Born Jacob Kurtzberg in 1917 to Jewish-Austrian parents on New
York's Lower East Side, Jack Kirby came of age at the birth of the
American comic book industry. Horrified by the rise of Nazism,
Kirby co‑created the patriotic hero Captain America with Joe Simon
in 1940. Cap's exploits on the comic book page entertained millions
of American readers at home and inspired US troops fight-ing the
enemy abroad. Kirby's partnership with Simon continued throughout
the 1940s and early '50s; together, they produced com-ics in every
popular genre, from Western to romance. In 1958, Kirby began his
equally fruitful collaboration with writer- editor Stan Lee, and in
1961 the two men co‑created the foundational text of the modern
Marvel Universe- The Fantastic Four. Over the next de-cade, Kirby
and Lee would introduce a mind- boggling array of new characters-
including the Avengers, the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, the Silver
Surfer, and the X‑Men. Kirby's groundbreaking work with Lee formed
the foundation of the Marvel Universe. In the early 1970s, Kirby
moved to DC Comics, where he created his intercon-nected Fourth
World series, as well as freestanding titles such as The Demon. He
returned to Marvel in 1975, writing and illustrat-ing The Black
Panther and Captain America, and introducing series such as Devil
Dinosaur, and the Eternals. Kirby died in 1994. Today, he is
generally regarded as one of the most important and influential
creators in the history of American comics. His work has inspired
multiple generations of writers, artists, designers, and
film-makers, who continue to explore his vast universe of concepts
and characters. He was an inaugural inductee into the Eisner Hall
of Fame in 1987.
Writer-editor Stan Lee (1922-2018) and artist Jack Kirby made comic
book history in 1961 with The Fantastic Four #1. The suc-cess of
its new style inspired Lee and his many collaborators to de-velop a
number of new super heroes, including, with Jack Kirby, the
Incredible Hulk and the X‑Men; with Steve Ditko, the Amazing
Spider-Man and Doctor Strange; and with Bill Everett, Daredevil.
Lee oversaw the adventures of these creations for more than a
de-cade before handing over the editorial reins at Marvel to others
and focusing on developing Marvel's properties in other media. For
the remainder of his long life, he continued to serve as a creative
figure-head at Marvel and as an ambassador for the comics medium as
a whole. In his final years, Lee's signature cameo appearances in
Marvel's films established him as one of the world's most famous
faces.
While sharing a studio with Jack Kirby, artist Joe Simon co‑created
Captain America, a stirring symbol of American idealism and pride
during the war-torn 1940s. Simon and Kirby would go on to form one
of the most productive partnerships of the early American comic
book industry. The two men co‑created comics in every genre-crime,
war, horror, science fiction, Western, humor, and romance-for
numerous different publishers between 1940 and 1954. Noted
characters and series included the Sandman and the Newsboy Legion
for DC Comics, Young Romance for Crestwood, and Boys' Ranch for
Harvey. Simon also wrote two autobiographies-The Comic Book Makers
(1990), coauthored with his son, Jim Simon, and Joe Simon- My Life
in Comics (2011)- essential reading for any historian of comic book
history and culture.
Jim Steranko rocked the comic book world in the late 1960s with a
revolutionary approach to design and narrative, influenced by the
contemporary worlds of both commercial and fine art. Ster-anko
produced very little comics work after the 1970s, but his
illus-trations would grace the covers of numerous science fiction
and fantasy novels, as well as film posters and record album
sleeves. He has also produced character designs for a number of
filmmakers, including George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Francis
Ford Cop-pola. His two- volume History of Comics was one of the
first modern works of comics scholarship, and his film industry
magazine Prevue enjoyed an impressive twenty- five- year run.
Steranko was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame in 2006.
John Romita Sr. was born in Brooklyn in 1930 and attended
Manhattan's School of Industrial Art before entering the comic book
industry in 1949. He drew many comics for Marvel (then known as
Timely or Atlas) during the early 1950s before moving to DC Comics
in 1958, where he established a reputation as a master of romance
comics. In 1965 he returned to Marvel, inking Don Heck's pencils on
an issue of the Avengers. After a short stint pen-ciling Daredevil,
Romita Sr. was tapped by Stan Lee to take over The Amazing
Spider-Man when original artist Steve Ditko left the book. Romita
Sr. brought a new emotional warmth to the series, while his slick,
clean craftsmanship took the title to even greater commercial
heights. His renditions of the title character, as well as
supporting cast members such as Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Wat-son,
were considered definitive by a generation of fans. In the 1970s,
Stan Lee appointed Romita Sr. as art director for the company;
while in this position, he helped design numerous characters
(in-cluding the Punisher, Wolverine, and Luke Cage). He was
inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame in 2002.
Gene Luen Yang is a MacArthur "genius," the fifth National
Ambassador for Young People's Literature, and the author of the
half-million-copy New York Times-bestselling graphic novel and
National Book Award Finalist American Born Chinese. He lives in San
Jose, California.
Ben Saunders is a professor of English at the University of
Ore-gon. He is the author of Desiring Donne- Poetry, Sexuality,
Inter-pretation and Do the Gods Wear Capes?- Spirituality, Fantasy,
and Superheroes, as well as numerous critical essays on subjects
ranging from the writings of Shakespeare to the recordings of
Little Richard. He has also curated several museum exhibitions of
comics art, in-cluding the record-breaking multimedia touring show
Marvel- Uni-verse of Super Heroes-a retrospective exploring the
artistic and cultural impact of Marvel Comics from 1939 to the
present.
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