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Feb 15, 2024 · Immigrant Roots: Jack Kirby, born on August 28, 1917, in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, was the son of Austrian-Jewish immigrants. Benjamin Kurtzberg, Jack’s father, had immigrated to the United States in 1907, seeking new opportunities and a better life. The Lower East Side, a melting pot of cultures and ...
Childhood & Early Life. Jack Kirby was born on August 28, 1917, in the Lower East Side (LES) neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, to Rose (Burnstein) and Benjamin Kurtzberg. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Austria. His father worked at a garment factory. Since childhood, Jack had a liking for drawing.
- Jack Kirby’s Childhood in The Lower East Side Inspired Many of His characters.
- Jack Kirby Wrote Under A Variety of Pseudonyms For Different genres.
- Jack Kirby Helped to Popularize Golden-Age Romance Comics.
- Jack Kirby Put A Lot of Himself Into The Thing from The Fantastic Four.
- The “Kirby Krackle” Became One of Jack Kirby's Signature Artistic Elements.
- Jack Kirby Originally Had A Different Name in Mind For Black Panther.
- There Was A Short-Lived “Kirbyverse” Based on Original Jack Kirby characters.
- Jack Kirby’s Relationship with Marvel Turned Contentious
- Some of Jack Kirby’s Previously Unpublished Drawings Were Released posthumously.
Kirby grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the turf of the notorious gangster Charles “Lucky” Luciano, also known as the father of modern organized crime in the United States. Witnessing fights amongst his peers and friends, and even getting involved in some brawls himself, Kirby’s time on the streets later seeped into many of his comics. He wen...
Although Kirby is best known for his superhero comics, he also wrote across a variety of genres under a number of different names. These pseudonyms included Fred Sande (Western, such as Wilton of the West), Ted Grey (humor, such as Abdul Jones), and Curt Davis (science fiction, such as The Diary of Dr. Hayward).
Before he helped jumpstart the Marvel Universe, Jack Kirby was a prolific romance comic artist in the '40s and '50s, having co-created series like Young Love and Young Romance, which is regarded as one of the first books in the genre. These titles were overwhelmingly popular at the time, even more so than superhero books, and would routinely sell m...
When creating the Thing from The Fantastic Four, Jack Kirby drew upon many of his own experiences and mannerisms. For one, they both grew up Jewish on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Kirby also talked about how he saw the Thing as a certain reflection of himself on the page, embodying Grimm’s gruff-but-lovable spirit. “If you’ll notice the way the Thi...
In addition to taking advantage of double-page spreads and eye-popping splash pages, Kirby was known for being an innovator of many illustration techniques, including the use of collages and incredibly complex technical sci-fi drawings. However, one of his most unique artistic flourishes was the “Kirby Krackle” (or “Kirby Dots”), a stylistic conven...
Within the landscape of mid-century comics consisting primarily of white characters, Kirby championed more diverse comics with a robust representation of various races. To this end, Kirby sketched a new character named Coal Tiger, a Black superhero decked out in a colorful costume. The concept was reworked before it was ever published and eventuall...
Published between 1993 and 1994, the “Kirbyverse” was a comics line released by Topps Comics that consisted of drafts of stories and previously unpublished characters that were never fully realized by Kirby. While the issues themselves used Kirby's art on some covers, the interior art was mostly done by a number of comic veterans like Spider-Man co...
While Jack Kirby created some of the world's most popular comic characters, it wasn't the financial windfall you'd assume, due to Marvel's claims that all of his work was “for hire” and thus he did not have the right to terminate the company's copyrights. Kirby worked for decades without royalties, health insurance, or possession of his original ar...
In 2006, Marvel published Jack Kirby's Galactic Bounty Hunters, a six-issue miniseries based on one of Kirby’s unfinished stories and concepts. Kirby’s daughter, Lisa Kirby, was co-writer with Steve Robertson, while Mike Thibodeaux provided the art. The coversto most of the issues were all unpublished Jack Kirby originals. In 2008, Marvel also publ...
- Olivia Popp
In 1917, Kirby was born under the name "Jacob Kurtzberg" on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. He was a son of garment factory worker Benjamin Kurtzberg and his wife Rose Bernstein. Both his parents were Austrian-Jewish immigrants. He developed an interest in drawing at an early age.
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- Thousand Oaks, California, USA
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Jack produced some of his finest war comics work in Our Fighting Forces, drawing on his personal war experiences for the Losers stories. In addition, Kirby launched the first of National’s black-and-white comic magazines, Spirit World and In The Days Of The Mob, and had a one-issue reunion with Joe Simon on Sandman.
Jack Kirby [1] (born Jacob Kurtzberg; August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994) was an American comic book artist, widely regarded as one of the medium's major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. He grew up in New York City and learned to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons.
Jack Kirby was born on August 28, 1917, in the Lower East Side (LES) neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, to Rose (Burnstein) and Benjamin Kurtzberg. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Austria. His father worked at a garment factory. Since childhood, Jack had a liking for drawing.
