Jack Kirby was an American comic book artist, 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 1940s, Kirby regularly teamed with Simon, creating numerous characters for that company and for National Comics Publications, later to become DC Comics.
Joseph Henry Simon was an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s–1940s Golden Age of Comic Books and served as the first editor of Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into Marvel Comics.
The Fly is a fictional comic book superhero first published in 1959 by Red Circle Comics. He was created by Joe Simon as part of Archie's "Archie Adventure Series" and later camped up as part of the company's Mighty Comics line. He first appeared in The Double Life of Private Strong #1; however, his origin story and first "full-length" appearance were in Adventures of the Fly #1.
Leonard Starr was an American cartoonist, comic book artist, and advertising artist, best known for creating the newspaper comic strip On Stage and reviving Little Orphan Annie.
Fighting American is a superhero created in 1954 by the writer-artist team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Published by the Crestwood Publications imprint Prize Comics, it was, contrary to standard industry practices of the time, creator-owned. Harvey Comics published one additional issue in 1966. One final inventoried tale was published in 1989, in a Marvel Comics hardcover collection of all the Fighting American stories.
Mainline Publications, also called Mainline Comics, was a short-lived, 1950s American comic book publisher established and owned by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon.
Boy Commandos is a fictional organization from DC Comics first appearing in Detective Comics #64 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. They are a combination of "kid gang" characters, an international cast of young boys fighting Nazis — or in their own parlance, "the Ratzies".
Vincent Colletta was an American comic book artist and art director best known as one of Jack Kirby's frequent inkers during the 1950s-1960s period called the Silver Age of comic books. This included some significant early issues of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four, and a long, celebrated run on the character Thor in Journey into Mystery and The Mighty Thor.
Sky Masters of the Space Force was an American syndicated newspaper comic strip created on September 8, 1958, by writer/penciler Jack Kirby and writer Dave Wood, featuring the adventures of an American astronaut. The strip stars the titular Major Skylar Masters—an American astronaut—and features his adventures in a fictionalized Space Race, including rocket launches, space stations, Moon landings, and double agents.
Young Love was one of the earliest romance comics titles, published by Crestwood/Prize and later sold to DC Comics.
Crestwood Publications, also known as Feature Publications, was a magazine publisher that also published comic books from the 1940s through the 1960s. Its title Prize Comics contained what is considered the first ongoing horror comic-book feature, Dick Briefer's "Frankenstein". Crestwood is best known for its Prize Group imprint, published in the late 1940s to mid-1950s through packagers Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who created such historically prominent titles as the horror comic Black Magic, the creator-owned superhero satire Fighting American, and the first romance comic title, Young Romance.
Romance comics are a genre of comic books that were most popular during the Golden Age of Comics. The market for comics, which had been growing rapidly throughout the 1940s, began to plummet after the end of World War II when military contracts to provide disposable reading matter to servicemen ended. This left many comic creators seeking new markets. The romance comic genre was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, who kicked off Young Romance in 1947 in an effort to tap into new adult audiences. In the next 30 years, over 200 issues of the flagship romance comic would be produced.
Girls' Love Stories was an American romance comic book magazine published by DC Comics in the United States. Started in 1949 as DC's first romance title, it ran for 180 issues, ending with the Nov-Dec 1973 issue. The stories covered such topics as girls worrying about getting a man, or marrying out of pressure, not love. Some of the early covers were photographs. The book's initial tagline was "True to Life!"
Black Magic was a horror anthology comic book series published by American company Prize Comics from 1950 to 1961. The series was packaged by the creative duo Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and featured non-gory horror content.
Blue Bolt is a fictional American comic book superhero created by writer-artist Joe Simon in 1940, during the period fans and historians refer to as the Golden Age of Comic Books.
Chamber of Chills is the name of two anthology horror comic books, one published by Harvey Publications in the early 1950s, the other by Marvel Comics in the 1970s.
Boys' Ranch is a six-issue American comic book series created by the veteran writer-artist team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for Harvey Comics in 1950. A Western in the then-prevalent "kid gang" vein popularized by such film series as "Our Gang" and "The Dead End Kids", the series starred three adolescents—Dandy, Wabash, and Angel—who operate a ranch that was bequeathed to them, under the adult supervision of frontiersman Clay Duncan. Supporting characters included Palomino Sue, Wee Willie Weehawken, citizens of the town Four Massacres, and various Native Americans, including a fictional version of the real-life Geronimo.
Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion was a horror-suspense-romance anthology comic book series published by DC Comics from 1971 to 1974, a companion to Secrets of Sinister House. Both series were originally inspired by the successful ABC soap opera, Dark Shadows, which ran from 1966 to 1971.
Bill Draut was an American comic book artist best known for his work at Harvey Comics and DC Comics from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Arnold Book Company (ABC) was a British publisher of comic books that operated in the late 1940s and 1950s, most actively from 1950 to 1954. ABC published original titles like the war comic Ace Malloy of the Special Squadron and the science fiction title Space Comics, and reprints of American horror and crime titles like Adventures into the Unknown, Black Magic Comics, and Justice Traps the Guilty. British contributors to the company's titles include Mick Anglo and Denis Gifford. Arnold Book Company was closely connected to the fellow British comics publisher L. Miller & Son.
