Jack

Here's a photo I took of Jack Kirby at some early San Diego Con (I think) back in the days before it was even called Comic-Con International. I seem to have a lot of photos of Jack in one of his two natural habitats, the other being "seated at his drawing table." This one is "surrounded by admirers," which he always was at any gathering of folks who knew anything about comic books.

At cons today, I meet a lot of people who feel a genuine sense of loss that they never got to meet Jack…never got to shake the hand that drew some of their favorite comics, never got to tell him that they were their favorite comics. When fans first started telling me this a few years ago, I was a little startled. It was like, "How could you not meet Jack Kirby?" He was always so accessible, so approachable. For a couple of decades, all you had to do was show up at a San Diego Con (or one of many others he attended) and be willing to wait in line for twenty minutes. Or if you had his phone number — and everyone did — you could call up, talk to him and maybe even get an invite to drop by the house for coffee.

And then I remind myself: Jack died in '94. Since then, an awful lot of humans have discovered his work, which remains increasingly in print. There's something about it that grabs readers in a way that few comics can. He drew stories that radiate, as Jack himself did, a certain energy and excitement. Larry Lieber, who wrote scripts for Jack at one point, has said, "If Jack drew a rock, it was fascinating. It was like the rocks had personality." And as someone else (I think it was me) pointed out after Larry said that, at one point, Jack drew a whole pile of personality-filled rocks which they called The Thing and it was one of his most personal, enduring characters.

Jack would have been 91 years old today. Of all the personal, enduring characters he was involved with, the most personal and enduring is turning out to be Jack.