anthology series
1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975), and the freakish Outsiders in
1st Issue Special #10 (Jan. 1976).
21st century In the 2000s, Simon turned to painting and marketing reproductions of his early comic book covers. He appeared in various news media in 2007 in response to Marvel Comics' announced "death" of Captain America in
Captain America vol. 5, #25 (March 2007), stating, "It's a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now". For a concept called ShieldMaster (1998), created by Jim Simon, Joe Simon provided prototype art. Shieldmaster, under the direction of Joe's son,
Jim, was also published in the comic books
Futura and
Étranges Aventures. A graphic novel format ShieldMaster was published in 2015 by Future Retro Entertainment. ShieldMaster comics have also been published by Jim's son, Jesse Simon. Simon is among the interview subjects in
Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle, a three-hour documentary narrated by
Liev Schreiber that premiered posthumously on
PBS in October 2013. Simon's grandchildren attended the Los Angeles premiere of
Captain America: The First Avenger and phoned Simon from the red carpet when his name was announced as the creator of the character. Though not present at the premiere, Joe Simon got to see
Captain America: The First Avenger before he died in December 2011. In 2024, Shieldmaster encounters several Joe Simon characters in
ShieldMaster: Blast to Past, a one-shot with Shieldmaster traveling to the year 1963 and encountering several characters created or co-created by Joe Simon such as Fighting American, The Fly, Lancelot Strong, Comics. Stuntman and Captain 3-D. == Legacy of Captain America ==