Jack

Each year on this day, I write something about Jack Kirby, who was one of the most important people in my life. He was one of the most important people in a lot of lives.

I looked back on some of those essays to figure out what I might say this year that I hadn't said before and I realized that for a decade or more now, I've been writing pretty much the same thing about Jack each year on his birthday. Here's the piece I posted here ten years ago today. Everything is the same except (a) I miss him ten years more, (b) he's even more famous and beloved now and (c) He would have been 101 years old today. Oh, and this hasn't changed: He would still have been coming up with fresher and newer ideas than comic book creators a fourth of his age.

Here's a photo I took of Jack Kirby at some early San Diego Con (I think) back in the days before it was even called Comic-Con International. I seem to have a lot of photos of Jack in one of his two natural habitats, the other being "seated at his drawing table." This one is "surrounded by admirers," which he always was at any gathering of folks who knew anything about comic books.

At cons today, I meet a lot of people who feel a genuine sense of loss that they never got to meet Jack…never got to shake the hand that drew some of their favorite comics, never got to tell him that they were their favorite comics. When fans first started telling me this a few years ago, I was a little startled. It was like, "How could you not meet Jack Kirby?" He was always so accessible, so approachable. For a couple of decades, all you had to do was show up at a San Diego Con (or one of many others he attended) and be willing to wait in line for twenty minutes. Or if you had his phone number — and everyone did — you could call up, talk to him and maybe even get an invite to drop by the house for coffee.

And then I remind myself: Jack died in '94. Since then, an awful lot of humans have discovered his work, which remains increasingly in print. There's something about it that grabs readers in a way that few comics can. He drew stories that radiate, as Jack himself did, a certain energy and excitement. Larry Lieber, who wrote scripts for Jack at one point, has said, "If Jack drew a rock, it was fascinating. It was like the rocks had personality." And as someone else (I think it was me) pointed out after Larry said that, at one point, Jack drew a whole pile of personality-filled rocks which they called The Thing and it was one of his most personal, enduring characters.

Jack would have been 91 years old today. Of all the personal, enduring characters he was involved with, the most personal and enduring is turning out to be Jack.