All this talk about Jack Kirby recently has brought to mind so many of my experiences with him, every one of which was pleasant and positive. I edited the four books a month he wrote for Marvel for the last year and a half he worked there (with some help from assistants sometimes). The pages […]
JayJay here. Jim will write about the comic book business and about his work, but he doesn’t often write about purely personal things. Mostly, no doubt, because his work has been the all-consuming thing in his life and he’s never really “off work” completely. But two incidents stand out in my mind that define who […]
Note from JayJay: Jim wrote the following recently and it appeared on the Bleeding Cool web site along with the entire script for the show. I’m reposting it here. You can read the script here on Bleeding Cool. In the spring of 1987, lawyer Steve Massarsky closed a deal with Marvel Licensing for the live […]
JayJay here, again. I’ve been sending Jim little comments and questions that I’ve read on various forums and on Twitter and he has agreed to respond to some of those as well as some of the blog comments. Rick Bacon commented on a post: “I don’t think I ever really knew that young Shooter’s work […]
JayJay here. I’ve asked Jim to answer some of your recent questions. I’m glad you asked! I was curious about some of these things, too. Here are his answers. We will get to more questions in the future. Marc Miyake said… (in Reference to Secrets of the Secret Wars) Why was Mike Zeck the artist […]
JayJay here. Someone has stated that Kirby never actually filed a lawsuit against Marvel and has made a number of comments about Jim’s recollections. Here is his reply: You may be correct, possibly the suit was never filed. I was Editor in Chief, not company counsel. Around the office, the matter was routinely referred to […]
The road that led to Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars actually began when Kenner Toys licensed the DC Universe for a boys’ action figure line. Their competitor, Mattel, already had their He-Man action figure line, which was doing very well, but wanted to hedge the bet in case comic book character action figures became the […]
Before the mid-seventies, no one got artwork returned. Actually, few cared about it. As the collector market grew stronger, and the artwork became valuable, artists started caring. By the time I became editor in chief at Marvel in 1978 (and therefore was in a position to have a voice in the Marvel management), both Marvel […]
Back when Jack Kirby was doing the monster books in the 1950s. I thought they were great. I’d see these books, and the Kirby ones stood out. I’d never seen comics like that before. It made an impression on me. Jack’s, and Steve Ditko’s stuff, just made a tremendous impression. Jack’s work had become somewhat […]
Around about early 1978, Marvel’s warehouse got broken into and ransacked. Other than scattering artwork all over the floor–they apparently hadn’t taken any of it that we could tell–but this warehouse was a dump! It was completely unsafe; anybody could break in there. I went to the people that ran the warehouse and said, “I […]