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[LordOfLore]

Old news for me but others might not know this about Marvel. Read the entire article.

Born Jacob Kurtzburg in 1917, Kirby was the son of immigrant Jewish parents who settled in the lower east side of Manhattan. Kirby started drawing young, teaching himself the rudiments of the fast, explosive style that became his calling card. He drew monster comics, romance comics (a genre he had a hand in creating), westerns, and science fiction. In 1940, he and his fellow artist Joe Simon created Captain America. In 1961, he and Stan Lee collaborated on Fantastic Four, the first modern Marvel superhero comic. It was the start of a partnership that produced a pantheon of characters: Thor, Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Hulk, Iron Man, Black Panther, The Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom, The Inhumans and the X-Men, and far too many others to name. The Marvel comics universe and its accompanying blockbuster films simply would not exist without the cigar-chomping Jack Kirby.

Marvel’s “Kirby Week” covers all of this in glowing fashion. But the articles all gloss neatly over the other side of the story: namely, the fact that Marvel fought a decades-long battle to keep Kirby from claiming creative and financial control over his creations, culminating in a legal dustup with his heirs that very nearly landed in front of the Supreme Court. The story of Kirby’s struggle with Marvel is also one of the most public examples of the lengths to which even the greatest of creators had to go in order to get credit—and compensation—for his work.

"Don’t do comics. Comics will break your heart.”