ASK me: Kirby and My Kin

Brian Dreger, the man who asks all the best questions, sent this one in…

Did your mother and father ever meet Jack and Roz Kirby? Did they spend time together? Did your parents understand what Jack Kirby meant to you as a professional and also as a fan? I’m curious about this because both sets of people seemed very instrumental in your life.

When my pal/partner Steve Sherman and I were working as assistants to Jack Kirby, there wasn't a whole lotta money there. That's because DC Comics kept shooting down Jack's proposals for new comics on which we would have worked. Jack paid us for what we did do…and kept trying to pay us for other reasons.

We both declined those attempts and later concurred that the time with Jack was the most rewarding "job" either of us ever had…and would have been even if we'd been paying him. Steve and I both had other sources of income then — him working for a graphics firm; me writing for markets other than comic books and then, after a while, for Disney's Publications Department and for Gold Key comics.

Jack took an almost-paternal interest in our other work and kinda/sorta understood it. My own father, who was as good a father as any boy ever had, didn't quite understand how I was making more money per week on average than he was. He also couldn't quite grasp the "on average" aspect of it. To him, a paycheck was something you received on the same day every week and for the same amount. The roller-coaster finances of a freelancer were alien to him.

One day, I was telling Jack about that and he insisted on phoning my father. Jack, laying it on thicker than I think he believed at the time or ever, told my father that his son had loads of talent and would do very well in his career. My father was, of course, quite pleased to hear this but I don't think he understood enough about who Jack Kirby was to be really excited about this endorsement.

Nor should he have been because I think Jack would have done that for just about anyone. He believed New Talent should always be encouraged.

Anyway, that was the one and only contact between Jack Kirby and anyone besides me named Evanier. No one in my family met Roz.

My father and Jack had some things in common. My father was born in 1910 and Jack was born in 1917…so more or less the same era. They were both raised in not-wealthy Jewish families. They were both staunch Liberal Democrats their entire lives and both hated Richard Nixon. They were both obsessive about providing for their families…

…and that's about it. My father wished he could be in some creative field but never got close to one. Jack, to the best of my knowledge, never worked for the Internal Revenue Service.

Oh — and I almost forgot the biggest thing they had in common: They were both very, very nice men without a scintilla of guile or meanness in their bodies. I was and still am a very fortunate kid.