24 FT383It’s hard to imaginea
world withoutJack Kirby’s
remarkable contributions.
And yet in 1926, as aJewish
youngster in NewYork’s
Lower East Side namedJacob
Kurtzberg, he had hisfi rst
brush with death.“When Iwas
nineyears old, I got double
pneumonia. Iwas supposed
to die.What was going to save
me?” Hisfamilywas too poor
to payfor medical treatment.
“My mother could not give me
up. She called in therabbis and
they all danced aroundmy bed
and chanted,‘Demon, come out
of this boy. What is your name,
demon?’... I just happened
to pull out of it because...I
don’t know thereason. But
you had torely on something.
God or at least purechance.”
Jacob survived and a decade
later achieved his dream of
creating comics, in newspapers
and in the new publishing
phenomenon, comic books.
But hewas not out of the
fi re yet. Se venty-five years
ago this summer, Kirbywas
shipped from England across
the Channel to Omaha Beach
in Normandy as part of a US
army squadron. On 23August
1944, he stepped off the boat
and ontoFrench soil to join
the Allies’ ongoing push to
liberate Nazi-occupiedFrance.
Around him lay the aftermath
of the D-Day landings, some 11
weeks before, in which 4,414
Allied troops had died, 2,499 of
them Americans.For thefi rst
time, the co-creator of Captain
Americawas standing on the
battlefield himself, not as his
super-powered hero garbed in
the stars and stripes, but asa
vulnerable, fl esh-and-blood GI,
plunged into theraw reality of
war. Would heeven see his 27th
birthday infi ve days’ time?
Kirby’s companywas initially
sent on to the frontline inVerdun to join GeneralPatton’s
push eastwards and to liberate
two villages south of Metz,
beforereaching another,
Dornot, on thewest bank of
the Moselle. During Kirby’s
terrifying combatexperiences
therewere heavy losses and
close calls, but whatfi nally
struck him downwas trench-
foot due to the severecold and
damp. Luckily, he was taken
out of service on 14 November,
although while hewas being
repatriated and treated
en route inParis and then
Hereford, England, he narrowly
escaped having both of his feet
amputated.
Despite the pain,a
wheelchair-bound Kirby
agreed to the doctors’requests
to make accuratereference
drawings (since lost) of hisfellow soldiers’wounded feet.
Eventually, Kirby came home
and resumed his career, but
what thewar had made him
see and dowould profoundly
change him and darken
and deepen hiswork. It’s no
accident,for example, that 10PAULGR AVETTreportsfromtwocurrentexhibitionsinFrancecelebratingthe
wartimeserviceandsubsequentcareerofcomicslegendJackKirbyTHEONCEANDFUTUREKING©1992-2019 GREG PRESTON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
EXHIBITIONREPORTyears later, for thefi rst co ver of
Foxhole(Oct 1954), a comic book
based on the testimonies ofreal-
life soldiers, he drew a bloodied,
bandaged D-Day survivor trying
to write home: “Dear Mom:The
war is like a picnic!Today we
spent a day at the beach!”
Jack Kirby lived another 50
years, until 1994,working hard
in comics and latterly also in
animation, as anexceptional
creative force, hisexpansive,
visionary concepts often sparking
frommythology and technology,
pouring from pencil onto paper.
Whether inwar or Western,
horror or humour, Kirby left
almost no genre untried,even
sharing with business partner
Joe Simon in the invention of
the romance genre in American
comic books.FromFantastic
Fourin 1961 toThe Eternals
in 1976, Kirbywent on to co-
create, with Stan Lee,much of
the Marvel Comics pantheon.
Often conflicted,fl awed yet
principled, these superheroes
have become iconsworldw ide,
especially thanks to theirrecent
blockbuster movie adaptations.
Kirby witnessed none of
Marvel’s 21st-century ‘Cinematic
Universe’. Lee hailed him as
‘The King’, though hewas a
king without a kingdom,owning
hardly any of the copyrights to
his (co-)creations. Onlyrecently
has he begun toreceive proper
acknowledgment in the comics
and fi lms, after an out-of-court
settlement between his estate
and Marvel’s owners, Disney.
Headhuntedby their rivals, DC
Comics, in the early Seventies,
Kirby cut loose from Lee on his
solo epic,four connected titles
collectively called ‘TheFourth
World’. Here, he escalatedWorld
War II to an intergalactic scale,
as godlikeextraterrestrials
from opposing planets bring
their conflict to Earth and
embroil fragile humankind.
Its centrepiece,New Gods,
unmistakably ‘inspired’StarWars
and is also heading to the big
screen.
Appropriately, Kirby is being
commemorated this summer with
two exhibitions in Normandy.
In ‘Kirby’sWar’ at Bayeux’s
Mediathèque (till 24August),STRANGEDAYS