Light research on Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby was born in August 1917 and died in February 1944.

He was born and raised in New York under the name Jacob Kurtzberg.

He initially taught himself to draw from a young age by tracing and copying figures he saw in comic strips and newspaper cartoons, citing examples such as Milton Caniff, Hal Foster, and Alex Raymond, among his influences later in life.

He began his career during the early years of the comic industry in the 1930s, where he drew various comic books features. It was at this time he used a number of different pen names, before finally sticking to using “Jack Kirby.”

After starting at the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate, he moved to Fleishers Animation Studio in the late 1930s, before then moving to Fox Feature Syndicate by  January 1940.

There, he met another cartoonist and editor called Joe Simon and the two became close friends. The next year, the two left to work at Timely Comics (later to become Marvel Comics) where they created Captain America which would prove to be Kirby‘s breakthrough series. The two also created the Romance Comics genre.

Following this, the United States entered WWII, so Kirby and Simon drafted up a years worth of comics to fill in for the gap, whilst they were drafted into the army as soldiers.

Through the 1950s to1980s, he worked for both DC and Marvel comics. Post 1980, he then entered the fields of animation concept art and independent comics in the 1980s.