POST BURNING SITE

[Michael from Toronto]

Back at Marvel, Kirby both wrote and drew Captain America and 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. Kirby's other Marvel creations in this period include Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man, and an adaptation and expansion of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as an abortive attempt to do the same for the classic television series, The Prisoner.[82] He also wrote and drew Black Panther and drew numerous covers across the line.[11]

[Michael from Toronto]

Still dissatisfied with Marvel's treatment of him,[83] and with the company's refusal to provide health and other employment benefits,[citation needed] Kirby left Marvel to work in animation. In that field, he did designs for Turbo Teen, Thundarr the Barbarian and other animated television series.[80] He also worked on The Fantastic Four cartoon show, reuniting him with scriptwriter Stan Lee.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]

[Michael from Toronto]

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 also 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 NFL 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.[84]

[Michael from Toronto]

Still dissatisfied with Marvel's treatment of him,[83] and with the company's refusal to provide health and other employment benefits,[citation needed] Kirby left Marvel to work in animation. In that field, he did designs for Turbo Teen, Thundarr the Barbarian and other animated television series.[80] He also worked on The Fantastic Four cartoon show, reuniting him with scriptwriter Stan Lee.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]

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 also 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 NFL 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.[84]

[Michael from Toronto]

In the early 1980s, Pacific Comics, a new, non-newsstand comic book publisher, made a then-groundbreaking deal with Kirby to publish a creator-owned series, Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers,[85] and the six-issue miniseries Silver Star, which was collected in hardcover format in 2007.[86][87][88] This, together with similar actions by other independent comics publishers as Eclipse Comics (where Kirby co-created Destroyer Duck in a benefit comic-book series published to help Steve Gerber fight a legal case versus Marvel),[89] 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.

[Michael from Toronto]

Though estranged from Marvel, 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. In 1987, under pressure from comics creators and the fan community, Marvel finally returned approximately 1,900[90] or 2,100 pages[91] of the estimated 10,000[91] to 13,000[92] Kirby drew for the company.[91][92

[Michael from Toronto]

Kirby also retained ownership of characters used by Topps Comics beginning in 1993, for a set of series in what the company dubbed "The Kirbyverse".[93] These titles were derived mainly from designs and concepts that Kirby had kept in his files, some intended initially for the by-then-defunct Pacific Comics, and then licensed to Topps for what would become the "Jack Kirby's Secret City Saga" mythos.[94] Marvel posthumously published a "lost" Kirby/Lee Fantastic Four story, Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure (April 2008), with unused pages Kirby had originally drawn for a story that was partially published in Fantastic Four #108 (March 1971).[95]

[Michael from Toronto]

On February 6, 1994, Kirby died at age 76 of heart failure in his Thousand Oaks, California home.[96] He was buried at the Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park, Westlake Village, California.[97]

[Michael from Toronto]

Kirby and his wife Roz, who married in 1942, had four children. Susan was born December 6, 1945,[citation needed] followed by Neal in May 1948[39] and their third child, Barbara, in November 1952.[98] They also had another daughter, Lisa.[99]

[Michael from Toronto]

Lisa Kirby announced in early 2006 that she and co-writer Steve Robertson, with artist Mike Thibodeaux, planned to publish via the Marvel Comics Icon imprint a six-issue limited series, Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters, featuring characters and concepts created by her father for Captain Victory.[99] The series, scripted by Lisa Kirby, Robertson, Thibodeaux, and Richard French, with pencil art by Jack Kirby and Thibodeaux, and inking by Scott Hanna and Karl Kesel primarily, ran an initial five issues (Sept. 2006 - Jan. 2007) and then a later final issue (Sept. 2007).[100] The series was collected in hardcover (ISBN 978-0-7851-2628-7) in 2007, and in trade paperback (ISBN 978-0-7851-2629-4) the following year.

On September 16, 2009,[101] the Kirby estate also served notices of termination to Walt Disney Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Sony Pictures to attempt to regain control of various Silver Age Marvel characters.[102][103] Marvel is seeking to invalidate these claims.[104][105] However, in mid-March 2010 Kirby's estate "sued Marvel to terminate copyrights and gain profits from [Kirby's] comic creations."[106] In July 2011, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a summary judgment in favor of Marvel,[101][107][108] which was affirmed in August 2013 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.[109]

In July 2010, Dynamite Entertainment announced that in 2011, it would publish Kirby: Genesis, an eight-issue miniseries by writer Kurt Busiek and artists Jack Herbert and Alex Ross, featuring Kirby-owned characters previously published by Pacific Comics and Topps Comics.

[Michael from Toronto]

The New York Times, in a Sunday op-ed piece written more than a decade after his death, said of Kirby:

    He created a new grammar of storytelling and a cinematic style of motion. Once-wooden characters cascaded from one frame to another—or even from page to page—threatening to fall right out of the book into the reader's lap. The force of punches thrown was visibly and explosively evident. Even at rest, a Kirby character pulsed with tension and energy in a way that makes movie versions of the same characters seem static by comparison.[112]

[Michael from Toronto]

Michael Chabon, in his afterword to his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a fictional account of two early comics pioneers, wrote, "I want to acknowledge the deep debt I owe in this and everything else I've ever written to the work of the late Jack Kirby, the King of Comics."[113] Director James Cameron said Kirby inspired the look of his film Aliens, calling it "not intentional in the sense I sat down and looked at all my favorite comics and studied them for this film, but, yeah, Kirby's work was definitely in my subconscious programming. The guy was a visionary. Absolutely. And he could draw machines like nobody's business. He was sort of like A.E. Van Vogt and some of these other science-fiction writers who are able to create worlds that — even though we live in a science-fictionary world today — are still so far beyond what we're experiencing."[114]
Jazz percussionist Gregg Bendian's CD, Requiem for Jack Kirby

Several Kirby images are among those on the "Marvel Super Heroes" set of commemorative stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service on July 27, 2007.[115] Ten of the stamps are portraits of individual Marvel characters and the other 10 stamps depict individual Marvel Comic book covers. According to the credits printed on the back of the pane, Kirby's artwork is featured on: Captain America, The Thing, Silver Surfer, The Amazing Spider-Man #1, The Incredible Hulk #1, Captain America #100, The X-Men #1, and The Fantastic Four #3.[112][115]

[Michael from Toronto]

Several Kirby images are among those on the "Marvel Super Heroes" set of commemorative stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service on July 27, 2007.[115] Ten of the stamps are portraits of individual Marvel characters and the other 10 stamps depict individual Marvel Comic book covers. According to the credits printed on the back of the pane, Kirby's artwork is featured on: Captain America, The Thing, Silver Surfer, The Amazing Spider-Man #1, The Incredible Hulk #1, Captain America #100, The X-Men #1, and The Fantastic Four #3.[112][115]

In 2002, jazz percussionist Gregg Bendian released a seven-track CD, Requiem for Jack Kirby, inspired by Kirby's art and storytelling. Titles of the instrumental cuts include "Kirby's Fourth World", "New Gods", "The Mother Box", "Teaneck in the Marvel Age" and "Air Above Zenn-La".[116]

[Michael from Toronto]

Various comic-book and cartoon creators have done homages to Kirby. Examples include the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage Comics series ("Kirby and the Warp Crystal" in Donatello #1, and its animated counterpart, "The King", from the 2003 cartoon series). The episode of Superman: The Animated Series entitled "Apokalips...Now! Part 2" was dedicated to his memory.[117]

As of July 2012, Kirby's drawing table and small taboret table reside in the den of his son, Neal Kirby, who hopes that they will inspire Kirby's great-grandchildren.[42]

As of September 2012, Hollywood films based on characters Kirby co-created have collectively earned nearly $3.1 billion.[118] Kirby himself is a character portrayed by Luis Yagüe in the 2009 Spanish short film The King & the Worst, which is inspired by Kirby's service in World War II.[119] He is portrayed by Michael Parks in a brief appearance in the fact-based drama Argo (2012), about the Canadian Caper.[120]

[Michael from Toronto]

Jack Kirby received a great deal of recognition over the course of his career, including the 1967 Alley Award for Best Pencil Artist.[121] The following year he was runner-up behind Jim Steranko. His other Alley Awards were:

    1963: Favorite Short Story - "The Human Torch Meets Captain America", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Strange Tales #114[122]
    1964:[123]
        Best Novel - "Captain America Joins the Avengers", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, from The Avengers #4
        Best New Strip or Book - "Captain America", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, in Tales of Suspense
    1965: Best Short Story - "The Origin of the Red Skull", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, Tales of Suspense #66[124]
    1966: Best Professional Work, Regular Short Feature - "Tales of Asgard" by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, in The Mighty Thor[125]
    1967: Best Professional Work, Regular Short Feature - (tie) "Tales of Asgard" and "Tales of the Inhumans", both by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, in The Mighty Thor[121]
    1968:[126]
        Best Professional Work, Best Regular Short Feature - "Tales of the Inhumans", by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, in The Mighty Thor
        Best Professional Work, Hall of Fame - Fantastic Four, by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby; Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., by Jim Steranko[127]

Kirby won a Shazam Award for Special Achievement by an Individual in 1971 for his "Fourth World" series in Forever People, New Gods, Mister Miracle, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen.[128] He was inducted into the Shazam Awards Hall of Fame in 1975.[129] In 1987 he was an inaugural inductee into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.[130] He received the 1993 Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award at that year's Eisner Awards.[131]

His work was honored posthumously in 1998: The collection of his New Gods material, Jack Kirby's New Gods, edited by Bob Kahan, won both the Harvey Award for Best Domestic Reprint Project,[132] and the Eisner Award for Best Archival Collection/Project.[133]

The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor.

With Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman, Gary Panter and Chris Ware, Kirby was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007.[134][135]