Good morning! It's good to be back in the Mechanicsburg store after the crazy week of relocting the York store and share the good news on a new collected edition project due out this summer from Titan Books! The project is
The Simon and Kirby Superheroes, and Titan is boasting that this book is going to be a massive 480 page omnibus and will be printed at a special 11″ x 7-1/2″ over-sized format, thus reproducing the comic book pages in their original printed Golden Age size. This book is the first follow-up to Titan's
The Best of Simon and Kirby, the first volume in The Official Simon and Kirby Library, and for this sequel, Titan owner and publisher, Nick Landau promises that "aside from their work for Marvel and DC, this will be all of the superhero stories Joe and Jack wrote and illustrated together from 1940 through 1960. It's a massive undertaking, but our team is ready to take it on."
I think the efforts of the Simon and Kirby Library publishing initiative are important to honor these men's achievements and contributions to the art of comics. The creative output of these two men in the span of two decades did so much to take the very young medium of the comic book and advanced it to the state of a true art form. These guys weren't just creators of comics, they were pioneers of comics. They were some of the earliest artists to bring a bit of the "cinematic" to comic books by expanding their storytelling beyond simply employing the standard comic strip format which was often applied to a comic page at that time. It was understandable the comics looked that way in their inception as a comic book was initially just a reprint collection for comic strips, but Simon and Kirby broke new ground in using center spreads to expand a scene. These techniques and their use of dynamic perspectives and exaggerated forms in action became the signature trademarks of Simon and Kirby's work! The pair started together on a science fiction story, but throughout their time together they'd work on books creating numerous adventure and super-heroes, they contributed early work to the horror genre of comics with their title,
Black Magic, and the pair are credited with the creation of the romance comic with their title,
Young Romance. They also produced many fine examples of crime and detective, western, and war comics during the time of their partnership.
Simon and Kirby had both gotten into comic book work in the late 1930s, but their paths didn't cross until Kirby got work at Fox Feature Syndicate where Simon had been serving as an editor. Simon recalled to panelists at the 1998 San Diego Comic-Con(
Jack Kirby Collector #25) "I loved Jack's work and the first time I saw it I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He asked if we could do some freelance work together. I was delighted and I took him over to my little office. We worked from the second issue of
Blue Bolt." After working on
Blue Bolt #2 and then
The Champion #9, Kirby followed Simon from Fox and to take a better paying gig at Timely Comics, a comic book publishing arm of pulp magazine publisher, Martin Goodman's Timely Publications Company. Goodman was interested in venturing into comic book publishing and after the hit he had with
Marvel Comics #1, Goodman began assembling an in-house staff, hiring writer-artist Joe Simon as editor, making Simon the first official employee of the new Timely Publications. Simon negotiated Kirby's move to Timely and their wages at the company, and they quickly demonstrated their worth by creating Captain America, the seminal patriotic hero of the 1940s.
Captain America #1 arrived on newsstands in 1941, sold out in days, and the second issue's print run was set at over a million copies. The title's success established the team as a notable creative force in the industry and the first issue's success established Kirby as the art director at Timely. Oddly enough, these years at Timely also set the stage for the second great creative collaboration of Kirby's career, as Joe Simon hired a young wannabe writer, Stan Lee, to serve as his office assistant. The fabled Marvel Age of comics laid its foundation not only in the characters which emerged from Timely publishing but also in the assemblage of its creative staff. Working with Simon was pivotal in Lee's creative development as he's stated "Lucky for me, when I entered comics Joe Simon was my mentor. In script, art, and editing he was the master."
While time at Timely was good for Simon and Kirby, their working relationship was not just forged in the Timely bullpen but also through the freelance work they produced outside the company as well. One such example of this work is their work on
The Black Owl for Prize Comics. In fact, it is with that mysterious costumed hero that this edition of the Simon and Kirby Library will commence their
Superheroes collection. This upcoming volume will also include the big-top swashbuckler known as
Stuntman, the Runyonesque adventurer
The Vagabond Prince, the entire run of the cold-war patriot
The Fighting American, and
The Fly and
Private Strong—whcih were the final Simon and Kirby collaborations before Jack Kirby made the move to help launch the Marvel Universe.
Series editor, Steve Saffel wants readers to know Titan Books has "got some amazing surprises in store” with this project. For example, Restoration wizard Harry Mendryk will take the groundbreaking 1953 adventures of
Captain 3-D and convert them to their original line art. These classic stories also feature artwork by Mort Meskin and a young Steve Ditko–who went on to co-create
The Amazing Spider-Man at Marvel–and will be published in full color for the first time. “Plus, with a little help from our friends, we’ve located a bunch of never-before-published pages starring
Stuntman,” Saffel revealed. “Many of the pages are in the hands of private collectors, with others coming directly from the Joe Simon archives. As a result, we’ll be able to pull together nearly the entire story, '
Stuntman Crowns a Jungle Lord,” and offer up other exciting features for the readers.”
If you'd like to learn more about Titan Publishing efforts to bring the Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Library to new readers, learn about this new upcoming volume, and Titan's plans for future volumes focusing on their work in horror, detective, and romance comics, please visit the project's
official website!
Thanks for reading!
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