Jack Kirby would have been 104 years old today. If you go by influence and impact, he's still with us.
I've written so much about Jack over the years that I'm not sure I have anything to say that I haven't said many times before. If you haven't watched the video I made last year with my ex-partner Steve Sherman — now, sadly, the late Steve Sherman — there's plenty in there of both of us discussing this man we were privileged to know. With each passing year, I realize that privilege was greater than I thought.
Someone a few months ago wrote me — I can't find the e-mail right now — to ask me to name three things that I wish people all knew about Jack. The first one that comes to mind is this: If you think of Jack only as an artist, you're missing most of what he was. The man was a thinker, a writer, a philosopher, a visionary, a dreamer and many other nouns in that category. The amazing thing about him was not that he could put something down on paper. It was that he saw it in his head in the first place.
Secondly, he was a thoroughly decent human being. I knew him to sometimes be confused or mistaken but never to be devious. A friend of mine told me that one of the things that impressed him when he watched that conversation I recorded with Steve was when we said that we never had a formal financial arrangement with Jack. He just gave us money whenever he felt it was appropriate — and sometimes when we didn't think it was or that we should be paying him — and we never felt cheated. My friend said, "I've never had anyone in my life I would trust to work that way" and I'm not sure I've had anyone else. But there was no one else quite like Jack.
And lastly…well, I can think of a few dozen things that could be in the third slot but I guess I'll pick that there was a timeless sense about Jack. I not only learned from him when I was around him, I'm still learning from him. And I still see his creativity and innovations and influence everywhere I look. I have lost many people I cared about in my life and I think about most of those people in the past tense. I mostly think of Jack in the present.