Jacob Kurtzberg, best known by his pen name, Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994), was an American comic book artist, writer and editor, widely regarded as one of the medium’s major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. He grew up in New York City and learned to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons. He entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s, drawing various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, before ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940’s, Kirby regularly teamed with Simon, creating numerous characters for that company and for National Comics Publications, later to become DC Comics.
After serving in the European Theater in World War II, Kirby produced work for DC Comics, Harvey Comics, Hillman Periodicals and other publishers. At Crestwood Publications, he and Simon created the genre of romance comics and later founded their own short-lived comic company, Mainline Publications. Kirby was involved in Timely’s 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, which in the next decade became Marvel. There, in the 1960’s under writer-editor Stan Lee, Kirby co-created many of the company’s major characters, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Thor, the Hulk and Iron Man. The Lee–Kirby titles garnered high sales and critical acclaim, but in 1970, feeling he had been treated unfairly, largely in the realm of authorship credit and creators’ rights, Kirby left the company for rival DC.
At DC, Kirby created his Fourth World saga which spanned several comics titles. While these series proved commercially unsuccessful and were canceled, the Fourth World’s New Gods have continued as a significant part of the DC Universe. Kirby returned to Marvel briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s, then ventured into television animation and independent comics. In his later years, Kirby, who has been called “the William Blake of comics”, began receiving great recognition in the mainstream press for his career accomplishments, and in 1987 he was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. In 2017, Kirby was posthumously named a Disney Legend with Lee for their co-creations not only in the field of publishing, but also because those creations formed the basis for The Walt Disney Company’s financially and critically successful media franchise, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Kirby was married to Rosalind Goldstein in 1942. They had four children and remained married until his death from heart failure in 1994, at the age of 76. The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor, and he is known as “The King” among comics fans for his many influential contributions to the medium.
Text Credit: Wikipedia
Phantom Comic’s
Whilst Jack Kirby worked for Harvey Hits between 1946 and 1955 with Joe Simon (an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher), it’s believed by some that Jack Kirby penciled various pieces of Phantom art which were published by Harvey Hits either on the cover or within the comic.
The pieces of art which closely resemble Jack Kirby’s style, which some believe Jack Kirby contributed to can be seen below.
Phantom Storyboard
In the 1980’s, Jack Kirby worked on several animation art projects, including for Hanna-Barbera and Walt Disney. He drew several pieces of concept art for film producers.
He drew a Phantom concept piece of art for an animated TV series which never came to fruition, and which not a great deal of information is known.
The art was published in ‘The Jack Kirby Collector’, number 30 in November 2000 on page 8 in USA. ‘The Jack Kirby Collector’ is a newsletter style publication which is authorized by the Kirby Estate.
Jack Kirby’s grandson, Jeremy Kirby, posted the following image on Twitter on the 27th of October 2020, the same seen in ‘The Jack Kirby Collector’ above.
The Phantom 