Jack Kirby-Artist research

Jack Kirby (Artist Research)

An American artist, Jack Kirby was born August 28 1917 in New York named Jacob Kurtzbuerg. Sadly he died February 6^th 1994 aged 76. He was the original illustrator of some of the most famous comic book super heros in the world! For instance Captain America, the fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor and X men!  Kirby collected many awards throughout his life time, Best pencil artist (1967) Alley Award also 1967) and Special Achievement by an individual (1971) He was married to Roy Goldstein in  1942, who was a ‘inker’ for DC comics! 1942. They had four children, and remained married until his death from heart failure in 1994. The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor. Kirby wasn’t raised with a rich family, in fact some would argue he was quite poor. He learnt to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips in the paper as a child. He finally entered the comic industry in the 1930s’s where he drew many comics under different names, Jack Curtiss being one, but soon after he decided to settle on Jack Kirby. It was in the 1940s when he and his writer-editor Joe Simon created the super hero comic Captain America for Timely Comics  (the predecessor of Marvel Comics). This comic was highly successful and so Simon and Kirby created a brilliant team and together created many amazing characters the captured the imagination of those all over the world and even worked with National Comics, the company that later became the famous DC comics. Kirby served in World War 2, but once the war was over he returned to the comic industry and started working on a variety of genres. He and Simon had created a new refreshed type of comic that was to capture not only younger boys but now younger females attention to the world of comics. They created the first romance comic. He and Simon did launch their own comic company, however it was short lived and He found himself back at Timely Comics again. Then in the 1960 he and his new Writer-editor Stan Lee co-created Marvels major characters. Kirby felt he was being treated unfairly at Marvel comics even thoughthey were getting high sales and amazing reviews, he left the company in 1970..Only to join their rival DC.  At DC Kirby created his Fourth World Saga, that was spread across many comic title. The series was not successful and was unfortunately cancelled. In his later years, some claimed that he was the ‘William Blake of comics’ and he began receiving recognition in the mainstream press for his accomplishments.