What was the greatest comic book artist's greatest legacy?
By Alex Ness
With a number of big Jack Kirby books coming out, I thought it would be a good time to ask one question: What do you believe to be Jack Kirby's greatest legacy in comic books?
MIKE BARON, writer
His greatest contribution was his groundbreaking style which broke through the panel borders, the page borders, and the atmosphere to depict the entire universe. No one was better at depicting majesty.
KURT BUSIEK, writer
I don't think any one project is Kirby's legacy -- I think his astonishing creativity, his pantheon of characters and stories, over the years, overshadow any one book. The Marvel Universe is built on Kirby. The DC Universe has Kirby running all through it. And his other work is stuff publishers compete to collect. It's an avalanche of legacy, his whole career.
MARK EVANIER, writer
Jack's greatest legacy in comic books is the fact that there are comic books.
JOE GENTILE, publisher, writer
Um... Say what you want about his style, or whether you liked his early stuff or his later stuff, or who actually did what "back in the day"...but, for straight up imagination and wicked storytelling skills...Kirby threw down the gauntlet.
MIKE GOLD editor
Being Jack Kirby.
MIKE GRELL, artist, writer
Captain America. Not discounting Joe Simon's contribution to this great comic book legend, but Jack brought a new style of visual storytelling that broke the so-called "rules" (not that cartoonists ever follow them anyway) with dynamic page and panel layouts, bold action poses and cinematic visual technique.
Oh, and "Kirby dots."
Here's a brief anecdote that may be of interest to Kirby fans. I was attending the San Diego Comicon and got into the hotel elevator with Jack and Roz Kirby. The elevator stopped to pick up another passenger, a 50-something businessman in a three-piece suit, who spotted my Comicon name tag and asked if I did a lot of business at trade shows. I said, "yes, but mostly I come here for a chance to ride in an elevator with Jack Kirby, the guy who created Captain America."
The guy's jaw just dropped and it was like he was instantly transformed into a kid again. He said Captain America had been his favorite comic when he was a boy during WWII, and here he was face-to-face with the guy who brought him to life.
When I got off the elevator he was still gushing over Jack. Roz caught my eye and smiled. I winked back, knowing that this was an elevator ride into the guy's childhood and one he'd never forget.
For that guy, Jack's greatest contribution was a memory.
PAUL GULACY, artist
Jack Kirby was the grand architect. He designed the essential plan and the rest of us just keep adding on.
ERIK LARSEN, writer, artist
There isn't one.
Jack's contributions were bigger than that. Without Jack Kirby there might not be any comics.
MICHAEL MAY, writer
Is "Marvel Comics" an acceptable answer? The company wouldn't exist without him. If you're looking for a specific comic, I'll go with *Fantastic Four*, because it blazed the trail that the rest of Marvel followed.
STEVE RUDE, artist, writer
Kirby's greatest legacy is probably 3 things. 1. His vast productivity. 2. His longevity. 3. He did the job of drawing comics more exciting than anyone else.
From the part of the brain that conceives and creates, Jack Kirby couldn't think in an average way if he wanted to. He came into this world with an amplified way of seeing everything, and used each new day at the board as a possibility to naturally ascend to some not-yet conceived territory in comic book art. Kirby took the "real" anatomy that everyone else in comics used, and transformed it into something "hyper-realistic" so that it not only looked right to Jack, but felt right.
Space stopped being a couple planets with stars. When a Kirby character struck a bad guy, it was treated like a blinding light source coming from the impact area. His way of depicting machines, space ships, creatures and characters--anything he drew and everything he conceived, foreign in "how to achieve it" to anyone but Jack himself. To one of Kirby's mind, I don't believe he could actually see it any other way, which may be a true way to define "genius".
Comics are mostly visual creations. At that, Jack Kirby was the very best.
BARBARA SCHULZ, artist
Hmm, well Stan might have been able to do it with someone other than Jack...but if Jack hadn't done (his work at) Marvel, would we have had New Gods? Best, I like New Gods.
FRED VAN LENTE, writer
I am a huge Kirby fan, and I'd have to say his biggest ongoing legacy would be his introduction of a fully unified cosmology and mythology into both the Marvel and DC universes, beginning in Thor, obviously, but continuing through the Fourth World and Eternals. It really elevated the super hero genre above the level of beating-up-bank-robbers into much larger subjects such as living with rage, the nature of good and evil, oppression versus freedom, and many other topics that -- while I am not one who agrees that super hero stories are a kind of mythology -- certainly employed the symbolism and grandeur of mythology to address both timeless and contemporary concerns.
MARK WAID, writer
I'd say the entire middle of his Fantastic Four run--not so much for the work itself as for the constant reminder, month after month, that super hero comics are about Big Ideas.
ALEX NESS, writer
I consider the most important legacy of Jack Kirby to be the prolific amount of great characters to come from his pencil. A small sampling of his creativity: Guardian, Captain America, Silver Surfer, Galactus, Black Panther, The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Thor, The New Gods, The Forever People, Challengers of the Unknown all sprung up from his pencil.
JACK “THE KING” KIRBY
Birth name: Jacob Kurtzberg
Born: 08/28/1917 New York City, New York
Died: 02/06/1994 Thousand Oaks, California
Expertise: Penciler, Inker, Writer, Editor
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