Jack Kirby and the Eternals

Inarguably one of the most important creators of the 20th century, Jack Kirby is responsible

for so many iconic fictional characters, it's almost impossible to list them all

From Captain America, the Hulk, Ettrick and the Demon, to the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and

the New Gods, the list of Kirby's contributions to popular fiction is simply mind-boggling

I'm Dave Baker, and today we're going to explain what Jack Kirby's life was really like, and

examine one of his lesser-known creations, the Eternals. Born Jacob Kurtzberg, Jack Kirby, like so many Jewish comics professionals in the 1940s, took on many pseudonyms

He frequently worked under the names Jack Curtis, Fred Sandy, Ted Gray, Lance Kirby, among countless others

Eventually, the now iconic Jack Kirby stuck, and the rest, as they say, is comic book history

Born in 1917, on August 28th on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Kirby's parents were both Austrian Jewish immigrants

As a boy, Kirby became involved in gang culture due to the harsh conditions that surround Depression-era New York

Many art historians have attributed a lot of the action and kineticism in Kirby's work

to the fact that, unlike a lot of artists, Kirby got habitually embroiled in street fights as a young man

Actually, now that we're talking about it, Kirby being in a gang explains why he drew so many gangs of young boys early in his career

like the Boy Commandos, Ooze Boy Legion, Yancey Street Gang, and the Young Allies

Here's hoping drawing all those kids beating the shit out of each other helped Kirby work through some of that, you know, trauma

Eh, you know what they say, comics is cheaper than therapy. Ostensibly self-taught, Kirby landed a job working at the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate

after a brief stint at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. This allowed Kirby to get his foot in the door, where he was able to eke out a living

working on such strips as The Lone Rider, a really shitty Lone Ranger knockoff

and Your Health Comes First, an advice single-panel strip. Kirby's work from this time period is almost unrecognizable as his

Everything looks like it was drawn in like 15 minutes. Largely, because it was drawn in 15 minutes

After slugging it out in the trenches for a few years, Kirby made a name for himself as a diligent worker who could produce large amounts of work under extreme circumstances

Simultaneously, the popularity of comic books were skyrocketing, and this led veteran illustrators like Will Eisner to start up production studios

the most famous of which being the aptly named Eisner-Iger Studio, where cartoonists would be employed as either writers, pencilers, inkers, or letters

They would then work as an assembly line, producing pages for publishers and newspapers

In 1940, Kirby would find his first long-term creative partner in Joe Simon

a writer artist and later editor They would initially work for the Fox Feature Syndicate for a week and then later move to Martin Goodman Timely Comics which would later become Marvel Comics There they would co the now Captain America

In 1943, Kirby would be drafted into the Army. After undergoing basic training at Camp Stewart

in Savannah, Georgia, he was assigned to the 11th Infantry Regiment. From there, he was

one of the many men who landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy on August 23rd, just two and a

half months after D-Day. While overseas, one of Kirby's many responsibilities was to scout ahead of his troops and draw maps

of the surrounding countryside. This was obviously exceedingly dangerous, and the fact that Kirby survived this is nothing

short of astonishing. After returning from the war, Kirby and Simon reunited and began working for Harvey Comics

From there, they segued to McFadden Productions, where they ostensibly created the Rome

romance comic genre from scratch. That's right, the men behind Captain America

and many other superheroes from the 1930s and 40s also created the romance comic genre

With titles like Young Romance, Young Love, and many others, Kirby and Simon saw a massive uptick in readers

who wanted to live vicariously through their romantic leads. Hmm. However, despite soaring sales, Kirby

and Simon were woefully underpaid for their efforts. They eventually struck out on their own under their new publishing name, Mainline Comics

They produced four titles, including Foxhole, a war comic, Bullseye, Western Scout, a Western comic

Police Trap, obviously a crime comic, and In Love, a romance comic, because that's what they were known for

Regrettably, Mainline was put out of business partially due to their books being featured in the anti-comic book Red Scare HUAC trials

which spawned from Frederick Wertham's book, Seduction of the Innocent, that blamed all of society's ills on comics

Finally, they were sued out of existence by Crestwood, one of Simon and Kirby's former employers

who noticed that Mainline was using artwork that Kirby had created for Young Love Comics

which they obviously didn't own. Needless to say, Mainline lost the suit and subsequently went bankrupt

Objectively, at the lowest point in his career, Kirby would return to Timely, which would soon rebrand as Marvel Comics

His determination and work ethic would transform his setback into a career-making winning streak

During this time period, he would work alongside former assistant Stanley Lieber

AKA Stan Lee, to co-create some of pop culture's most enduring cultural icons like Iron Man Fantastic Four the Black Panther Silver Surfer the Hulk the X Thor the Inhumans and virtually hundreds more

After being disrespected and underpaid by Marvel, Kirby spent two years negotiating a contract

with DC Comics to enter their creative stable to write, draw, and edit a slate of his own titles

This eventually evolved into him taking over four books. Three of these he would create whole cloth

Mr. Miracle, New Gods, and Forever People. And then an additional one that he took over due to a lack of a steady creative team

Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen. Over his time on these books, which would eventually become known as the Fourth World

Kirby would redefine what DC cosmic stories could be in terms of scale and grandeur

He'd also create an army of new characters, most iconically the uber big bad of the DC universe, Darkseid

Despite being currently lauded for its innovation and deep probing themes, Upon release, the fourth world books were not met with critical acclaim

Ultimately, Kirby served the duration of his contract at DC, and then they canceled all the fourth world books

They had Kirby even go so far as to wrap up his mega epic tale in a one-off graphic novel that casual readers to this day are probably unaware of

In 1975, Stan Lee would announce that Jack Kirby was returning to Marvel

However, Jack would not be partnering with his old co-creator this time. The two still had bad blood between them for multiple reasons

Jack felt that Stan took too much credit for his loose dialoguing over the stories that Jack had written and drawn

Kirby also felt that Stan had done little to nothing to assist him in regaining ownership of nearly thousands of pages of original artwork, a virtual fortune in original art sales

Marvel just refused to return these pages to the Kirby family. Kirby would go on to write and draw numerous projects during this time period at Marvel

From the then-much-maligned Captain America and the Madness Bomb story to the now-iconic 2001 A Space Odyssey adaptation

Kirby produced some of his most idiosyncratic and personal work during this time period

And now we arrive at the Eternals. The Eternals are far and away one of Kirby's most neglected and unsung creations

The Eternals first appeared in July of 1976 in the aptly named Eternals No. 1

The series only lasted 12 issues on its initial release. The Eternals starts with a revelation that when the Celestials visited Earth 5 million years ago

they performed genetic experiments on mankind. This produced two races, the Deviants, who were hideous monstrous beings

and the Eternals human people of virtually immortal lifespans The Eternals were so highly intelligent that they rapidly became technologically advanced They created technology that allowed them go into hiding for almost a millennia even travel into space

The plot of The Eternals centers around a cosmic narrative that'll have you asking, didn't I already read this issue of the new gods

The protagonist of almost all of these stories is Icarus, a character so stock Kirby

that you'll practically have to double-check he's not Captain Victory or Orion

The other members of The Eternals include Kingo, Fastos, Sprite, Ajak. The initial 12 issues of The Eternals

centers around the revelations that the Deviants and the Eternals have been returning to Earth

in order to battle, in a classic retcon that didn't quite go anywhere

Kirby attempted to establish that the Eternals have been behind the scenes for eons, pulling the strings

Needless to say, nobody really picked up on these threads. The majority of these issues tell simple, clean stories

about Icarus and company striking out on adventures and engaging in unlikely friendships with humans

Icarus ends up bonding with a human doctor-researcher type named Daniel Damien

and his daughter, Icarus' love interest, Margo. And from there, Kirby attempts to build the framework that would create a new line of epic stories

However, the book was ostensibly over before it began. Kirby could draw like four pages a day, which means when he put out a book in two weeks

So when you do the math, he really only worked on Eternals for like six months before it was just canceled

From there, various writers and artists have tried to mine Kirby's basic setup for new stories

most notably Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr., when they took over the reboot of The Eternals in 2006

The big twist here is that Sprite cast a spell and all the Eternals forgot who they really were

The story sees Icarus remembering who he truly is and then embarking on a mission

traveling around the globe, trying to help the other Eternals remember their past. This setup is weirdly similar to the Warrior Magazine reboot of the iconic Marvel Man comic that Alan Moore wrote in the 1980s

It's almost like Neil Gaiman must have been Alan Moore's assistant. Spoiler alert, well, he wasn't really his assistant, but yeah, Alan Moore showed Neil Gaiman the ropes and basically taught him everything he knows

This reboot didn't really catch on, and ultimately the Eternals returned to their C-list status as curvy characters that everybody has a few stray issues of, but very few of us have actually read

So what do you think? Will we ever have a creator of the likes of Jack Kirby again? Will the Eternals pull a blade and become a massive movie franchise

despite being obscure comics characters? Or will they be the first MCU failure

I mean, at this point it'd be really surprising to me if anything short of like a stilt man movie caused the MCU to stumble

Bye