The granddaddy of all comic book artists and almost a caricature himself, having grown up on the tough on the lower east side of New York. He was keen on drawing from an early age, having his first published strip at the age of 16. After a period working fo Max Fleischer's animation studios he returned once more to strip cartoons, continuing in them almost till the end of his life.

The rest, as they say, is comic book history. Kirby's work spans the Golden Age, the silver age and whatever other age there was until he died in 1994.

Kirby evolved a technique for drawing powerful and dynamic square jawed characters. Towards the end of his career, in comics such as Captain Victory, he almost seemed to parody his own style though he could still produce powerful double panels.

In terms of storyline Kirby veered towards the simplistic if left to his own devices. He probably produced better work when he was partnered with someone else such as Simon or Stan Lee.

It was with Simon that he produced Captain America as well as a host of other golden age creations who are no longer in print (and if you read them you can see why) such as the Sandman, the Boy Commandos and the Newsboy Legion. they also created "Young Romance" which is fun to look at but wouldn't exactly survive too well nowadays.

After their partnership dissolved he created the excellent newspaper strip Sky Masters, inked by Wallace Wood.

The Marvel era of the 60's is, of course, a different matter. They're still with us and Marvel owe much of their success to Kirby with creations such as Fantastic Four, Thor and the X Men as well as work on every other character. He also created the main Marvel villains - Doctor Doom, Magneto and Galactus.

In the seventies Kirby moved to DC and was given carte blanche to create his own characters. So he created the Fourth World on the back of the Jimmy Olsen series. This spawned a couple of spin offs - The Forever People and Mr Miracle, with the infamous Big Barda.

Unfortunately he scripted these himself and they didn't last too long. He jumped from project to project, including Kamandi, the last boy on Earth .

Then it was back to Marvel and the Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy . One series worth mentioning is The Eternals, a wonderful Chariots of the Gods Scenario where they come back to judge the Earth and the the three races who live on it (you need to read the comic to find out which three).

It burned brightly as a series for about twelve issues then began to run out of steam, to be cancelled after issue 18, but not before we had been introduced to Sersi, probably Kirby's most exuberant and amoral female character - and all the better for that.

Before he left Marvel for a Captain Victory, Kirby and Lee combined for one last show. In a one off graphic novel imaginatively entitled "Silver Surfer" they retold the famous Fantastic Four "Coming of Galactus" story - only without the Fantastic Four. The story ain't the greatest but it acts as a summation of Kirby's later obsession with godlike figures. Beautiful drawing too. Worth getting hold of if you can.

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