POST BURNING SITE

[Michael from Toronto]

After serving in World War II, Kirby returned to comics and worked in a variety of genres. He produced work for a number of publishers, including DC, Harvey Comics, Hillman Periodicals and Crestwood Publications, where he and Simon created the genre of romance comics. He and Simon also launched their own short-lived comic company, Mainline Publications. Kirby ultimately found himself at Timely's 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, soon to become Marvel. There, in the 1960s, he and writer-editor Stan Lee co-created many of Marvel's major characters, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Hulk. Despite the high sales and critical acclaim of the Lee-Kirby titles, however, Kirby felt treated unfairly, and left the company in 1970 for rival DC.

[Michael from Toronto]

There Kirby created his Fourth World saga, which spanned several comics titles. While these series proved commercially unsuccessful and were canceled, the Fourth World's New Gods have continued as a significant part of the DC Universe. Kirby returned to Marvel briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s, then ventured into television animation and independent comics. In his later years, Kirby, who has been called "the William Blake of comics",[2] began receiving great recognition in the mainstream press for his career accomplishments, and in 1987 he was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

[Michael from Toronto]

Kirby was married to Rosalind "Roz" Goldstein in 1942. They had four children, and remained married until his death from heart failure in 1994, at the age of 76. The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor.

[Michael from Toronto]

Early life (1917–1935)

Jack Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg on August 28, 1917, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, where he was raised.[3] His parents, Rose and Benjamin Kurtzberg,[3] were Austrian Jewish immigrants, and his father earned a living as a garment factory worker.[4] In his youth, Kirby desired to escape his neighborhood. He liked to draw, and sought out places he could learn more about art.[5] Essentially self-taught,[6] Kirby cited among his influences the comic strip artists Milton Caniff, Hal Foster, and Alex Raymond, as well as such editorial cartoonists as C. H. Sykes, "Ding" Darling, and Rollin Kirby.[6] He was rejected by the Educational Alliance because he drew "too fast with charcoal", according to Kirby. He later found an outlet for his skills by drawing cartoons for the newspaper of the Boys Brotherhood Republic, a "miniature city" on East 3rd Street where street kids ran their own government

[Michael from Toronto]

At age 14, Kirby enrolled at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, leaving after a week. "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".[8]

[Michael from Toronto]

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 movie animation company Fleischer Studios as an inbetweener (an artist who fills in the action between major-movement frames) on Popeye cartoons. "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."[9]

[Michael from Toronto]

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 remembers as his first comic book work, for Wild Boy Magazine.[10] 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.[11] He first used the surname Kirby as the pseudonymous Lance Kirby in two "Lone Rider" Western stories in Eastman Color's Famous Funnies #63-64 (Oct.-Nov. 1939).[11] He ultimately settled on the pen name Jack Kirby because it reminded him of actor James Cagney. However, he took offense to those who suggested he changed his name in order to hide his Jewish heritage.[12]

In the summer of 1940, Kirby and his family moved to Brooklyn. There, Kirby met Rosalind "Roz" Goldstein, who lived in the same apartment building. The pair began dating soon afterward.[13] Kirby proposed to Goldstein on her eighteenth birthday, and the two became engaged.[14

[Michael from Toronto]

irby moved on to comic-book publisher and newspaper syndicator Fox Feature Syndicate, earning a then-reasonable $15-a-week salary. He began to explore superhero narrative with the comic strip The Blue Beetle, published from January to March 1940, starring a character created by the pseudonymous Charles Nicholas, a house name that Kirby retained for the three-month-long strip. During this time, Kirby met and began collaborating with cartoonist and Fox editor Joe Simon, who in addition to his staff work continued to freelance. Simon recalled in 1988, "I loved Jack's work and the first time I saw it I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He asked if we could do some freelance work together. I was delighted and I took him over to my little office. We worked from the second issue of Blue Bolt through... about 25 years."[15]

[Michael from Toronto]

After leaving Fox and landing at pulp magazine publisher Martin Goodman's Timely Comics (later to become Marvel Comics), Simon and Kirby created the patriotic superhero Captain America in late 1940. Simon cut a deal with Goodman that gave him and Kirby 25 percent of the profits from the feature, as well as salaried positions as the company's editor and art director, respectively.[16] 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.[17] After the first issue was published, Simon asked Kirby to join the Timely staff as the company's art director

[Michael from Toronto]

With the success of the Captain America character, Simon 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 (later renamed DC Comics).[16] 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.[19] Fearing that Goodman would not pay them if he found out they were moving to National, the pair kept the deal a secret with Stan Lee while they continued producing work for the company. Goodman eventually learned of the deal, and Kirby and Simon, convinced that Lee had revealed their plans, left after completing their work on Captain America Comics #10

[Michael from Toronto]

Kirby and Simon spent their first weeks at National trying to devise new characters while the company sought how best to utilize the pair.[21] 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.[22][23] 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.[24] It sold over a million copies a month, becoming National's third best-selling title.[25] They also scored a hit with the homefront kid-gang team, the Newsboy Legion, featuring in Star-Spangled Comics.[26]

[Michael from Toronto]

Kirby married Roz Goldstein on May 23, 1942

[Michael from Toronto]

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.[25] Kirby was drafted into the U.S. Army on June 7, 1943.[28] After basic training at Camp Stewart, near Savannah, Georgia, he was assigned to Company F of the 11th Infantry Regiment.[29] He landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy on August 23, 1944, two-and-a-half months after D-Day,[29] though Kirby's reminiscences would place his arrival just 10 days after.[28] 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.[30]

[Michael from Toronto]

Kirby and his wife corresponded regularly by v-mail, with Roz sending "him a letter a day" while she worked in a lingerie shop and lived with her mother[31] at 2820 Brighton 7th Street in Brooklyn.[32] During the winter of 1944, Kirby suffered severe frostbite on his lower extremities and was taken to a hospital in London, England, for recovery. Doctors considered amputating Kirby's legs, but he eventually recovered from the frostbite.[33] He returned to the United States in January 1945, assigned to Camp Butner in North Carolina, where he spent the last six months of his service as part of the motor pool. Kirby was honorably discharged as a Private First Class on July 20, 1945, having received a Combat Infantryman Badge and a European/African/Middle Eastern Theater ribbon with a bronze battle star.[34][35]

[Michael from Toronto]

Simon arranged for work for Kirby and himself at Harvey Comics,[36] 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).[11]