Graphic designer, historian, veteran ArtCenter teacher, and former Eisner Award judge Michael Dooley is moderating and co-organizing the panel. I’ve been a guest of Michael’s at ArtCenter a number of time, usually in his Design History of Comics class, and always I’ve come away with new knowledge and new things to think about. I mean, every time. Michael’s work knocks me out: his many presentations at scholarly and fan events, his contributions to Print magazine, his tireless enthusiasm for documenting comics culture here in southern California. Plus, he is a faithful friend, bon vivant, and troublemaker of the best sort.
Joining us on the panel are:
Kevin Dooley, retired educator and former editor and writer for DC Comics, whom I first met at CSUN years ago. Kevin’s work at DC included editing storied runs of Green Lantern and Aquaman and writing and editing runs of the Mister Miracle series, part of Kirby’s Fourth World. He also edited Fantagraphics’ fondly remembered magazine Amazing Heroes for several years.
Tony Puryear, a Renaissance man if there every was one: artist, writer, comics maker, and more. Tony draws, paints, and designs; he writes for page and screen; he was the first African American screenwriter to script a summer blockbuster (Eraser, 1996). He co-created the comic book series Concrete Park, a polycultural urban dystopia steeped in the influence of Kirby.
Jim Thompson and Alonso Nuñez, both former Eisner judges (like Michael and me) and now co-chairs of the Eisner Hall of Fame judging committee. Jim, who is co-organizing this panel, is a brilliant comics historian and the founder-moderator of the popular and eye-opening Facebook group “A People’s History of Comics.” Alonso is co-founder and executive director of the educational nonprofit Little Fish Comic Studio.
Delighted to be in this good company! This event is free and open to all. Free parking is conveniently available not far from our venue, the ArtCenter Library (many thanks to librarian Mark Parsons for welcoming us).
Jack Kirby (b. Jacob Kurtzberg, 1917-1994) would be 108 years old today.
Born and raised on New York’s Lower East Side, Jacob, or Jakie, or (later) Jack or Kirby, would live through poverty, eke out a living by writing and drawing, lift himself and his family into a precarious middle-class existence, one he always had to fight for, and, over time, reshape US comic books (and pop culture generally) with his profuse, unstinting, freewheeling imagination. Next to my brother Scott, Kirby has probably influenced my reading and writing life, hence my whole outlook, more than any other creator. I’ve had, and I have, other go-to artists and cultural heroes, but Kirby hit me early on, heavily, seriously, knocking me sideways in the best way. I keep trying to write my way to a better understanding of why Kirby, basically, set me afire, but, well, it’s an ongoing effort. Of course.
My introductory comics studies course at CSU Northridge, Comics & Graphic Novels (a bad name, and I’m to blame for it), is focusing on Kirby this semester. That’s a focus my classes haven’t had since 2015. Why again now? Mainly because of the Skirball’s splendid exhibition, Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity, which I’ve written about here before and which my students are required to visit. That exhibit, curated by Patrick Reed and Ben Saunders, is open until March 1 next year, and I’m determined to take classes to it. When you’ve got that kind of resource in town, that big and historic a show, not using would be a terrible waste. So, we’re going there, and that means I’ve had to redesign my course yet again! Glad to do it.
For a few years now, I’ve taught Comics & Graphic Novels as a frankly presentist course focusing on currently popular genres in US comics publishing: graphic novels, graphic memoirs, webcomics (increasingly, webtoons), and translated manga, often alongside a token direct-market comic book serial and some minicomix that I loan out. While reading in those genres, we study comics form and also do some experiments in cartooning, culminating in, usually, a final, comics-making creative project. In the past, oh, seven to eight years the number of required books in the course has dropped from a half dozen or more to, sometimes, just three, maybe four. I’ve developed a habit of teaching about key genres in terms of recent examples, while backfilling a bit with lecture to acknowledge certain canonical heavyweights (so, for example, Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do became a way to talk about Green, Spiegelman, Bechdel, and the autographics tradition). Along the way, lectures about history have actually become fewer, though more targeted.
But now, it’s back to Kirby again, with a vengeance, and therefore back to history. It’s odd but true to say that, despite my love of Kirby, he hasn’t played a very obvious role in my teaching life, maybe because the one class on comics that I get to teach regularly is taxed with covering a lot of things. I mean, I taught an X-Men course this past spring, and of course Kirby figured there, hugely, at the outset, but that wasn’t an auteurist course. And sometimes I teach a whole semester without talking about Kirby much.
The question that the Heroes and Humanity show posed to me was, is, How do I reconcile my usual present-day focus with this grand opportunity to teach Kirby, and through him, comic book history?
So here’s what we’re doing, or what I expect we’ll be doing, over the next roughly fifteen to sixteen weeks:
We started two days ago with some drawing and icebreaking exercises, a few introductory words about that most recalcitrant of subjects, comics (what the hell are they, anyway?), and a very brief intro to Kirby.
Today, Kirby’s birthday, my students will share their homework, that is, their versions of Kirby’s two-page comic, “Hot Box” (Foxhole #2, 1954), which I gave to them sans text and asked them to fill in with their own words. This will lead to some discussion of text anchoring image (in Roland Barthes’ sense) and the multimodal nature of comic art. I also hope we have time to read “Meet Captain America” (Captain America Comics #1, March 1941). Next week we’ll be reading Kirby’s 1968 recreation of Cap’s origin story, “The Hero That Was” (Captain America #109, Dec. 1968). We’ll also be reading Kirby’s beautiful, haunting “Street Code” (created in 1983, published in 1990 in Argosy #2).
Over the next five weeks or so, we’ll read wartime and postwar Simon & Kirby, including some kid gang and romance classics, dive into Tom Scioli’s graphic biography of Kirby, talk about the early history of comic books in general, right up to the 1950s anti-comics eruption and industry implosion, and get ready to absorb the Skirball show.
After we see the show, we’ll get to the Marvel Sixties, covered very selectively over two to three weeks (with, for example, Ben Saunders’ splendid Fantastic Four volume in the Penguin Classics series), and then we’ll spend a couple of weeks talking about the Fourth World, Kirby’s bold 1970s experiment and, from my POV, the peak of his work in serial comic books. Around that time, students will probably be working on their Visual Analyses: side-by-side studies of pages from Kirby comics and other comics of their choosing.
In the back half of the term, in roughly the last six weeks, we’ll read some contemporary artists who take Kirby’s influence in unexpected, independent directions. Only one of our readings will actually be a corporate franchise comic, Ngozi Ukazu’s intriguing take on Kirby’s Barda (DC). Others will include work by Hugo Canuto (Tales of the Orishas), Charles Glaubitz (Starseeds, and more), and Lale Westvind (Grip). I’m determined not to focus on DC and Marvel IP at the expense of other themes. By the end of term, students will be crafting Final Projects: either research projects based on works encountered at the Skirball, or comics projects reflecting on their entire experience in the course.
This is all an experiment, of course: a way of connecting the dots between the comic books of Kirby’s multiple eras and comics of today. I’m excited to see how it plays out!
It’s fitting that Jack Kirby has given me new ways to converse with my students. Happy Birthday and unending thanks to the artist whose influence ushered me into the work I do and who continues to delight, enthrall, confound, and transport.
PS. The Kirby Museum is once again hosting a walking tour of Kirby’s Lower East Side, this very day. This is a great way to think about the roots of Kirby, and where so much of our comics iconography and pop culture have come from. Check it out: 6:30 pm Eastern on the SE corner of Essex and Delancey, and then ending up at the original location of the Boys Brotherhood Republic, 90 East 3rd St. Would that I could be there in person. ❤
Today, May 1, the Skirball Cultural Center officially opens its career-spanning Jack Kirby exhibition, Heroes and Humanity (on view through March 1, 2026). Last night, the Skirball launched Heroes and Humanity (and its other brand-new exhibition, Away in the Catskills) with a reception and preview for members and supporters. This preview was well attended to the point of congestion: the museum’s courtyard was thronged, and jostling crowds packed the galleries. My wife and my daughter and I were there. So were a great many colleagues, friends, and acquaintances, some I hadn’t seen since the CSUN Kirby show almost ten years ago. In fact, the crowd was a Who’s Who of Kirby collectors and historians. Members of the Kirby family were there too (I spoke briefly to Kirby’s granddaughter Jillian, as well as, to my surprise, Joe Simon’s grandson Jesse). At the night’s end, the Skirball’s staff could hardly get the Kirby crowd out of the museum; as we drove away, the front steps were still teeming with people.
To call the reception a success would be an understatement.
Navigating Heroes and Humanity took me the better part of two hours. This is partly because I kept running into friends, former students, former lenders, and others to whom I desperately wanted to talk (readers of this blog will likely know of Jack Kirby Collector publisher-editor John Morrow and Kirby Museum stalwarts Rand Hoppe, Tom Kraft, and Mike Cecchini — that’s just the iceberg’s tip). Plus there was, again, the crowd, eager, voluble, and large. But beyond that, there was so much to look at and take in. Honestly, I couldn’t get close to every bit of exhibitry, every wall, installation, case, or monitor, and I didn’t try. I knew I’d be coming back (I will be going back) repeatedly. At times, I’d look closely at a work or a wall and rhapsodize about it to anyone who would hear (pretend docent syndrome). At other times, I’d just skirt around. I took no photos for my first hour in the gallery, but waited for the crowd to thin slightly before I rewound, restarted, and snapped some pix. I need to get better shots.
My photos (most taken just before closing time) underplay the size of the crowd:
I will have to return to the exhibition to spend more time with favorite elements. Here are a few works that had me goggling or verklempt:
I can’t pretend to be objective about this show, and my memories of last night are a blur; again, I’ll need to return and take it all in again, at my leisure. Writing a full review may be beyond me, as I’m somewhat compromised: co-curators Ben Saunders and Patrick Reed are friends, and I know that this has been a passion project for them just as 2015’s Comic Book Apocalypse was for me. But here are a few impressions:
This show is properly Kirby-focused, that is, art-focused, not character, property, or brand-focused. There are nods to Kirby’s influence and the spread of his designs beyond his drawing board, and of course the show has a lot to say about Marvel, but it’s Kirby as artist, storyteller, worldbuilder, and visionary that towers over it all.
The comic art on view unsurprisingly leans toward the latter half of Kirby’s career, given the sheer spectacle of his late work and the greater availability of originals after 1960. However, this is a true career-spanning effort, unlike Comic Book Apocalypse‘s narrower, late Sixties to mid-Seventies take. I loved seeing a fair amount of Simon & Kirby work on the walls.
That said, I would have liked (I would always like) to see more of Kirby’s kid gang work of the early Forties, including the semi-autobiographical Newsboy Legion and millions-selling Boy Commandos. I think those comics are an underrated, very important part of Kirby’s output, and say a lot about him.
I would also have liked to see more romance work — the great underserved area in Kirby studies, frankly. This show does acknowledge romance, with multiple examples, but I’d have liked to see more, perhaps a whole installation. I don’t know how much of the peak-period romance art (late Forties to early Fifties) has survived, and I know that most of it lacks the spectacular, wall-sized oomph of late-career Kirby, but man, that part of the story does warrant spotlighting.
The selection on unpublished, personal work by Kirby knocked me right out. Beautiful, widescreen collages, the stunning drawing of Jacob wrestling the angel (scripture as SF, or vice versa), an explosively colored drawing of warfare: eye-boggling, revelatory work. I got to see a few pieces I’ve never seen before, even in reproduction.
The exhibition was sharply designed and beautifully mounted, though perhaps too dense for easy absorption. That doesn’t bother me (as I said to my wife Mich, I lose all objectivity when I’m looking at stuff I love — give me excess of it), but wow, were those spaces packed! More for me to enjoy on the return trips, I’m thinking.
In sum: go! If you love or are curious about the history of the American comic book, if you want to know how a once-moribund genre, the superhero, bounced back and became something different, if you are curious about the design roots of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if you just love narrative drawing, if you want to have the top of your head blown off with sheer visual pleasure (as mine was at about age ten, and has been over and over throughout my life), then GO.
One of my last pix of the night: the leaders of the curatorial team:
(L-R) Co-curator Ben Saunders, Skirball Museum Deputy Director Michele Urton, co-curator Patrick A. Reed, and consultant and curatorial collaborator Rachel Pinnelas. Thanks, folks.
This Thursday, May 1, the Skirball Cultural Center here in Los Angeles opens its exhibition Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity, co-curated by Patrick Reed and Ben Saunders in collaboration with Michele Urton, the Skirball’s Museum Deputy Director. This exhibition, the first career-spanning Kirby show in an American museum,
traces his experiences as a first-generation Jewish American born to immigrant parents in Manhattan’s storied Lower East Side, a soldier who fought in World War II, a successful commercial artist who worked in marginalized creative industries, a mentor to a generation of younger comic creators, a resident of New York and Los Angeles, and a proud family man whose Jewish faith remained important throughout his life.
The show, which runs through March 1, 2026, promises a mix of “rare original comic book artwork and print comics, fine art, and commercial work,” including many pieces never before exhibited. For example, the complete original art for X-Men #7 (Sept. 1964) will be shown. In all, the show incorporates more than 150 objects, including personal artifacts such as Jack Kirby’s US Army uniform and “ephemera that illustrate his life [and] inspirations.” Docent-led tours will begin on May 29. On the night of Wednesday, April 30, just before the show’s public opening, the Skirball offers a member’s preview event that includes a reception and an early look at the exhibition. I will be there!
(Scan the QR code to visit the exhibition’s webpage.)
I’ve known of this project for some time, and recently, at WonderCon 2025, my wife Mich and I were able to take in a panel moderated by Patrick Reed, “Comic Culture in Museums: The World of Pop Media Exhibitions,” that offered a sneak peek (Sunday, March 30). During that panel, Reed announced that Heroes and Humanity is the first of three substantial exhibitions about comics that the Skirball will be showing over roughly the next three years. Joining Reed on the panel were Rachel Pinnelas, comics writer and editor as well as consultant and co-curator on the Skirball projects; Xaviera Flores, librarian and archivist at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center; and Rita Vandergaw, executive director of the Comic-Con Museum. All three discussed their experiences working on pop culture-related exhibitions, and the challenges and joys of crafting exhibitry rooted in comics and zines. It’s exciting to know that the Skirball is going for comics in such a big way!
The Skirball will present various programming events tied into these comics exhibitions, starting with Comics, Cultures, and Communities: The Jewish World in Graphic Novels, a six-week course (May 4-June 15) led by Dr. David Greenfield focusing on graphic books by such artists as Rutu Modan, Joann Sfar, and Joe Kubert.
Having curated the Kirby exhibition Comic Book Apocalypse in 2015, I’m of course keenly interested in all this! Patrick Reed and Ben Saunders, colleagues and friends of mine, have had ample experience creating comics and pop culture exhibitions both individually and together. In fact, Ben and I worked closely together on Comic Book Apocalypse, and co-edited its companion book. Ben significantly shaped that show. I’ve been in awe of his curatorial work; in 2018, I reviewed here a show that he spearheaded, the traveling Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes, and I’ve seen several of his other exhibitions too (check out this stunner for instance). In addition, I’ve seen Patrick and Ben’s jointly curated Spider-Man: Beyond Amazing, which opened at the Comic-Con Museum in 2022 and has since traveled. So, I can’t speak disinterestedly about these things — but, FWIW, I think their record is stellar. Further, the Skirball is a wonderful venue with a history of creating or hosting exhibitions that I’ve loved, so I’m stoked. I hope to take several groups of students to Heroes and Humanities over the next ten months.
Apologies to Rick Geary, Jack Kirby, and Joe Sinnott!
This week brings, once again, the happy madness of Comic-Con International in San Diego, an event that in some ways began with Jack Kirby and continues to testify to his influence. I’ll be there this week, for the first time in, what, seven years? (I don’t think I’ve been to CCI since Kirby’s and Will Eisner’s combined centenary in 2017, which is the last time I used the above graphic.)
Honestly, I’m a bit intimated about returning to the hectic swirl that is Comic-Con. Remember, folks: good shoes, plenty of water, energy bars, that sort of thing. And patience! (Maybe don’t plan on attending two back-to-back time-certain events with less than half an hour’s transit or break time in between?)
I’ve been to Comic-Con many times (starting in 1986), but life has changed since we last went. COVID has hit. Politics have seesawed with terrifying unpredictability. My in-laws and my own parents have all passed away. Mom and Dad’s passings were hard. My wife, our daughter, and I have lived in our current house, through the pandemic, long enough to know the place minutely, almost every nook and cranny. My son and his wife have been married seven years, and are parents now, which makes us grandparents (the usual proud and doting kind!). My daughter traverses greater Los Angeles as a librarian and activist. I’ve termed out of my service to the Comics Studies Society and continue to pursue publishing projects. My wife has transitioned out of (she hates the R-word) her years as a teacher and counselor and returned to school to pursue her first love, art. I am eyeing that kind of move (the R-word!) myself in the coming few years. I watched a few Comic-Con@Home videos in 2020 but then lost touch. This blog went on a near two-year hiatus, only recently ended (good grief!). These days, I’m up to my neck in further Kirby studies work. Whew.
I’m looking forward to getting back to CCI in a smaller way than before, with a reduced schedule and, I hope, lots of get-togethers with friends. We’ll be attending the annual Teaching and Learning with Comics workshop (with Peter Carlson, Antero Garcia, and my friend and colleague Susan Kirtley) at the San Diego Central Library on Wednesday afternoon, hopefully the screening of John Kinhart’s documentary film Married to Comics(about Carol Tyler and Justin Green) on Thursday afternoon, the Eisner Hall of Fame ceremony on Friday morning, and of course the panel I’m participating in, which is about Patrick McDonnell’s recent book, The Super Hero’s Journey:
Mutts creator Patrick McDonnell’s The Super Hero’s Journey is a celebration and reinvention of the Marvel Comics drawn by Jack Kirby he loved as a kid. McDonnell will discuss this book and his upcoming Comic-Con Museum exhibit with Kirby experts Glen David Gold (Carter Beats the Devil), Charles Hatfield (Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby), and publisher Charles Kochman (Abrams ComicArts). Moderated by Kim A. Munson (Comic Art in Museums).
Thanks for Kim Munson for making me a part of this panel!
There are several other Kirby-themed events happening at Comic-Con, and I hope to be able to attend some of them. Look out for:
Jack Kirby’s Mythology (hosted by Rand Hoppe of the Kirby Museum, with Tracy Kirby, Ray Wyman, Jr., Bruce Simon, and Mark Badger), on Thursday at 12:00 noon
TwoMorrows Turns 30 (with John Morrow, publisher and editor of The Jack Kirby Collector among many other things), on Saturday at 4:00pm
and of course Mark Evanier’s Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, on Sunday at 10:00am, this year with Patrick McDonnell, Rick Parker, Tracy Kirby, Dave Schwartz, and Paul Levitz along with Evanier
In addition, there are many panels featuring friends and colleagues of mine that I hope to take in. Also, we’ll be visiting, and on Thursday afternoon after 3pm I’ll be guesting at, the booth of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center (booth #1804), which is on my favorite part of the convention floor, in a triangle formed by the IP (independent publishing) Pavilion, the Small Press Pavilion, and the Gold and Silver Pavilion (near Lobby B2). There’s a map below, FYI, or you can find the Museum’s booth by visiting the searchable Comic-Con Exhibitor Portal and typing in “Kirby.”
I expect to be at the Museum’s booth on Thursday between 3:30 and 5:30pm, signing and selling copies of my Eisner-winning Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby (2011) and the exhibition catalog Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby (2015). Please drop on by, say hello, and chat with me about Kirby! My books will be discounted a bit, and portion of all sales will go to the Kirby Museum.
Jack and Roz Kirby were practically patron saints of Comic-Con in its early years, and I can think of nothing I’d like to do more at the Con than support the Kirby Museum, who are doing the good work of preserving and extending his legacy. Why not stop by and donate?
If you do get to come to Comic-Con, go easy on yourself and everyone around you, remember to stay watered and fed, walk with patience, and enjoy! It’s like nothing else in this world.
Kirby Studies 