They call him the King for a reason. Perhaps no single artist contributed to the language and history of comic books more than Jack Kirby. In his nearly six decades of comic book work, Kirby created or helped create some of the biggest characters in the medium: Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the New Gods, the Demon, Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor. (He nearly helped create Spider-Man, too, but Stan Lee called his designs “too heroic,” and so the Spider-Man fans know and love was co-created by fellow luminary Steve Ditko).

Related: Jack Kirby: 5 Reasons The New Gods Are His Greatest Creation (& 5 Why It's The Eternals)

Over the years, Kirby's art has beamed, enticed, provoked, and crackled from the newsstands. Though he worked for several companies during his career, many of his most-iconic covers come from his work with Marvel. Here are Jack Kirby's ten most-iconic Marvel Comics covers.

Updated on August 28th, 2020 by Josh Davison: Jack Kirby's imprint on modern pop culture is immeasurable. He created countless iconic characters and created an artistic style that inspired and molded thousands, if not millions, of artists that followed him. The Jack Kirby style is unmistakable; you often don't even need to see an attribution to know who drew his covers. Any list written here could barely scratch the surface of the beautiful and stunning catalog of covers drawn by Jack King Kirby. That said, we've expanded on this article with an additional five entries with the greatest and most iconic Jack Kirby covers.

15 Avengers #1

Of course, the debut of Earth's Mightiest Heroes measures among Kirby's most beloved covers. The header does crowd the scenery a little bit, but, in fairness, this was a titanic union of most of Marvel's characters at that point.

You get Thor readying to pound Loki, Iron Man and the Hulk stalking towards the God of Mischief, and Ant-Man and the Wasp bussing around in the foreground. The Avengers sure made one heck of a debut on this cover.

14 Black Panther #7

Jack Kirby wrote and drew a weird and wonderful solo series for the Black Panther that started in 1977. It was filled with treasure-hunters, bulbous headed humans with psychic powers from the far-future, and a pair of jeweled frogs purportedly belonging to King Solomon himself that allowed people to travel through time.

It was great, and this was the best cover of the series. Here, King T'Challa leaps at the reader with claws outstretched with a glowing menace staring back at him in the foreground. It's such a spectacular cover that it's the one used as the cover in all collected editions of the series.

13 Fantastic Four #52

Speaking of the Black Panther, this is his first appearance in the Fantastic Four magazine. It's another stellar setup with the then-unknown Black Panther stalking the First Family of Heroes while they wander through a landscape of advanced technology unimaginable.

It really drives home the mystique of T'Challa when he first took on the Fantastic Four. Is he a hero? A villain? Or something else altogether? Why is he hunting the FF? On top of all of this, the cover has Kirby's fabulous ability to craft a geometric beauty in the cold wires and mechanisms of futuristic technology.

12 X-Men #4

This cover from X-Men #4 finds the mutant team squaring off against their mortal enemy, Magneto, and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. This cover highlights the menace and strangeness of this villainous crew. Magneto looms in the foreground while Toad rubs his hands together. Mastermind glowers from the background, and Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch look almost disinterested in the whole affair.

It's a killer cover introduction for a new team of antagonists, and it shows them seemingly rendering the X-Men themselves helpless to stop it all.

11 Incredible Hulk #1

Is he a man, a monster, or is he both? The cover to Incredible Hulk #1 finds this seemingly normal scientist transforming into a bulking monstrosity leaving bystander, general, and grunt alike astonished and terrified. It tells you everything you need to know about the Hulk in a single image. Bruce Banner and the Hulk are one, and it's something even the military is helpless to stop.

This cover is actually a slight recolor, as the original had Bruce Banner blonde, but that one was hard to track down a decent image of. Regardless, this is another spectacular cover showing off the Kirby magic.

10 Devil Dinosaur #1

Devil Dinosaur, and his very special friend Moon-Boy, debuted in 1978. Created in response to Kirby's successful Kamandi series for rival DC, Devil Dinosaur never achieved that sort of notoriety.

The art of that cover, though, is really something: Devil is all teeth and crimson, Moon-Boy is riding like a boss, and the logo in the corner has the title hero looking like a rum advertisement. It's bold and showy, and that's why this cover makes the list.

9 Strange Tales #135

So much of what fans take for granted in the current Marvel media empire starts here, in Strange Tales #135, published in 1965. Here is the origin of S.H.I.E.L.D, of Hydra, and of the soldier-turned-superspy Nick Fury.

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The bold lines and fancy gadgets are classic Kirby, and the Hydra soldier lurks over the entire cover with ominous menace. And if that wasn't enough, this issue has some classic Doctor Strange art by Steve Ditko, too.

8 Tales to Astonish #13

Few could make a monster look as good as the King, as evidenced by this iconic cover featuring the tree man who would eventually go on to be one of today's most beloved movie stars. (That's quite a sentence!)

This classic issue of Tales to Astonish first introduced Groot. At first an alien invader bent on subjugating all Earthlings, Groot eventually was re-invented as a noble alien. But the image that sold a million Baby Groots starts here.

7 Fantastic Four #48

Even though Galactus doesn't appear on the cover of Fantastic Four #48, his presence is clearly felt in the reactions of the Fantastic Four, and especially in the despairing posture and expression of the Watcher.

This image perfectly captures the sense of the existential threat that Galactus usually poses to a planet: massive, unrelenting, certain. Galactus and Silver Surfer would each make their first cover appearances on the very next issue, but they make their first appearances within #48's pages.

6 Fantastic Four #72

Two dozen issues later, Silver Surfer appears on the cover of Fantastic Four #72, a perfect image of the surfer of the space way and the distinctive effect fans have come to call the Kirby Krackle or Kirby Dots.

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While his use of his namesake dots predates even his work at Marvel, Kirby's fractal-like negative space energy depictions found their fame in his cosmic Marvel stories. In this cover, he uses them to represent those invisible forces that bind and rend everything throughout the cosmos, making physical and manifest the powers that barely exist as ideas.

5 Captain America #100

Captain America is so iconic that even his 100th issue gets to be labeled a “Premiere Issue!” After taking a break from comics, and then getting defrosted in an Avengers book (more on that in a minute), Cap returns to his own series with this amazing cover.

Cap in all his glory, flanked by some of Marvel's greatest heroes. Kirby's art just leaps off the page. It's a great cover that would make number one on anyone else's list, but this is the King's list, so it only makes number five.

4 Fantastic Four #51

No one could make The Thing more human than Jack Kirby. On this cover, the despair of the rocky Ben Grimm, AKA The Thing, emotes from the page. It's a quiet story that comes on the heels of the Galactus trilogy of issues.

This was a brave change-of-pace for Kirby, and his story collaborator, Stan Lee. It's one thing for a comic book artist to draw monsters and fight scenes, it's quite another to show that those monsters can cry.

3 Fantastic Four #1

The last Fantastic Four issue to make the list is also the most iconic, destined for homages and parodies for the foreseeable future. Simply put, this comic book changed history. According to many comic book historians, Fantastic Four #1, published in 1961, rests in the center of what is now called the Silver Age of comics, so it's impossible to ignore the impact the FF had on the comic book world.

The first book produced using what is now known as “The Marvel Method,” Kirby and Lee combined to create a family that happened to be superheroes. They had real problems and squabbled like everyone does with their relatives. A long chain of successful Marvel Comics begins here, with Kirby establishing the group dynamic right from the cover.

2 Avengers #4

Kirby and Lee mined Marvel's history to defrost Captain America and include him in The Avengers. Once again, Kirby has crafted a cover where the central figure (Cap, again) springs from the page. It had been a decade since Cap had appeared in comics, notwithstanding an impostor Cap in an issue of Strange Tales, and it was time for him to return.

Fans learn about Cap's suspended animation following World War II, and a new generation of comic book fans gets to root for the Star-Spangled Avenger. Captain America is truly one of Kirby's greatest creations, and this cover demands attention.

1 Captain America Comics #1

Co-created by Jack Kirby with the inimitable and equally iconic Joe Simon, it's only fair that Captain America should top this list. The cover of Captain America #1, drawn by both Kirby and Simon, was published nine months before the United States entered World War II,  and shows the eponymous Cap punching out Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. As a political statement, the message from Simon and Kirby -- both sons of immigrant Jewish parents -- is clear.

This image continues to have a lasting legacy, both in comics and on-screen in the MCU, as it was homaged in Captain America: The First Avenger. When it first hit newsstands, though, that impact would have been all the more resounding, just as Simon and Kirby intended.

Next: DC: Top 10 Villains Jack Kirby Created