Someone who signed their message "Comicspies" wrote to ask me…
In a 1974 radio interview with Jack Kirby, Jerry Connelly asked Jack what his influences were and he responded: "The masters in comics, certainly, are the ones in the newspaper field: Milton Caniff with Terry and the Pirates and Alex Raymond, who did Flash Gordon. There were the fellows who did the funny strips, too. They all influenced me because their product had such appeal."
Who were Jack's favorite artists who specialized either specialized in humor (like Walt Kelly) or both adventure and humor storytelling (like Segar)?
Elzie Segar — who for anyone reading this who doesn't know, did the Thimble Theater newspaper strip which was later renamed in honor of its main character, Popeye the Sailor — was the one Jack mentioned most often. He loved Al Capp's work, though not the man himself. He loved Billy DeBeck's Barney Google and pretty much anyone who was on the funnies page back in the thirties. I don't recall him ever mentioning Walt Kelly or anyone who came along in the forties or after except Charles Schulz. He did like a number of guys in comic books who combined humor and adventure like Jack Cole or Dick Briefer. (Briefer was a friend and he worked with Jack on some early comics.)
One cartoonist Jack sometimes named as an inspiration was Will Gould — no relation to Chester Gould, who did Dick Tracy. Will, who I knew through a brief telephone-only friendship, did funny strips in the thirties along with a hard-boiled detective comic strip called Red Barry. I think Jack favored Red Barry over the humor work but he admired the guy in both genres. Will was very flattered when I told him Kirby was a fan of the work he'd done long, long ago.
That's all that comes to mind. I wish I could give you more names but by the time I worked with him, Jack rarely looked at what other contemporary artists were doing. He respected anyone who created anything that was popular, especially if it was highly original…but I don't think he paid much attention to newspaper strips in the seventies…or even to most comic books unless there was a specific reason for him to read one of them.
