While comics typically focus on a purely fictional world, Jack Kirby, born Jacob Kurtzberg, and Joe Simon debuted Captain America in a comic book where he battles Adolph Hitler, who tumbles to the ground, falling like a rag doll, defeated and, really, destroyed.
While today that might seem natural, it was distributed in 1940 before the United States entered the war, when Hitler was still in power and a sign that superheroes, more than fantasy, went to war in their own way.
That larger-than-life-size cover is one of more than 70 items in “The Jack Kirby Way: How a boy from the Lower East Side became the King of Comics” free exhibit at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th St. through Nov. 26.
Located in the center’s Valentin Blavatnik Gallery, the exhibit is co-presented by the center, American Jewish Historical Society and the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center.
It is curated by Roy Schwartz and Randolph Hoppe, with Andrew Sperling as consulting curator, part of a recognition of Kirby as not only a co-creator of heroes, but something of a hero himself.
The exhibition follows the May 11 co-naming of Essex Street between Delancy and Rivington Streets, nearly a block from his birthplace at 147 Essex St., Jack Kirby Way.
A green street sign went up on the northwestern corner of Essex and Delancey, and a replica of the sign in the exhibit shows Kirby is in the middle of a comeback.
The Center for Jewish History is hosting an exhibit on Jack Kirby.Photo courtesy of the Center for Jewish History
“I’d call it a Kirby Komeback,” said Schwartz, who led the street co-naming effort. “The truth is, he’s never not been a huge name for those in the know. But for young readers, audiences, and gamers today, he’s a relative unknown.”
Jacob Kurtzberg, 1917-1994, created or co-created the Avengers, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Hulk, the Silver Surfer, the X-Men, and many more. The exhibit bills him as the “Co-creator of the Marvel Universe and its pantheon of superheroes,” an “unsung founding father of modern popular culture” and a “king of comics.”
Schwartz said, “Outside comics, the only name people really know is Stan Lee,” while “getting Kirby the recognition he deserves has been a longtime crusade of mine.”
Kirby grew up in what was then often called a Jewish Ghetto on the Lower East Side, the son of Benjamin and Rose Kurtzberg, who emigrated from a region now part of Ukraine. Benjamin worked in garment factories.
“Kirby mostly spent his childhood on Delancey,” according to the exhibit, “and it’s Delancey that he immortalized in his comics as Yancy Street.”
Fearing anti-Semitism, Kirby worked under alter egos with “Anglo-Irish names” such as Curt Davis, Jack Curtiss and Fred Sande, doing political cartoons.
The exhibit includes a political cartoon he drew as Jack Curtiss after Great Britain, France, and Italy on Sept. 30, 1938, signed the Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany, giving it the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in return for Hitler’s pledge not to seek additional territory.
At 21, Kirby, as Jack Curtiss, lambasted appeasement as emboldening and encouraging Hitler, who on March 15, 1939, occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
Eventually, Kurtzberg settled on the name Kirby, because it sounded similar to actor James Cagney, “a fellow Lower East Side tough guy” according to the exhibit. In 1942, he legally changed his name to Jack Kirby.
The Center for Jewish History is hosting an exhibit on Jack Kirby.Photo courtesy of the Center for Jewish History
“I wanted to be an all-around American,” he is quoted in the exhibit as saying in 1990. “I kept Kirby. My mother gave me hell. My father gave me hell.”
The exhibit says, according to Kirby’s son Neal, his frustration with appeasement, Nazi violence and policies, including toward Jews, led him and Joe Simon to co-create a “new, patriotic Nazi-fighting character” named Captain America.
Kirby co-created Captain America at age 23 with 27-year-old Joe Simon, originally published by Timely Comics, later known as Marvel, distributed Dec. 20, 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor.
The German American Bund inundated Simon and Kirby with “hate mail and calls, threatening to hang them from lampposts in Times Square,” according to the exhibit.
Bund members began showing up outside of the Timely offices, leading to pushback from Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who called to let Kirby, Simon and Timely know they would be protected, according to the exhibit.
“You boys over there are doing a good job,” LaGuardia reportedly told them, before sending police to patrol their offices. “The City of New York will see that no harm will come to you.”
Kirby didn’t just draw superheroes; he earned a Bronze Star, fighting in the World War II infantry, landing on Omaha Beach days after D-Day, serving as part of the Battle of the Bulge and using his drawing skills to scout the enemy.
A lieutenant recognized his name as that of the comic book artist and asked if he could draw, according to quotes in the exhibit. “Great, some officer wants me to draw his portrait,” Kirby writes. “Then he said, ‘Good. I am making you a Scout.’”
The Center for Jewish History is hosting an exhibit on Jack Kirby.
Kirby saw the result of pure evil, including starved people tottering on the brink of death when the Allies arrived to liberate them.
“They were mostly women and some men,” Kirby writes of emaciated people. “They looked like they hadn’t eaten for I don’t know how long. They were scrawny. Their clothes were tattered and dirty. All I could say was, ‘Oh God.’”
The exhibit tells the story of Kirby’s life and work, including ways his life informed his art and familiarity with the real battlefield.
“I was drawing reality, and if you look through all my drawings, you’ll see reality,” Kirby says in a big, bold quote on the wall near his work.
He sometimes drew familiar faces as superheroes battled it out, idealizing strength and courage.
“You can see my early books on Captain America. I had to draw the things I knew,” he writes in text included in the exhibit. “In one fight scene, I recognized my uncle. I’d subconsciously drawn my uncle, and I didn’t know it until I took the page home. So I was drawing reality, and if you look through all my drawings you’ll see reality.”
The cover of one larger-than-life comic book cover from the Fantastic Four, priced at a dime, boasts that The Thing, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch, and Invisible Girl are “together for the first time in one mighty magazine.”
In addition to the exhibit, presented with special thanks to Jesse Simon and the Joseph H. Simon Estate and thanks to Rosalind Kirby Family Trust and Tom Kraft, the Kirby comeback continues elsewhere.
Brooklyn One Productions later this summer plans to present King Kirby, a play by Fred Van Lente and Crystal Skillman, directed by Bill Coulter.
“Jack Kirby hasn’t gotten the recognition he deserves until now,” Schwartz said, “but he’s one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.”