Comic Book Questions Answered – where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

This is a bit of an odd one, in the sense that a reader just forwarded me a question that Deniz Camp asked on Twitter, but hey, whatever, it's a good question, so I'll answer it here!

While everyone knows a lot about Jack Kirby's career from when he joined Marvel Comics, Kirby was already pretty much one of the most successful artists in comics BEFORE he joined Marvel. He was already in his 40s when he began working for Marvel regularly in the mid-to-late 1950s. Kirby, in effect, created the "Marvel Method" because Stan Lee knew that Jack Kirby didn't need scripts to do his work. He could just be given a plot and Kirby would do the rest of the story himself and Lee would just have to script it later (when Kirby started at Marvel, he would even come up with his own plots independent of any other writer - he eventually did the same later on in the 1960s with Fantastic Four).

Jack Kirby started working in comics for Eisner and Iger's packaging studio. A packaging studio is when writers and artists would create stories for publishers and then sell them to the publishers to print. Naturally, some companies began to just skip the middle man and just hire the writers and artists themselves. One of those companies was Fox Features, who hired Joe Simon (one of the other guys who worked as a creator for a rival packaging studio, Funnies, Inc.) as a freelance editor. Simon worked for Fox and for Funnies, Inc. Kirby had left Eisner and Iger and began working for Fox Features. He and Simon worked together on some stories.

Funnies, Inc. had been hired by Martin Goodman for his new line of comic books and after it was very successful, Goodman decided to hire some of the creators himself. He then hired Simon as his new Editor-in-Chief. Simon brought Kirby with him.

The two of them then created Captain America Comics...

Simon and Kirby would split the work on the series (the book was filled with multiple stories in it) between each other. Kirby was the much faster artist, so he drew most of the stories. The two men would plot out stories together and since Kirby was spending more time drawing, Simon typically scripted the books and inked Kirby. In other words, they'd plot together (sometimes Simon would plot his stories by himself) and then Kirby would pencil most of the stories while Simon would pencil some of them and then Simon would script and ink most of the pages. That division of labor allowed them to produce a whole lot of content. Obviously, it was built on the back of Kirby's amazing ability to draw lots of pages. Still, it was an effective division of labor either way.

Captain America Comics was a huge hit, but Simon and Kirby decided to leave Timely after Martin Goodman screwed them over on some promises he made regarding profit sharing on the sales of the Captain America Comics series. They then signed with DC Comics, where they then began to do their own little empire.

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Again, they followed their earlier approach at DC Comics, as well. However, for the first time, they were doing so much work that they began to enlist other creators, as well (they likely would have done the same in Captain America Comics had they not left the book fairly early on).

So 1943's Adventure Comics #85 had a Manhunter story, "The Mystery of the Monster Bird" that was written by Kirby and drawn by Pierce Rice...

After World War II, Simon and Kirby worked for a number of other companies. They developed their own studio and as such, they would often have other artists work on these series. Like their famous series for Prize Comics called Boys' Ranch. Kirby drew the first three issues, but the last three issues were mostly drawn by other artists (with Kirby doing splash pages at the beginning of each story) and Kirby presumably at the VERY least plotted the stories, but likely scripted them, as well.

Simon and Kirby typically liked to have Kirby draw the early issues to hook in readers and then bring in the other artists. Guys like Mort Meskin (great artists in their own right, of course, they're just not Jack Kirby). This continued with their work for Harvey Comics and other companies.

In general, though, Kirby drew so many pages that he typically just wrote for himself, especially after he left Marvel for DC again in 1970. He drew what he wrote for pretty much all of his DC work and then continued to write what he drew when he returned to Marvel in 1975.

I might have very well missed other examples of Kirby writing for other artists, but whatever, the main thing is that yes, Kirby did, in fact, write stuff that other artists drew.

Thanks for the question, Deniz! Even if it was not for me!

If anyone else has a question, drop me a line a brianc@cbr.com!