Jack Kirby impacted the medium of comics in many ways: he invented and reinvented visual vocabularies, he expanded the scope and scale of the superhero genre beyond simple notions of good and evil, he imagined infinite infinities filled with spotted black energy dots and twisting jungles of machinery. He’s known as “The King”, as creator and destroyer of worlds, as the man who brought ‘cosmic’ to comics, as one of the true artistic visionaries of the 20th century.
Last Thursday, August 28th, would have been Jack Kirby’s 97th birthday, and I put together a few posts for ComicsAlliance to celebrate the occasion: one compiling some of my favorite covers that he drew for DC comics, and a couple (1, 2) bringing together an amazing assortment of comic creators to offer impressions his work. So I’ve been spending lots of time flipping through stacks of old Kirby comics, looking at interviews on youtube, reading various articles and remembrances, and thinking about why his work connects with so many different people, and with me personally. And to a great degree, I think it comes down to his ability to take the mundane, and make it spectacular.
“Mundane?” I hear you say. “Jack Kirby was all about spectacle! He thought big, too big for this world!” And that’s true: ideas were his lifeblood, anything he came in contact with could serve as inspiration.
Which is actually sort of what I’m getting at. His work celebrated the tiny elements of the world, taking the most commonplace details and imbuing them with beauty and grandeur. He thought big, and those big thoughts grew from the tiniest seeds, and took root in the lowest-common-denominator medium, floppy pamphlets made for kids. And he did it over and over again, day in, day out. He invented entire universes in thirty-two pages of poorly colored newsprint, and by the time the next month rolled around, he’d moved on and come up with something else again. Jack was constantly moving, constantly inventing, often in a world of his own – but even his wildest flights of fancy are based in very real, very relatable emotions.
(And though it feels a bit strange to use such a casual form of address for someone I never met, I’ve heard from many people that he hated being called “Mr. Kirby”, and insisted people simply call him “Jack”. So I will.)
Jack was, by all accounts, a brilliant contradiction. He lived through the worst that the world had to offer, and came out the other side believing in the goodness of people. He was completely confident in his abilities, yet was endlessly humble. He was a blue-collar craftsman and a visionary creator. He was the fastest artist of his generation, pencilling pages with ridiculous speed, but he never cut corners and always gave his all. His work ethic was legendary, yet he always took time out for anybody who wished to sit and talk.
All the action-packed grandeur and sweeping scale of his work is vitally important, but it wouldn’t matter at all without the emotional grounding – and it’s that straightforward humanity at the heart of all Jack’s comics, no matter how bizarre and fantastic the trappings become, that connects with readers.
Jack Kirby saw the worst of the world. Talk to anyone who ever spent time with him, or read about him for five minutes, and you’ll hear about his war stories. He stood on battlefields, he ran from the enemy and toward the enemy. He saw exactly how inhuman humanity could be.
And yet he dreamed. He pictured better worlds. He trusted in the goodness of every single person he met, to an alarming (and often detrimental) degree. He cared about people. He liked people. And he believed in people. And that rubbed off on the people he came in contact with.
There’s a friend of mine named Joe Ferrarra. Joe owns a comic shop, Atlantis Fantasyworld, in Santa Cruz, California. Joe has known me for… Well, for longer than I care to admit.
And Joe has a Jack Kirby story. If you ever see him, ask about it. I’d retell it here, but it’s not my story to tell, and I’d probably get some essential detail wrong. But [SPOILERS], it’s about meeting Jack Kirby, and learning to love the art because of the person who made it.
That above paragraph doesn’t really need the spoiler warning, as it’s not that different from many hundreds of other stories about Jack Kirby, and the influence he had on people. If you’ve heard a story about Jack Kirby, you’ve probably heard something similar. If you’ve met people who met him, there’s a way they smile when they talk about him. It’s like the mere thought of Jack makes them more open, lighter, quietly excited.
I was in Atlantis Fantasyworld some years ago, looking for fun things to read, digging through the 50¢ boxes on the floor. And as I flipped through stacks, I saw a Kirby cover. It was a very late-period work, an issue of Last Of The Viking Heroes, and it was clearly one of the pieces done when Jack’s powers were waning, his eyes were going, and his line lacked the power of his peak years. Still, though, it was Kirby. A piece of Jack’s work that I didn’t own.
So I picked it up, and opened it, looking for the credits to see if Jack just did the cover, or if he also did any interior work… And there, on the first page, was a signature. Jack’s signature. Not printed, signed in ink.
I stopped dead. A signed Jack Kirby comic in the 50¢ bin. Clearly, this was a mistake. I mean, I wanted to buy it, and take it home, and have it, but – yeah, no.
So when I went to check out, pay for my stack of discount cut-out comics, I told Joe. I showed him the book. And I said something to the extent of “I was gonna buy this, but I think there’s been a mistake…”
Joe was stunned, and quickly agreed. “Yeah, that certainly shouldn’t have been there. I don’t know who did that, that’s crazy, thanks for showing me. There’s no way I could sell that for fifty cents, obviously.”
And then he smiled. “Give me a dollar for it.”
That’s the sort of story that seems to come up all the time when Jack Kirby is mentioned. Not just his work, not just his creativity, but the reactions he inspires in people, to this day. You can see it in the stories people tell. You can see it in the love people have for him. You can see it in how his name brings people together to do wonderful things. You can see it in how his family upholds his legacy: Jack’s granddaughter, Jillian Kirby, created and runs the Kirby4Heroes campaign, which celebrates her grandfather’s work by raising money for comic creators in need.
That’s what “The King” did. He touched people, and continues to everyday. He told stories of gods, but his humanity is what made it all real.
So yeah, I never got to meet Jack. But I’ve seen the dreams he had come to life. I’ve gotten to work in and around the medium that he pioneered. And I see his greatest legacy wherever I go: the art he imagined, the people he impacted, and the lives he inspired.
It’s been said we all live in Jack’s shadow. And that’s understandable, but fundamentally incorrect. Jack Kirby towered above the world, but never cast a shadow on anybody – and today, we all live in the light he created.