My friend/employer Jack Kirby created or co-created dozens of classic comic book characters, as well as a whole approach to comic art that has extended well beyond the confines of the super-hero comic book. I don't know if it surprises you that his influence has been so vast, but it didn't surprise Jack. With more modesty than seemed humanly possible, he was quietly certain that what he did in his career — especially in the Marvel Comics of the sixties and his early-seventies work for DC — would bleed into other media, especially film. At the time of his death in 1994, he had seen this happen often enough to know that his prediction was coming true, and that it would only grow and continue.
It wasn't just that Jack knew that major feature films would be made of The Fantastic Four, The X-Men and other comic books he helped launch. He knew that his dynamic style of storytelling would spread beyond the properties on which he'd worked. He would therefore be utterly unamazed to read some of the reviews currently being written of The Matrix Reloaded. I just did a very simple search and found these quotes online, all from folks writing about that film…
…what are these images but elaborate homages to the balletic slugfests, property-damage free-for-alls and urban apocalypses created by Jack Kirby, Gil Kane and other Marvel Comics artists? [Full review]
Comic book fans were quick to notice the influence of "Captain America" illustrator Jack Kirby in several action sequences. [Full review]
Cybernerds, proliferating like the film's men-in-black computer Agents, studied the Wachowskis' host of referents — to the Bible and Buddha, to novelist William Gibson (Neuromancer) and comic-book artist Jack Kirby (Captain America), to cybernetics and higher mathematics… [Full review]
And there are others. In fact, based on my admittedly-inexhaustive search, I'd say Jack's getting mentioned more often in reviews of The Matrix Reloaded than he is in pieces about the new X-Men movie. I'm pleased to see this. But I still hope that Marvel doesn't forget him in the credits and publicity materials for the films based on comics he co-created.