I loved comic books as a kid and collected stacks of them in the early 1970s, but in the early 1980s I moved onto other things and didn't read one for almost two decades. In around 2000, I wandered into a local comics shop -- every comic graphic novel, and TP in the joint was tightly wrapped in a bulletproof plastic bag and taped shut. I was about to bolt, but as fate would have it there was one book that wasn't locked in impenetrable polypropylene that caught my eye -- a collection of Kirby's New Gods.
As a teenager I wasn't a huge fan of Jack Kirby's work, but re-reading his books as an adult I found his innovative storytelling really resonated with me. There was a wonderful workmanlike simplicity to his stories and an epic cosmic grandeur that reminded me of the great metaphysical and mythological masterpieces of ancient Sumeria, Assyria, Babylonia, Phoenicia, Egypt, India, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, and Native America.
In my opinion, Kirby's entire body of work -- an estimated, incomprehensible 40,000 pages of art -- set an unsurpassed level of excellence in the field of sequential art, and Jack's visionary oeuvre transcended the often-maligned comic book genre.
Over the last few years I've been looking at his life story mainly in great publications like John Morrow's Jack Kirby Collector, and I've had the honor to speak to many of Jack's associates, comics scholars, and Kirby experts who were incredibly generous with sharing their time and research. During that time, I gathered several thousand nice HQ scans of Jack's artwork from fans, and on the internet. Instead of filing them away forever in CD sleeves and stuffing them into a forgotten dusty cardboard box, I figured it might be fun to share some of them with you.
My hope is to give viewers who visit this site a way to quickly scroll through a wide variety of Kirby artwork from throughout Jack's entire career. Using Jack's illustrations on this website, I also want to suggest that the future of comics storytelling will be online -- artists will no longer have to deal with limitations based on the constraints of the single printed page. I also hope to discuss how comics storytelling incorporates techniques used in fine art, advertising, and the cinema; and I'd like to use Jack's work as a springboard to speculate on the inevitable transition from published newsprint comic book narratives, to new, potentially revolutionary forms of digital online sequential storytelling.
But more than anything, I hope this website gives you a fun stroll through Jack's amazing career. Thanks for visiting my website, and feel free to email me if you have any comments.
As a teenager I wasn't a huge fan of Jack Kirby's work, but re-reading his books as an adult I found his innovative storytelling really resonated with me. There was a wonderful workmanlike simplicity to his stories and an epic cosmic grandeur that reminded me of the great metaphysical and mythological masterpieces of ancient Sumeria, Assyria, Babylonia, Phoenicia, Egypt, India, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, and Native America.
In my opinion, Kirby's entire body of work -- an estimated, incomprehensible 40,000 pages of art -- set an unsurpassed level of excellence in the field of sequential art, and Jack's visionary oeuvre transcended the often-maligned comic book genre.
Over the last few years I've been looking at his life story mainly in great publications like John Morrow's Jack Kirby Collector, and I've had the honor to speak to many of Jack's associates, comics scholars, and Kirby experts who were incredibly generous with sharing their time and research. During that time, I gathered several thousand nice HQ scans of Jack's artwork from fans, and on the internet. Instead of filing them away forever in CD sleeves and stuffing them into a forgotten dusty cardboard box, I figured it might be fun to share some of them with you.
My hope is to give viewers who visit this site a way to quickly scroll through a wide variety of Kirby artwork from throughout Jack's entire career. Using Jack's illustrations on this website, I also want to suggest that the future of comics storytelling will be online -- artists will no longer have to deal with limitations based on the constraints of the single printed page. I also hope to discuss how comics storytelling incorporates techniques used in fine art, advertising, and the cinema; and I'd like to use Jack's work as a springboard to speculate on the inevitable transition from published newsprint comic book narratives, to new, potentially revolutionary forms of digital online sequential storytelling.
But more than anything, I hope this website gives you a fun stroll through Jack's amazing career. Thanks for visiting my website, and feel free to email me if you have any comments.
