Jack Kirby is one of a trio of artists whom I consider geniuses of the comic book form. Harvey Kurtzman and Bernie Krigstein are the other two. Kirby was the oldest, born in 1917, and his career was the longest and the most productive.
He was born Jacob Kurtzberg and raised in New York's Bowery. His art was his ticket out - out of the slums and out of poverty. He got his first job drawing in 1935 at the Max Fleischer Studio where he worked as an "in-betweener" on animated cartoons. It was the depth of the Depression and any job was to be treasured. Yet, Kirby quit the animation business after two years. By 1937 he was drawing comic strips and single-panel cartoons for a small newspaper syndicate called Lincoln News.
At right is the cover for what is arguably his first comic work - a 24 page booklet published by HT Elmo of Lincoln News. It was meant as a bank giveaway with generic content (all by Kirby) inside and a space on the back cover for a specific bank or savings institution to print or stamp its name and address.
By age 20, he was a seasoned professional using different styles and different pen names on half a dozen different features. Some of those features found their way into the fledgling comic book market. Kirby quickly followed them.
It was at Fox Comics that he met Joe Simon, a freelance writer and artist. With Simon's business acumen and hustle and Kirby's skill and speed, the team of Simon & Kirby soon exploded onto the comic book scene. Their work appeared at Fox, Novelty and Timely/Marvel - often as the cover artist team. They started out with Simon doing layouts and Kirby finishing, but Kirby's understanding of the comic book medium helped to quickly reverse those roles.
Remember, in 1940 the comic book as a medium was only five years old and for half that time consisted entirely of newspaper strip reprints. The graphic language and techniques in play in 1940 were primarily those of the daily comic strips. Kirby was one of the very first to view the comic book page as a unique form and the first to fully comprehend its potential and solve its challenges.
In comic books, Kirby saw the differences from, not the similarities to, their comic strip antecedents. Action was not only possible, it was paramount. But, before Kirby, many early comic books had to rely on various guiding devices to lead the reader in the proper sequence through the more dynamic panels. Some simply numbered the panels to ensure that they were read in the proper order. Others used graphic arrows to point to the next one.
At right is a page from a Kirby comic story drawn in late 1940. It was taken from The Art of Jack Kirby. Notice the arrow that points from the first panel to the second. This is actually the most obvious transition on the entire page and the arrow is scarcely necessary. Now witness how Kirby leads you through the story with his drawings. Just follow the red line: the character in panel two is facing back toward panel three. He used this device throughout his career. He probably did it unconsciously, just as he often used a character facing or moving to the right in the first panel on the second tier. Note also how the path of the eye is drawn through the speech balloons. And when it's not, the eyes of the character point you in that direction (note the blue lines). The angles of the background and furniture also come into play to move you through the story in the manner he desires.
I believe Kirby invented this approach. He figured it out and implemented it almost from the very start: Don't draw something that leads the eye away from the story. The story is the driving force. Make sure the drawings move it forward. The composition of the page should keep the reader's eyes on the page until the last panel and then that panel should facilitate the turning of the page. Backgrounds should set the scene and indicate reading direction.
All this was completely intuitive to Jack. He saw the needs and built solutions into his style. The way he told a story was driven by the need to show you how to read it. And I'll bet he never really thought about it.
Getting back to what he did with his style...
Simon & Kirby's first big hit was Captain America, a character they created for Timely Comics. The image at left is from issue #2, published in April of 1941 and drawn nearly a year before America declared war on Germany. The comic books were never neutral.
After nearly a year producing Captain America, S&K left Timely to work for National Comics (DC) where they created their next big hit, Boy Commandos. Then came the real war and both men were drafted in 1943. After the war, comics were in the doldrums and Kirby took what work he could get. Always a scrapper and a professional, one of his first jobs was a one-page strip, "How to make your own Puppets" in Punch & Judy comics.
Kirby and Simon teamed up on two new titles for Harvey, Stuntman and Boy Explorers, but both were short-lived. Their work was still being used by National and they were producing a wide variety of work for Hillman (the Punch & Judy publisher). They did crime stories for Real Clue, an aviation strip, Link Thorne, The Flying Fool (at left) for Airboy, and a teen title, My Date, but the prolific pair wanted more. What they wanted was a share of the profits.
So they invented the Romance comic and sold the idea to Crestwood/Prize Comics for a 50/50 cut of the profits. Young Romance, Young Love, Western Love, Headline and Justice Traps the Guilty were the main titles that the Simon & Kirby team produced for Crestwood. They had a whole studio of artists working for them and many were adept at approximating Kirby's pencil style or Simon's inking. Still others had distinctive styles of their own that were almost submerged in the S&K style. Except Kirby. You could always tell a Kirby story. Just follow the panels. Their comics were a major success. Artists like Mort Meskin, Bill Draut, Marvin Stein and Bruno Premiani were on staff and produced hundreds of stories each over the years. They must have treated them well - not surprising considering that the men in charge were working artists, just like them. | 
Young Love 1949 |
| More titles flowed from the creative duo. For Crestwood, they created Black Magic, The Strange World of Your Dreams, Charlie Chan, and Young Brides. In 1951, for Harvey, they came up with Boys' Ranch, a marvelous western comic hearkening back to Boy Commandos. |
 In 1954, back at Crestwood, they released their pièce de résistance, Fighting American, a parody of the then dormant superhero genre (see right). | |
The next step was to become publishers themselves. In 1954, as the rest of the industry was retrenching due to the public furor over comics and juvenile delinquency, Simon and Kirby launched Mainline Comics, to minimal fanfare and mediocre sales. With titles like In Love, Foxhole, Police Trap and Bulls-Eye, they had all the popular genres covered. They were the most successful and well-known creators in comics history. And they failed miserably. Most titles lasted only four issues.
With the failure, the team split up to make each his own way in the new, post Comics Code, comic book landscape. Romance comics survived. Kirby did lots of strips for Harvey. (Simon and Kirby are listed as editors of some of the Prize/Crestwood romance books through 1957. Then it's just Simon - who also returned to drawing stories about 1960. Simon also went on to create Sick Magazine, a long-running Mad imitation.)
The Yellow Claw - Atlas 1957
(inks by John Severin)Kirby returned to the strong publishers for work. He did mystery stories and Challengers of the Unknown for National/DC, a few mysteries and westerns for Atlas (once Timely) comics. He continued to produce romance stories for Young Love and Young Romance at Prize, and he found work at Harvey as well. He achieved the goal of most comic artists - he landed a newspaper strip.
Sky Masters of the Space Force was penciled by Kirby from September 1958 through February 1961. Wally Wood did the inking for the first eight months and their combined styles built strength upon strength. The results, one panel above, were breathtaking. Dick Ayers did a masterful job on the rest of the run, but nothing since has matched the Kirby/Wood team up.
Read More at Jack Kirby Biography (http://www.bpib.com/illustra2/kirby.htm)
Posts
