Jack Kirby 101

As surely as Elvis Presley is the King Of Rock ’N’ Roll and Michael Jackson is the King Of Pop, Jack Kirby is the King Of Comics. Not that he ever aspired to such lofty heights. In fact, the notion that comics could be anything noble was an alien idea when the late Kirby (who would have turned 96 on August 28) broke into the nascent medium in the ’30s, brimming with energy and imagination. Any normal artist would have had those qualities beaten out of him by the grueling, low-paying, glory-free grind of the industry back then. Instead, Kirby flourished. Prolific and profoundly innovate, he fought through setbacks, market upheavals, and an egregious dearth of creators’ rights, yet emerged by the end of the century as the undisputed figurehead of a medium that had made billions off his work—and continues to do so with the successful franchising of his most popular co-creations: The Avengers, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, and the character that put Kirby on the map, Captain America.