Roz Kirby
by Mark Evanier
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 1/9/98
Comics Buyer's Guide
In 1940, something monumental happened to the American comic book. Jack Kirby paired off with Joe Simon to form the industry's preeminent creative team. For a decade and a half thereafter, the best and most innovative comics usually came from the Simon and Kirby studio. It wasn't so much that their comics were well-drawn or well-written, though they always were. It was that the work was fresh and alive and ground-breaking and different and daring, always marking a trail that others might follow.
Simon and Kirby were a team until around 1958, give or take an epic, at which point they went their separate ways. Jack's took him to a new collaboration. Thereafter, the best and most innovative comics usually came from the team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby — work that was fresh and alive and ground-breaking, etc., marking that trail for others to heed.
Fans have been known to argue, long and loud, as to which was the better collaborator for Kirby: Simon or Lee? It's not the kind of question that can ever have an answer except to say None of the Above. With all due respect to Joe and Stan, one of them is in second-place and one is in third. Jack Kirby's best partner was Roz Kirby.
For more than fifty years, she was his constant companion and source of inspiration — a fully-vested participant in everything he wrote, everything he drew, everything he did. She didn't come up with story ideas and she didn't move the pencil. Still, her influence was there on every page, in every panel, in every masterpiece. It wasn't so much that she created the work as that she made it possible, even desirable, for Jack to get to the drawing board each day.
Rosalind Goldstein was born in Brooklyn on September 25, 1922. Even though she was a sickly child, afflicted with asthma from age eight on, she did what she could to aid the family income. Her father was a tailor and her mother was a dressmaker. At an early age, she was taught to sew and would often work all night to assist her mother. Even with everyone working though, the Goldstein family usually struggled to make the rent and sometimes had to up and move when unable to pay it. After Roz graduated high school, she secured a job doing lingerie design, inking in lace patterns on sketches.
In the Summer of 1940, the Goldsteins moved into a second-story apartment and became acquainted with the Kurtzberg family, who lived on the ground floor. One of the Kurtzbergs' son, Jack, was five years older than she was, and already supplementing the family income by drawing comic books.
"The first time I saw him, he was in the street, playing stickball with his friends," she once recalled. "Later, he came over and started talking to me and almost the first thing he said was, 'Would you like to see my etchings?' I didn't know what the word 'etchings' meant so he explained, 'my drawings.' He wanted to take me into his bedroom and I thought, 'Why not? His parents are in the next room, my parents are in the next room, what could happen?'
"So he takes me to his bedroom and — can you believe it? — he really did have etchings in there. He showed me all these drawings, including pages he was drawing of Captain America. He showed me the first comic books I had ever seen." There was an instant attraction between the two of them, Roz later recalling, "I started wondering what he'd look like in swim trunks. He was quite a catch. The neighbors had five daughters and every single one of them was after him."
Jack's devotion to Rosalind was immediate and total: He knew instantly he'd found his lifetime companion. He also knew his occupation could be an obstacle. Roz remembers, "My parents thought, 'He's an artist. He'll never be able to make a living.' Jack was actually doing pretty well then."
The day after the showing of his "etchings," Jack was drawing faster than ever and telling Simon that he needed a better, stable income. Even long after the Goldsteins had accepted his ability to put food on the table by drawing funnybooks, Jack never took lightly, that need to bring home a paycheck.
They started dating. "It was the cheapest date in the world because Roz lived upstairs," Jack recalled. "I'd go up and have dinner with her parents, or she'd come down and have dinner with mine, then we'd go out to a movie together." Jack would sometimes see a movie he liked in the afternoon, sit through it twice, then take Roz to see it in the evening so he could study it further.
One date they would never forget was December 7, 1941. Jack recounted, "We went to a show at the Roxy and when we came out, people were crowding around on the sidewalk, talking and looking worried. It turned out the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and we were going to war. That's how we heard. It was a moment I'll never forget."
A few months later, on her eighteenth birthday, they became engaged and, on May 23, 1942, Jacob Kurtzberg and Rosalind Goldstein were married. They rented an apartment in Manhattan Beach for $53 a month. "It was a huge apartment," Roz recalled. "I think he was still trying to impress my folks."
A few weeks later, Jack made another major change in his life. For over two years, he had been doing most of his work under the name Jack Kirby, and he decided to adopt it legally. Together, they would bring forth and raise four children.
Roz continued to work in the lingerie business for a time, but she eventually gave it up to devote her full energies to his career. She counseled, she drove, she cared for him. Once in a while, she even picked up a pen and, hearkening back to her days in undergarment design, she would assist with a little inking.
Mostly though, she provided moral support. When all else was going wrong in the comic book industry — a not uncommon occurrence — Jack knew he had one person he could always turn to for sound advice and pragmatism. Jack was, after all, a visionary…and every visionary needs someone standing by with a reality check.
She saw Jack through his World War II years, and some equally tumultuous times in comics. She was there when he and Joe Simon did Sandman, Newsboy Legion, The Boy Commandos, Stuntman, Boy's Ranch, Young Romance, Black Magic, Bullseye and Fighting American.
She was there when Jack did Sky Masters and Challengers of the Unknown and Green Arrow, and when he returned to Marvel and drew "Googam, Son of Goom" and other monster/masterpieces. And she was there when he and Stan Lee brought forth the Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, X-Men, The Avengers, Sgt. Fury, the Silver Surfer and countless others.
When Jack created his "Fourth World" for DC, Roz was a source of constant inspiration (and the basis of a couple of characters), and she was there when he did Kamandi and the Demon, and when he went back to Marvel yet again and did The Eternals and Devil Dinosaur. When he segued over to animation, and when he conceived Captain Victory and his other twilight creations, Roz was standing by him, helping him, encouraging him, guarding him.
When Jack accepted his endless stream of honors and awards, Roz was by his side. She accompanied him to every convention and sat quietly (most of the time) as Jack was mobbed by admirers.
Jack passed away in 1994 — the most devastating moment in the life of Rosalind Goldstein Kirby. Bravely, she assumed her role defending and representing the Kirby name and his creative legacy. She welcomed Kirby fans into her home and traveled to conventions, but her friends and family could sense her health fading with each passing month. In September of this year, they gathered to toast her 75th birthday. But three months later — on December 22 — she passed away quietly in her sleep.
On December 26th, her friends and family gathered again, this time in the Chapel of the Oaks at the Valley Oaks Memorial Park in Westlake Village. Among those present from the comic book world were Mike Royer, Stan Lee, Mike Thibodeaux, Steve Sherman, Alfredo Alcala, Buzz Dixon, Sergio Aragonés, Paul Smith, Len Wein and Zeke Zekley. I had a fistful of regrets to pass on from those who could not rearrange their holiday plans in order to attend, including Steve Rude, Marv Wolfman, Dave Stevens and Scott Shaw.
There was a strong sense of family in the hall, and of a shared loss. But most of all, there was a strong sense of Roz — and Jack, as well — and when it was over, no one wanted to leave. I wish you could have been there.
Since you couldn't, I'll close by printing the speech I gave. It went like this…
One Tuesday in July of 1969, I drove down to Irvine, California to meet my favorite comic book artist. I thought I'd meet him and maybe get an autograph and an interview for my fanzine but it didn't work out that way. When I left, I had no autograph and no interview, but I did have two new people in my life…two people who would come to be important to me in ways I cannot fully articulate, even now, even to myself.
I was not alone in this experience. Millions of us loved the comic books that came out of the Kirby house. Most of us who were privileged to visit there instantly came to love the man who made them happen, and the woman who made them possible.
We loved Jack because of his brilliant imagination and his outstanding decency and sense of humanity. And we loved Roz because…well, first of all, because she loved Jack. She dressed him and fed him and drove him and cared for him. And often, just this side of dawn, she'd go into his studio and tell him to, for God's sake, put down the pencil and come to bed.
You rarely see two people who so totally and truly belonged together, each putting themselves second so the other could be first. Every time we went to a restaurant, Jack would look at the menu and announce what he was going to order. And then Roz would tell him what he should eat and he would change his order…because he knew (a) that she was always right and (b) that she had only his best interests at heart.
You couldn't help but appreciate the synchronicity: Jack sitting there 'til all hours, cobbling up tales of great champions, protecting the world from total annihilation…and Roz sitting there in the next room, protecting Jack. Compared to her, the super-heroes had it easy — because Jack, God love him, needed a lot of protecting.
We never saw her go off-duty, never saw her flinch. One time at a convention in the 80's, a stooge for one of the comic companies started yelling at Jack, denouncing him for a stand which struck all of us as a simple matter of independence and integrity. Before any of us could rush to Jack's defense…before Jack himself could even raise his voice, there was Roz, telling off the corporate goon better than any of us could. The guy is still probably trembling…because nothing scared her when her life partner was threatened, and Jack was the same way about her.
When I think of her today, I think of her courage and I think of her compassion. I think of how proud she was of her family…Susan, Barbara, Lisa and Neal, and all the grandchildren and in-laws and nieces and nephews and everyone.
And then there was that extended family…all of us writers and artists and comic fans who thought of Jack and Roz as surrogate aunt and uncle. There's no way to estimate the number of talented folks who received valuable encouragement and inspiration from them both. Since word spread that we had lost her, they've been calling to commiserate. One author was practically kicking himself that he hadn't sent yet sent her his new book. It may well be a huge hit but something will always be missing for him: He didn't get to show it to Roz and get her approval.
It was never dull around them. I remember Jack telling the story of sitting there in his studio one day when Roz was coming home from the store. Her foot slipped on the brake and she plowed through the back of the garage, right into Jack's workspace. No one was hurt and Jack, in a strange way, enjoyed the shock of it all. He said to me, "I'm sitting there drawing and I hear a noise…and suddenly, here's Roz comin' right through the wall." Then he paused and added, "You know, we've been married half a century and she's still finding ways to surprise me."
In an equally strange way, I think Jack would have liked the fact that she survived him a few years. Not that anyone wished that loss on her but she did deserve that brief time in the spotlight. The day before Jack's funeral, she told me she was worried that all the people who called and came to the house would drift away…because really, they only cared about Jack.
That never happened. They called and they came, to the point where she sometimes announced, tongue-in-cheek, she was sick of all the attention. At the San Diego Comic Convention, they stood and cheered her, because they knew that Jack Kirby was a two-person operation.
Today, we're all sad to lose her. But we're glad he's got her back.