When Jack “King” Kirby’s heir put the new Disney/Marvel team-up on legal notice this month a lot of the fair-weather LA ComiCon goers stared into their iPhones at the Nikki Finke story and scratched their heads.
Who the hell is Jacob Kurtzberg anyway? The L.A. Times’ Geoff Boucher provides the answer.
Jack Kirby, the abandoned hero of Marvel’s grand Hollywood adventure, and his family’s quest [updated]: “
‘My favorite thing about Kirby’s artwork was his storytelling,’ Lee said. ‘He was really a film director doing comics.’
In that, Kirby was certainly ahead of his time. Comics are a huge part of Hollywood now, thanks to the modern era of computer-generated special effects that, finally, can match the galactic visions and super-powered mayhem that Kirby put to paper in the 1960s. Kirby’s influence is nothing less than massive on several generations of artists and filmmakers.‘There was power in the work of Jack Kirby that changed the way I looked at things,’ said Guillermo del Toro, writer-director of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth.’ ‘There was no one else like him and there never will be.’”
(Via The Hero Complex.)
