Originally published March 4, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1059
One line.
New York Newsday gave him one dámņ line. A one line obit to the man whose artistry and vision shaped a generation of comic fans and professionals.
And it had three errors.
It read: “Jack Kirby, 76, the artist who with writer Joe Simon created such comic book superheroes as “Spiderman” and “The Incredible Hulk,” died Sunday of heart failure in California.”
1) Simon and Kirby didn’t create Spiderman. That was Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, although Kirby did design the costume.
2) Simon and Kirby didn’t create the Hulk. That was likewise Lee and Kirby.
3) They misspelled Spider-Man.
Simon and Kirby were a team, of course, with their best-known creation indisputably being Captain America. But they didn’t create the characters ascribed to them in Newsday.
Some of you may be wondering why I’m taking pains to spell this out. I mean, everyone knows this stuff, right? So it’s one newspaper that screwed up. What’s the big deal?
Well, it’s not one newspaper. Because for every single one of you who knows the name of Jack “King” Kirby as well as you know your own, I guarantee that there’s at least one reader, if not more, who is saying, “So who’s Jack Kirby? Don’t know him. Never heard of him. Kirby? Didn’t he do that thing for Topps? I didn’t like that. What’s the big deal about Kirby?”
Members of every generation make a point of ignoring or rejecting the icons of their predecessors. Even when it makes no sense to do so. Even when they’re disenfranchising themselves out of a knee-jerk reflex.
How do you tell them what it was like when…
…when the Fantastic Four, powerless and aided by Daredevil, tried to recapture their headquarters from Doctor Doom–climaxing in the most joyously received supervillain comeuppance ever, as a deadly furious Thing plowed through everything Doom had to offer and just shredded him…
…when the Mighty Thor, facing off against the unstoppable Destroyer, was absolutely stunned to see the Destroyer effortlessly slice the indestructible Mjolnir in half.
…when the Avengers looked on in amazement at the thawed-out individual dressed in red, white and blue, with a shield clutched to his chest.
…when Thor, heavily shadowed and lightning crackling over his head and looking every inch a God, stood over the dumbfounded Jane Foster and told her, in the equally immortal dialogue of Stan Lee, “It is an immortal of Asgard whom you love, Jane Foster… and who truly loves you as well.”
…when Darkseid, his plans thoroughly bûggërëd by the Forever People, prepared to blow the young godlings out of existence with the Omega Effect while informing his right hand toady, “The pups have angered me, Desaad! Put me on the defensive! A great feat!” (For some reason this full page shot remains my personal favorite moment in Kirby’s oeuvre. I don’t know why. In fact, I still use the line on occasion in regards to some of the snottier responses this column gets.)
Darkseid was, in my opinion, one of Kirby’s masterpiece creations. A villain so non-chalant, that he usually stood with his hands casually draped behind his back because–no matter who you were–you weren’t worth getting worked up over. Walt Simonson captured this perfectly in the X-Men/Teen Titans crossover. The best intercompany story ever, period, featured a climactic sequence wherein Darkseid is about to get his ticket punched by the full fury of Dark Phoenix unleashed. Is he throwing up his arms in terror? Shouting “Noooo!” or somesuch? Nah. He’s just standing there, at parade rest, staring unflinchingly at the oncoming onslaught as if to say, “Take your best shot. Better make it count.” It was a moment that was the epitome of a word that was created, and is still casually used, just to encompass such sequences: “Kirbyesque.”
Another story that had tremendous personal impact for me was an issue of New Gods entitled “The Glory Boat,” in which an innocent young man (Richard, I think his name was) sacrificed his life defending the father who had had nothing but contempt for him. At the climax of the story, Orion and Lightray of the New Gods hurtle in a high-speed aquatic vessel on a head-on collision course towards the evil “Deep Six.” Strapped to the front of the New Gods’ ship, a defiant banner, is Richard’s body. Even in death Richard strikes back at his murderers. And at the end of the story, Richard’s father is left floating on the ocean, saddled with the realization that he had never really understood the son that he now would be forever denied the opportunity to know.
This is the stuff I grew up with, by the way, which is why I’m focusing on it. It’s not that I wish to give short shrift to Kirby’s considerable body of work during comics’ Golden Age. The Golden Age Sandman, the Newsboy Legion… all of these were thing I grew to appreciate in later years. But it was the Kirby of the 60s and 70s that had the greatest impact on me.
How do you tell fans of today what it was like when Kirby left Marvel? The closest analog is the departure of the Image boys, and I’m sorry, but that’s not really close. Because Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld worked for Marvel, but dammit, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were Marvel. For fans at the time, it was like standing in the middle of a frozen lake and suddenly hearing the rifle shot noise of ice cracking. And what flashes through your mind at such a moment is, “My God… what will happen now?”
You can’t.
You can’t really put it across.
I met Kirby a couple of times, but I seriously doubt he remembered me from one time to the next. I was simply one of thousands of admirers; one of hundreds of creators whose work was inspired by, or owed to, his.
The first time I met him, though, was the most significant to me. I was about twelve or thirteen. My father and I had just seen a news report about a comic book convention being held in New York. Jack Kirby was the guest. I sat there and watched him signing autographs. My dad saw how enraptured I was by the report, but we were living in New Jersey, and to me New York was where we went solely for visiting my grandparents, or the very very occasional Broadway show (usually for a special occasion.)
Yet my dad turned to me and said, out of the blue, “Would you like to go?”
I couldn’t believe it. Go to a comic book convention that had been on television? Actually go and see Jack Kirby? It wasn’t like now, where big city conventions are oftentimes populated by canny youngsters trying to discern which titles might carry the maximum investment potential. To me, it was like being invited to take a quick tour of Mount Olympus.
So we went. And I was part of the adoring throng grouped around Kirby, who was drawing and sketching as quickly as he could while, at the same time, answering questions with equanimity.
And I said, “I wanted to ask you a question about Darkseid.” Which I pronounced “Darkseed” because that’s how I heard a couple of idiot fans saying it.
Kirby looked up at me and said, “It’s Dark-side.”
I was crushed. Staggered. I’d done the exact thing that every fan fears: I’d gone to meet an idol and said something stupid. Now he was going to hate me and go back to the pantheon of greats with whom he associated and say, “Wait’ll you hear what this idiot fan boy did.”
And without wasting a beat, Kirby shrugged in a “no big deal” fashion and said, “Lots of people say it that way. Don’t worry about it. So what did you want to know…?”
Relief flooded over me. I’d screwed up, but the King said it was okay, and therefore, it was okay. The details of the question have long since faded from my memory. But the details of the moment stay with me.
That was the first time I saw Jack Kirby. The first professional I ever met, and it was everything that such an encounter should be.
The last significant memory I have of Jack Kirby was at the San Diego Comic Convention. Not last year’s, because I didn’t manage to make it over to the organized Jack Kirby bash that was put together at the time. Nor am I thinking of the several times that I encountered and re-encountered Kirby, each time re-introducing myself as the writer of Incredible Hulk. As noted above, he didn’t remember me, nor did I expect him to.
What makes the memory significant is that I was walking through the lobby of one of the convention hotels, and I spotted Kirby sitting off in a corner.
He was talking with Stan Lee.
For those (and again, there are many) who are unaware, the past decade had not been a kind one to the relationship of one of the most synergistic teams in comic history. Fueled by an imbroglio involving the return of Kirby’s original art to him, which then became inextricably tangled with lawyers trying to determine who was sole creator of what. It seemed that, in essence, the Marvel Universe that had been forged by Lee and Kirby was no longer big enough for both of them. Sides were split, lots were cast with various sides, and a miserable time was had by all.
So when I saw Lee and Kirby deep in conversation at that hotel, I couldn’t help but wonder what they were saying. I can’t describe to you how they “looked” because that would be too subjective. Objectively, I can say no punches were being thrown. No one was holding them back from each other. Neither of them was raising his voice.
I know what I’d like to think they were saying to each other. I know how I would have scripted it. Another Lee/Kirby production, each man building on the other’s strengths to create a foundation upon which more dreams would be constructed.
I have this hope.
I am hoping that the flow of tributes and essays and what-have-you that will accompany the passing of the King will prompt more than just bored questions from modern unknowing fans. Don’t just settle for what you read here. Go out and experience for yourself the artistry of Jack Kirby, for Kirby was not simply a master of the form, but an architect of it. Much of what you see in comics nowadays, you may think is an improvement on what he did. But it’s not. Actually it’s just watered down, copies of copies of copies, the original vision lost through multiple distorted lenses.
Try to open yourselves to the excitement and wonder that filled the imaginations of the previous generations.
You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, extends his sincerest condolences to the family of Jack Kirby.)
• 
LONG LIVE THE KING!!!
Mr. Kirby’s contributions to the comics industry and its fans are extraordinary, and I find “New York Newsday”‘s inaccuracies irresponsible. This is a matter of poor journalistic standards and disinterest in the comics industry. The poor journalism is quite objectionable, but disinterest in comics is not really such a great sin. Most people don’t read comic books. They didn’t in 1994, and they don’t in 2010. Why should they, if they don’t feel like it? No creator has a right to an audience, large or small. No fan has the right to demand that others join him, and it is short-sighted to assume others share one’s tastes.
When Jack Kirby died, I felt a masterful draftsman and creator had been lost. To those who didn’t care for comics, it was much less of an occasion.
I remember watching the Season 2 finale of the X-Men cartoon, and at the very end, it had a little card that said “In memory of Jack Kirby.” That was how I found out. To my credit, I did know who he was, and was crushed to find out. I mean, at that point, I was a nascent but die-hard Marvel Zombie, and though I wouldn’t have known Roy Thomas from Roy Orbison, I had at least memorized the names of the Holy Trinity of Lee, Kirby, and Ditko.
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Going to the comic book store that day was a subdued experience for me, I’ll tell you that.
Great article. This bit about Lee & Kirby talking for the last time in the lobby of the convention makes me wonder about their complicated working relationship through the years and what truly happend betwen them. By the way, thank you for putting online all your “But I Digress” columns, I was way too young to read them at the time and most of them are jewels.
Peter, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but even though you believe that encounter with Kirby wasn’t all that important, it was important to you and that’s what counts. I met Kirby at a NY con as well and I have wonderful memories of standing at his table for the better part of half an hour while he talked to me and a couple of other fans about the creation of the New Gods.
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I think it is all but impossible to explain to fans of this generation how important Kirby was to fans of our generation, although to be fair, your column certainly did try. We lived in an age without the Internet and Wizard and The Comics Journal and Previews and all those places that normally give away plot details months before a book came out. In those days, you pretty much didn’t know what what was going to happen on the next issue of a book until you sat down to read it for the first time. Maybe that’s one of the reasons those stories had so much extra punch.
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While I loved pretty much all of Kirby’s work, it was his run on Fantastic Four that remains my absolute favorite. Each issue was packed with brand new supporting characters (many of them have now gone on to their own books) and brand new villains that were cooler than the next. How do you describe to today’s reader what it was like to read the first FF featuring the Silver Surfer only to witness the coming of Galactus? Or the FF/Dr. Doom/Surfer issues in which Doom stole the Surfer’s powers and happily spent the next couple of issues beating the crap out of the FF? Or the Inhumans for goodness sake? Or the Frightful Four?
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I did love Thor as well, but I always found Kirby’s art to be a bit scratchier, if that’s the right word. It was until decades later that I found out that inker Vinnie Colletta used to regularly erase most of Kirby’s elaborate backgrounds just so he could ink those pages faster and move on to the next job. I never got that feeling with the Kirby/Sinnott FF pages. They were real pieces of art.
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I could say a lot more, but there are other people who could doubtless explain it better than I, as Peter has aptly demonstrated with his colum. But I’m happy to throw in my two cents, for whatever that’s worth.
Joe, I wasn’t as lucky as you, Peter, and other posters who had the priviledge to meet Jack “King” Kirby, but I too have fond memories of the Fantastic Four. The introduction of the Silver Surfer & Galactus, the first appearance of the Kree in the form of Sentry 459 & Ronan the Accuser, and all of those Skrulls!
For those who didn’t read it, I strongly suggest that you hunt down Will Eisner’s “The Dreamer” and read his outline featuring “Jack King!” It takes a legend to give just praise to another.
I got to shake hands with Jack Kirby at one of his last San Diego con appearances…perhaps the last one. I remember vividly that it was the year of Image’s ascendance. Lines for the autographs of Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, et al., were around the block. I encountered Mr. Kirby at a small publishers booth (I forget which)…all by himself. I stopped, said hello, thanked him for decades of superb entertainment. He was very gracious (of course), but I didn’t want to take up his time with a lot of fanboy gush, and I’m not a sufficient scholar of his work to ask what I thought would be a deep, insightful question, so I thanked him again, and moved on.
If pnly I had known I’d never get another chance…
Hard to think of many people in any artistic field who managed to come up with and flesh out as many memorable characters and concepts as this man had.
As for memorable character moments, yes, the Phoenix/Darkseid one was a biggie, but I think I preferred the Galactus/Darkseid one. Darkseid actually seemed to think he had a chance against the World Devourer. He very quickly discovers the awful truth. But The Moment comes after the fact when Galactus tries to assimilate the life energies of Apokalypse, only to learn it’s a dead world and he queries to Darkseid as to why he risked his life defending a worthless planet. In a very Doom-like response the still defiant Darkeid replies something to the effect of “Because it’s mine.”
When I was first reading comics, Jack Kirby was drawing Fantastic Four and Thor. But at the same time, there was Fantasy Masterpieces, reprinting more primitive but no less enjoyable Kirby work on Captain America. So I was exposed to the Kirby that influenced Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino and hundreds of other artists. And I could see the impact he’d had on storytelling in comics almost from the start.
A few years ago, I finally managed to track down a copy of the Boy’s Ranch trade. It’s a mixed bag, but the first few issues, with Kirby both writing and penciling whole stories(and anybody who has read Kirby’s Fourth World can tell he wrote it – – Kirby had many strengths, but dialogue wasn’t always one of them) and found it to be one of those gems that has been hidden for years under all the crap that has been published in this industry since the mid-thirties. It has the same emotional impact that the first nine issues of Mister Miracle had.
And I had occasion once to read a book-length Boy Commandoes story (Boy Commandoes #3, I think) that had the same impact. Even in 1942, Kirby had a feeling for grand scale, both in his art and in his story. Joe Simon contributed to this issue, but the bulk of the story reads like Kirby’s work. And it’s one of the great little known works in comics history.
So, yeah, a lot of folks these days don’t understand how important the name “Kirby” is to comics. They’re dazzled by artists doing their riff on Jim Lee, who himself was influenced by Neal Adams, who was influenced by Gil Kane, who was influenced by . . . Joe Simon’s old partner.
Peter,
I’ve always liked how you reach the humanity of the people who make comics possible.
I remember when you wrote about the mass purges at Marvel in the early 90’s. You likened it to cavemen who would push out the aged into the wild to be torn apart by wild animals.
I always apprciated that.
Dave
When those pictures were taken with you and Stan a few months back, did you get a hint as to what he and Kirby discussed?
Great article; I never got to meet Kirby which is sad, so I didn’t pass up “meeting” Stan Lee this weekend. A different experience, where you waited two hours and paid $40 only to by shuffled through as quickly as possible, but still worth while overall.