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Jack "The King" Kirby

2024.12.16

Photo Credit: Erik Mclean @pexels.com 

 

You probably know “The God of Manga”, Tezuka Osamu, but do you know “The King of Comics”?

 

You may not know who this King is, but you might know many of his characters. Over the past 15 years, superhero movies from Hollywood have become very popular worldwide. The most popular of these superhero movies were the Avengers movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). These box-office hits featured characters such as Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, and Nick Fury. All of these characters were created or co-created by Jack “the King” Kirby.

 

Kirby started working in American comics when he was about 20 years old. A few years later, he met up with his creative partner Joe Simon, and together they created Captain America in 1940. On the cover of the very first Captain America comic, Captain America punched Adolph Hitler, This was a year before the United States entered the Second World War. It established Captain America as an ideal of America: the very best that America could be.

 

After joining the American army and fighting in Europe during the war, Kirby returned to drawing comic books. By this time, superhero comics had become less popular, so Kirby and Simon created a new genre of comics: romance comics. In 1947, their comic magazine Young Romance was the first and most popular of over 100 different romance comics published until the mid-1950s.

 

But it is from the 1960s that Kirby became the King. He joined Marvel Comics, and in 1961, Marvel published The Fantastic Four with art by Kirby. In a period of about ten years, Kirby helped create some of the most famous superheroes of American comic books. Not only did Kirby create the characters named above, he also was the original artist for the X-Men (made into their own series of movies) and helped co-create Ant-Man and Black Panther. In all, 21 of the MCU movies feature Kirby-created characters as the main heroes of the story.

 

By this time, Kirby had developed his own dynamic art style and innovative storytelling techniques that changed the way comic book stories were told. His art had a sense of movement and energy when many other comic artists drew stiff figures that seemed motionless in comparison. The stories that he told through his art were often at a cosmic scale. With these stories, he made the reader think about the meaning of being human in a universe that was so vast. Kirby’s work set new standards for visual storytelling that still influences artists today.

 

Questions:

Q1. Kirby co-created Captain America in 1940. Who was his co-creator?

 

Q2. When did Kirby do his famous work for Marvel Comics?

 

Q3. What was special about Kirby's art?

 

Scroll down ↓ for answers.

 



















A1. Joe Simon

A2. During the 1960s

A3. It was very dynamic with a lot energy. He told stories that were on an epic scale.

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