Kirby Creations

I don't like to argue with people about what Jack Kirby did or did not create when he was at Marvel Comics. So I lay it on the line:

Jack Kirby created the entire original cast and atmosphere of what we now call "the Marvel Universe" of the Silver Age of comics. He created Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, the Avengers, Ant Man, the X-Men, and all of the associated characters that went along with those creations. He created Galactus, the Silver Surfer, Dr. Doom, Loki, the Watcher, the Yancey Street Gang, Wyatt Wingfoot, the Black Panther, the Juggernaut, etc. and etc. forever after.

The only things at Marvel that he did not create were Spider-Man and Dr. Strange and the various characters that Steve Ditko concocted to appear with those creations.

There was no "co-creator". Jack Kirby did his job, and Steve Ditko did his own. No one helped them, with the possible exception of the inkers who may have delineated their pencil work. And of course they had an editor. Their editor did not create the comics that Jack Kirby plotted, wrote, laid out, and penciled. Jack Kirby created the characters. An editor fiddled with the dialog. But that editor did not create the books. He was a good editor, but that's all he was.

Did Ernest Hemingway's editor "create" THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA? Hell, no. Did Jack Kerouac's editor create ON THE ROAD? Fuck, no. Did Edgar Rice Burroughs' editor create TARZAN? No, no, no, and no.

I am sick to freaking death of idiots defending a fifty-year-old lie.

STRANGE TALES #69.

 And so, since I haven't posted any bits of my comic collection in a while, I figured I'd show a couple of images. These are both from my pre-hero Marvel collection. This particular book is STRANGE TALES #69, which appeared in 1959, two years before Jack Kirby jump-started Marvel's sagging fortunes by creating the titles and characters I mentioned in the second paragraph of this brief essay. Both Kirby and Ditko would, from time to time, come up with physical archetypes that they would refer to in later works; they both would, in a way, mine those physical types for material. Everyone knows about the pre-hero Marvel comic wherein Ditko created precursors to Aunt May and Uncle Ben, the tragic foster parents of Peter (Spider-Man) Parker.

In this issue of Strange Tales, I was struck by the physical characteristics of the featured person who was so similar to someone Kirby later created for one of his best titles: THE X-MEN. And so, it could be said that Kirby first saw here, in this minor story, the face and figure that we would all one day know as Professor Charles Xavier, the leader of the X-Men.

Yep. Looks for all the world like the character we would later know as Prof. Xavier.