Happy Birthday to The King

A simple post. i won't bother typing out my interactions with Jack Kirby, all one of them as it was, frankly, completely unremarkable in the grand scheme of his life. (My favorite personal Kirby story can be found here, actually.) It was, however, remarkable in mine only for the chance to actually talk with the grand man of comics for a while. No great anecdotes were shared I'm afraid. I knew Jack, like most, through his art.

Jack was one of the great creative forces of American culture in the 20th Century. It simply took much much longer for anyone to realize it given the poor status of comics socially. But millions of people read his books. Millions. And then another generation came and read them and passed them around... and then another generation... From 1939 in the 1980's we had a creative genius who struggled to make ends meet and never reap the rewards of his fertile imagination.

Think about that. The Beatles changed culture with their music world wide and they were recording for six years. Six years. Jack was active for well over 40 years. Astonishing.

Reproduced here is one of my favorite Kirby panels of all time, from Fantastic Four #55 just to say, well, thanks Jack. You were one of a kind.