by Mark Evanier
DC Comics
THROUGHOUT MOST OF ’42 and into ’43—with the conflict front, center, and everywhere—Joe and Jack had three obligations in need of balancing: to their country, which needed young men to serve; to their loved ones, who needed more income to live on than Joe and Jack would make as military pay; and to DC Comics, which needed Simon-Kirby strips to print while they were away.
They knew they’d be going. It was just a matter of when.
Jack had received a draft notice, and with no small amount of guilt, secured a deferment as the sole support of his family. He and Joe began to work faster and faster, the goal being—as he’d put it—“to get enough work backlogged that I could go into the Army, kill Hitler, and get back before the readers missed us.” With several hands assisting, pages of their four strips were produced at breakneck pace.
In early ’43, Simon enlisted in the Coast Guard. He spent most of his service time at the Combat Air Corps in Washington, D. C., doing what he did best: assembling comic books, this time for the military. Kirby kept on drawing, moving for a time into the DC offices. Other artists would stand and watch in amazement at the quantity and quality of what flew off his drawing board. One, Jerry Robinson, said he’d never seen anyone draw faster . . . or better.
On Monday, June 21, Jack reported for duty and was shipped off to Camp Stewart, near Atlanta, Georgia. There, Uncle Sam made a laughable attempt to turn Kirby, a man who could barely drive without running off the road, into an auto mechanic. “My parents weren’t happy I was in the Army,” Jack once explained. “But they liked the idea of me becoming a mechanic. They’d always thought that was a more stable career choice than comics.”
The motor pool and Kirby were not made for each other, and he was soon reclassified as a rifleman. On August 17, 1944, he was shifted off to Europe and assigned to the infamous Company F of the 11th Infantry, under the command of General George S. Patton. His outfit landed at Omaha Beach in Normandy on August 23 to handle operations that remained following D-Day, some two months earlier.
SAVANNAH EVENING PRESS
Newspaper clipping
October 1, 1943
A drawing Jack sent back to Roz from Camp
Stewart, Georgia.
August 21, 1943
“The Little Woman.” A drawing Kirby did in his hospital bed in France.
November 23, 1944
Roz and Jack
A note in Roz’s handwriting says, “Just before he shipped overseas.”
1944
One of dozens of letters Jack sent back to Roz while assigned overseas. He wrote almost every day.
1944
Simon-Kirby letterhead
1947
In October, Company F joined the battle for Bastogne and engaged in weeks of heavy combat with a substantial number of casualties. Not all came from enemy fire. “The weather was brutal,” Jack recalled. “We were losing men to pneumonia and exposure.” Private Kirby, forced to sleep out in a field, was almost among them. By the time his unit was withdrawn, he was practically immobilized by frostbite in his lower extremities. They put him in a hospital in France and he listened as doctors discussed amputating one or both of his feet. More than a month later, both feet were still there and he was able to walk out on them.
In January 1945, he was reassigned to Camp Butner in North Carolina. Six months later, he was mustered out with the rank of private first class, sporting a Combat Infantry Badge, along with the European-African-Middle Eastern Theater Ribbon with a bronze battle star. He’d spent two years in uniform, during which he somehow managed to amass about twenty years’ worth of war memories. For the rest of his life, they’d be dispensed at the slightest relevance and used in stories.
But the experience was more to Kirby than a source of material and anecdotes. It changed him forever, invading not only his conversation by day but also his sleep at night. Even half a century later, he would still revisit the Big One in his dreams, often waking up alongside Roz in an icy sweat. (That was one recurring nightmare. The other, which got worse in later years, involved being out of work and unable to provide for his family.)
STUNTMAN
no. 1
April 1946
Art: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
Harvey Publications
STUNTMAN
no. 1
April 1946
Art: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
Harvey Publications
BOY EXPLORERS COMICS
no. 1
May 1946
Art: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
Harvey Publications
MY DATE
no. 1
July 1947
Art: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
Hillman Periodicals
BACK IN NEW YORK, Jack tried to pick right up where he’d left off but couldn’t. Things had changed at DC Comics. The Simon-Kirby features were losing steam—especially, since there was no more war, the one about kids at war. Worse, there was little enthusiasm for letting anyone, even Joe and Jack, be outside suppliers any longer. The editors there now wanted everything to go through them. Jack drew some stories for DC but mostly marked time, waiting for Simon to be discharged from the Coast Guard.
When that happened, they decided there was no point in taking up with DC again. Jack would keep drawing Boy Commandos while it lasted, but the Simon-Kirby team would start anew with their old buddy, the one-time Eagle Scout, Al Harvey. He was now Captain Alfred Harvey, and he and Joe had been discussing—at the Pentagon, no less—putting out some new comics through Al’s company. He had a special “in” to get supplies of paper . . . a precious commodity in postwar America.
They decided to try two. Stuntman was the first costumed hero Simon and Kirby had created since the Guardian in 1942, and their last until Captain 3-D in 1953. Boy Explorers took the kid gang idea in new, adventurous directions.
Creatively, Simon and Kirby had never been better, but the market, as Simon later put it, “just wasn’t there.” Newsstands were glutted with product, and the new books were returned in their wire bundles, unopened and unpurchased. It was one of the great heartbreaks for All Concerned.
What kids were buying then was crime comics, and Jack liked the idea of doing some. He’d seen tough guys in his neighborhood and read about tougher ones. Joe arranged for work doing gangster stories for Headline Comics, which was published by the Prize Group, and Real Clue Crime, published by Hillman. There were odd jobs for several publishers, but nothing lasting. Not until they invented a new genre: the romance comic.
It came in two steps. First, there was My Date, which was sort of a romance comic, but skewed in a humorous Archie-like direction. That title was for Hillman.
The experience emboldened them. Why couldn’t there be a more serious comic about love and dating and marriage? About boys and girls doing what boys and girls do? They took the idea to Mike Bleier and Teddy Epstein, the men who ran Prize. They were skeptical but said OK . . . if, that is, Joe and Jack were willing to gamble and take nothing up front and everything on the back end.
Joe and Jack were—but just to play it safe, they’d also start another crime book, Justice Traps the Guilty. As Jack put it, “Mike and Teddy didn’t have much faith in Young Romance”—that’s what the love comic would be called—“so they figured they’d make back on the crime book what they lost on the love book.” Happily, the crime book sold well and the romance book sold better. Young Romance was a smash, as big as Captain America was in its way, and Simon and Kirby were back. Hitmakers once again.
They set up shop, bigger and better than their prewar operation, working in partnership with Prize, aka Crestwood. The first two books were joined by Young Love, Real West Romance, and Western Love. In 1950, they added Black Magic and at the same time came up with a book for Al Harvey called Boys’ Ranch.
JUSTICE TRAPS THE GUILTY
no. 8
January 1949
Art: Jack Kirby
Crestwood Publications
&
nbsp; HEADLINE COMICS
no. 37
September 1949
Headline Publications
Kirby, for a photo cover, becomes a thug—a job, he said “had slightly more prestige in my old neighborhood than drawing comic books.” Joe Simon played the cop.
JUSTICE TRAPS THE GUILTY
no. 18
September 1950
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
HEADLINE COMICS
no. 23
March 1947
Art: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
Headline Publications
REAL CLUE CRIME STORIES
vol. 2., no. 7
September 1947
Art: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
Hillman Periodicals
YOUNG ROMANCE
no. 4
March 1948
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
YOUNG LOVE
no. 13
September 1950
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
YOUNG ROMANCE
no. 9
January 1949
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
YOUNG LOVE
no. 1
February 1949
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
YOUNG ROMANCE
no. 12
July 1949
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
BLACK MAGIC
no. 18
November 1952
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
BLACK MAGIC
no. 27
November 1953
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
BLACK MAGIC
no. 10
March 1952
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
BLACK MAGIC
no. 17
October 1952
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
BLACK MAGIC
no. 20
January 1953
Art: Jack Kirby
Headline Publications
THE STRANGE WORLD OF YOUR DREAMS
Unpublished cover intended for no. 5
March—April 1953
Art: Jack Kirby
Black Magic was a horror comic, but one of the milder ones: no bloodshed, no werewolves, no violence. Other companies, like E. C. Comics with its Vault of Horror, were getting into that. Not Joe and Jack. They’d creep their readers out with clever plots and moody art, and be just as effective. There were also heavy psychological subtexts to the material. If someone in the studio came in one morning and described a nightmare and it wasn’t Kirby flashing back to World War II, it became a story. Later, a companion title, Strange World of Your Dreams, would trample even farther on readers’ fears.
As for Boys’ Ranch, it was another “kid gang,” this time set in the old west. It was a comic with a lot of heart and a very special one from Jack’s viewpoint. All the other kid gangs had been him and his friends from the streets of New York, going off on extraordinary adventures. This one, however, was the special dream about growing up in the heartland instead of the tenements. One story in particular—“Mother Delilah” in the third issue—would be his all-time favorite of the hundreds he did with Simon.
Like all the really great comics they created for Harvey, Boys’ Ranch didn’t sell. Six issues and out. A year later, when 3-D comics were all the rage, Al Harvey would call on them to create a super hero for the process. Captain 3-D was a pretty good comic, too, at least for the one issue it lasted. “Joe and I were very fond of Al,” Kirby insisted. “We were frustrated we couldn’t seem to give him a hit. We gave him some of the best books we ever did, but they never quite caught on. None of them.”
Still, everything else they were doing was going gangbusters. The studio was busy, bursting with talent: Mort Meskin, Steve Ditko, John Prentice, Marvin Stein, Bruno Premiani, George “Inky” Roussos, Bill Draut, and others. Joe and Jack usually came up with the stories. They’d write them or give them to someone else like Jack Oleck to write. Sometimes, Kirby would draw the story; other times, just the first page. Simon drew less and less but laid out covers and splash pages—some of the best in the business, Kirby insisted.
They paid their people well and promptly. Ben Oda, who handled the lettering, would call it “The best place in town a comic artist could work.”
“Too good to last” was how Kirby phrased it. There was a crackdown coming, coming from all directions. Psychologists were claiming that comic books, especially the crime and horror ones, contributed to juvenile maladjustment. Legislators were either deeply concerned or jumping on the bandwagon of an easy issue. Parents were hearing what they wanted to hear . . . or maybe it was just that they were afraid not to listen to the doctors and the politicians.
The year 1954 was a bad time to be launching new comics, but Simon and Kirby tried. Another new creation, Fighting American, appeared from Prize. It started out as a pretty standard variation on Captain America—another guy dressed like a flag while he and a kid sidekick beat up on bad guys. With each passing issue though, Joe and Jack took it less seriously, veering off into parody. Readers didn’t seem to know if they should be laughing with it or at it . . . or at least, that was the reason Jack later gave for its failure. That and a shrinking marketplace.
BOYS’ RANCH
no. 1
October 1950
Art: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
Harvey Publications
BOYS’ RANCH
no. 2
December 1950
Art: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
Harvey Publications
BULLSEYE
no. 3
November 1954
Art: Jack Kirby
Mainline Publications
CAPTAIN 3-D
no. 1
December 1951
Art: Jack Kirby and Mort
Meskin
Harvey Publications
Above and following page
FOXHOLE
no. 1
October 1954
Art: Jack Kirby
Mainline Publications
Above and following page
FOXHOLE
no. 2
December 1954
Art: Jack Kirby
Mainline Publications
WIN A PRIZE
no. 1
April 1955
Art: Jack Kirby
Charlton Press
And it was the worst possible time for someone to be launching a new comic book company but Simon and Kirby tried that, too. Mainline Comics, they called it. Their first four books—In Love, Police Trap, Foxhole, and Bullseye—went on sale just as the Senate Commission on the Judiciary was convening to discuss government regulation of comic books. The timing could not have been worse.
In Love was just more Young Romance under a different name, while Police Trap was a crime comic founded on the naïve hope that if you put “Police” in big letters on the cover, you could get away with publishing a crime comic.
Foxhole was a war book, written and/or drawn by men who’d been there, done that. Jack signed his stories, “By P. F. C. Jack Kirby, 5th Division, 3rd Army.” It was a book he loved. According to Roz, “He would have been very happy to spend the rest of his life just drawing the war stories he told everyone all the time.” He also loved the fourth book, Bullseye, a western hero in the Zorro/Lone Ranger motif.
Fine comics. Wrong year for them. The crusaders were causing newsstands to stop carrying comics, and publishers were closing left and right. Every week, another one gone. In a panic, the majors banded together, formed a self-regulatory bureau, and proceeded to self-regulate crime, horror, and almost anything else that was entertaining out of everyone’s product. Jack said it was like the business got together
and said, “You can’t ruin our comics! We’ll beat you to it!”
Only a few publishers escaped having to submit their wares to the Comics Code Authority for approval of content. Mainline wasn’t among the few. Joe and Jack were told, in language Jack felt was quite appropriate for a crime comic, “You either join up or your comics don’t get distributed.” So they joined up and their comics didn’t get distributed. The Code also didn’t save E. C. Comics, formerly the main purveyor of horror and crime. Even laundered, their line went under and their distributor, Leader News, soon followed. That was truly bad news for Joe and Jack’s company since Leader was their distributor, too.
That put Mainline out of business. Joe eventually arranged for Charlton Press, the lowest-paying publisher in the field, to print the already-completed Mainline material and also Win A Prize, a “game show in a comic” that Joe and Jack had been developing for their own firm. Nothing sold well enough to warrant continuance, and Joe and Jack were fast running out of places to work, at least as a team.
It was time to go their separate ways. Simon took a job editing comics for Harvey and could occasionally employ Kirby to draw them. Some of the material was excellent, especially a science-fiction comic called Race for the Moon, done back when countries really were racing for the moon. But it didn’t last long. Nothing seemed to be lasting very long.
FIGHTING AMERICAN
no. 1
April–May 1954
Art: Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
Headline Publications
FIGHTING AMERICAN
Of all the fifties’ Simon-Kirby creations, Jack enjoyed none more than Fighting American. At arms’ length, it looked like Joe and Jack imitating themselves with an unabashed Captain America knock-off. Up close and personal, it was the two of them having enormous fun, hoping readers would find it infectious.
Super heroes were largely passé. The Golden Age of that genre had passed and its resurrection, which would largely be defined by Jack and his next partner, Stan Lee, had yet to occur. But nothing was selling particularly well, so Simon and Kirby gave it a try, hoping the old form might seem fresh if tongues were planted firmly enough in cheeks. MAD Magazine, after all, seemed to be catching on. Fighting American, however, just got sillier and sillier, prompting one critic to suggest that Joe and Jack were deliberately screwing with a formula they’d invented, just to see if anyone would notice. Apparently, no one did—but for seven issues, Jack couldn’t have been happier . . . unless, of course, the thing had shown a profit.