Today marks fifteen years since the great comic book creator Jack Kirby passed away, a recognition that saddens me for all the obvious reasons. One, perhaps not so obvious, is that if he was still with us, he'd be even more famous and honored and rewarded than he was in his lifetime. It's only in the last decade or so that the works of folks like Jack and Stan Lee and Steve Ditko have been recognized as important (and lucrative) contributions to mainstream popular culture. Lee, I'm happy to see, is being showered with tributes and deals. Ditko is still with us but for his own reasons, chooses to avoid most of that. Kirby would have reveled in it.
I have written so much about Jack over the years that I'd be repeating myself to discuss his influence on so many of us. So I thought I'd just share the above photo with you. It was taken in Jack's studio in 1970 by my then-partner Steve Sherman…and yes, that's me in the Red Skull mask. There is or was (I think they're still in business) a company called Don Post Studios founded by a gent named, oddly enough, Don Post. If you ever need a great-looking rubber mask of a monster or other odd creature, look for the Don Post label.
Anyway, we took one of Mr. Post's plain, vanilla skull masks and a can of red spray paint and — voila! — we had a mask of Captain America's arch-enemy. Jack loved it and acted like we'd somehow figured out how to invent nuclear fission or something. It always felt good to get Jack's approval and an awful lot of people are still trying for it, one way or another…