Consequently, despite their characters becoming iconic, Kirby and the other artists of his generation made absolutely no royalties of any kind and were denied any chance to share in the successes of their creations. An embodiment of how talented artists were treated by the companies which became multibillion dollar industries because of their creations, while leaving the original creators with pittance on the basis of dubious "work for hire" contract policies by which artists were paid for no more than the "page rate" for the comics that they drew. ![]() Kirby is also well known (alongside Siegel and Shuster) as the poster boy for the creators' rights movements of The '70s and The '80s. In the Eighties he also became one of the first major creators to write creator-owned comics for the Direct Market, writing Silver Star and Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers. Furthermore, he had a good experience in the toy business as such creating the designs for Kenner's famous Super Powers toy series where he finally got direct compensation working on the classic DC Comics characters. Ironically, his most satisfying work at this point was in animation where he worked as a production designer with designs for most famously Thundarr the Barbarian. and even returned to Marvel for a time to single-handedly write and draw Captain America, Black Panther and new titles like The Eternals and Devil Dinosaur, before his work rate finally started to slow down. Kirby remained with DC writing individual titles like The Demon, Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth and O.M.A.C. New Gods was reportedly his favourite of his works, and is commonly regarded by Kirby fans and scholars as his greatest achievement. Unfortunately, this idea was around 15 years ahead of its time and DC's publisher, Carmine Infantino, pulled the plug before Kirby could see the project through. In those titles, Kirby created a grand cosmic mythos he planned to have reprinted into bound volumes for resale. After Kirby left Marvel, he went to DC Comics and created "The Fourth World" series, New Gods, The Forever People and Mister Miracle as well as insisting on taking over Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen which didn't have an assigned art team so he wouldn't cause anyone to lose their job. However, towards the end of the 60s, the increased prominence of natural showman Lee and unfavourable working conditions led Kirby to become disillusioned with the company and leave. Kirby note although he loathed to work under Stan Lee whom he suspected of ratting him out to Martin Goodman and thus getting him fired from Timely in the 1940s then spent much of the late 50s working on Atlas Comics' monster stories with Stan Lee, co-creating characters who would eventually become Marvel mainstays, including Fin Fang Foom and Groot.Īfter this came the famous early Marvel period, where the Lee-and-Kirby team, with some help as well from Steve Ditko in key areas, built the Marvel Universe from the ground up. Eventually, comic books went through their 1950s rough patch and the team amicably split for their separate paths. Among other things, the two co-created Captain America and the entire genre of romance comics. (Not to mention, he and Stan Lee also exist there as normal people who write comics based on the 'actual' adventures of the superheroes.)īefore working with Lee, he had a ridiculously creative partnership with Joe Simon, starting in the 1940s. ![]() In the Marvel Universe, God looks like Jack Kirby. Due to his speed in creating well-received comics, there exists something called the "Kirby Barrier" breaking the barrier means that you've created a quality comic in under a week, a surprisingly difficult feat. ![]() He died of heart failure in 1994 at the age of 76, or at least that's what Galactus wants us to believe. Kirby Dots are named after the artist's distinctive rendering of Battle Auras, also nicknamed, "the Kirby Krackle". His incredibly unique art style and bombastic storytelling made him one of the most imitated creators in western comics history. This is the man who created or co-created dozens of classic characters for DC and Marvel, and he is universally considered one of the masters of the medium, on par with Osamu Tezuka, Will Eisner or Mœbius. Jack " The King" Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg, Aug– February 6, 1994) is, quite simply, one of the most important and influential artists and writers ever in American comics.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |