SIMON and KIRBY SUPERHEROES INTRODUCTION by Neil Gaiman I
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SIMON AND KIRBY SUPERHEROES INTRODUCTION by Neil Gaiman I’ve written about Jack Kirby in the past, about the power and the energy of his art and his storytelling. He was one of the people who made comics what they are today. He was the most dynamic, innovative, most creative artist in Twentieth Century Comics. Even if we were only talking quantity, not quality, given the list of important comics characters Jack co-created, he’d be a giant. Take that as read. It’s true. In this book you’ll see beautiful Simon and Kirby work: you’ll watch Jack’s art move from the fluid and powerful work he was doing in the 1940s to something much closer to his later “Kirbyesque” style: jaws get craggier, anatomy and ways of representing things become more personal. You’ll see some art assists by others, as well: the Ditko work on Captain 3-D in particular is a delight (he went on to contribute to Simon and Kirby's Black Magic title, as well). There is praise aplenty out there for Jack Kirby. That’s not why I wanted to write this introduction. This is my chance to write about Joe Simon. I’ve never met Joe Simon, but he’s been a part of my life for over forty years. I wonder sometimes who I would be today, if not for Joe Simon. After all, Joe Simon wrote Sandman. First he and Jack reinvented the mysterious night avenger with the gasmask (it was not they who put him into a yellow and purple skintight costume and gave him a kid sidekick, but they were the ones who made it work). And then, thirty years later, Joe Simon brought back the Sandman. He teamed up with Jack Kirby for the first time in many years for a one-shot, the Dream-Stream incarnation of the Sandman, nothing in common with his predecessor except the name. He was an “Eternal being, outside time” who, with the nightmares Brute and Glob in tow, rescued a boy named Jed from bad dreams and the things that were causing them. I bought my copy of Sandman #1 from a comics dealer in South London, put it into a bag, and began to wonder who this strange figure in his red and yellow costume was. The things that Joe didn’t explain were as powerful for me as the things that he did. Nearly twenty years later, I would write Sandman. Joe Simon (who created Captain America and so much else) was doing more, always, than just writing comics, but Joe Simon is a remarkable writer of comics. In his 1940s heyday he wrote comics that were always powerful, always filled with energy and madness, stories that simply never stopped moving. They were filled with larger-than-life characters, with strange, caricature- villains. They were pure story, filled with Joe Simon’s own energy, which was unlike anyone else’s. And, very often, even if lopsidedly, they were funny. He did little work for DC Comics in the 60s and 70s: He wrote BROTHER POWER THE GEEK, the story of a dressmaker’s dummy who comes to life as a hippy, and is fired off into space, and PREZ, a comic about the first teenage president of the USA. They were drawn by Jerry Grandinetti. In the only issue of Swamp Thing I ever wrote, I brought Brother Power the Geek back down to earth. Later, with artist Michael Allred, I would retell the story of Prez, from Prez #1, as if it were a synoptic gospel. I love playing with Joe Simon’s toys. One of the first projects I pitched to DC Comics was a revival of BOY COMMANDOES, 1987 style, another great Simon and Kirby comics from the 1940s. But none of those were the things that would change my life. Sandman was. And it started with the Simon/Kirby Sandman from the 1970s – wondering what would happen if you took him a little more seriously, wondering why he dressed like that, what the sand was for, whether he looked different if he was in someone else’s dream. I talked about my ideas to DC Comics’ former President Jenette Kahn, and editor Karen Berger when they were in England, and some months later wound up being invited to write a monthly Sandman comic, but to use my ideas about Joe’s work as a jumping off point and do something else (as writer Roy Thomas would be doing something with a Simon/Kirby Sandman). It changed my life, and I owe it to Joe Simon. And I think what attracted me to Simon’s stories were how unlike anyone else’s they were, how full of life. He created strange villains, part cartoon, part caricature, part embodiment of whatever he wished to talk about. While the trends in comics were towards realism in writing, Joe Simon marched in the opposite direction, creating his own reality. One of my favourite early 20 th century American authors is Harry Stephen Keeler, a mystery writer who wrote stories that were, in terms of plot, dialogue, and geography, nothing like anyone else’s. He was derided for it at the time, but is now collected and remembered while most of his contemporaries are forgotten. He was an odd writer. Joe Simon plotted more efficiently than Keeler, but, like Keeler, he wrote stories that no- one else could have written, and they linger in the memory and in the heart. The oddness of Joe Simon’s work is where it gets its power. Joe Simon stories – and the Simon and Kirby stories you’ll read in this book -- make no pretense of being anyone else’s art or stories. They are in motion all the way, or almost: they begin with something happening, they pile on the event, and only end, when they end, at the final panel, or the penultimate, leaving a final panel of exposition and explanation and plot wrap almost as an afterthought: they hurtle until they stop. Here you’ll see that pattern over and over. And you’ll see stories and characters that shouldn’t work, or rather, that under anyone else’s hand wouldn’t work that work like a dream. Jack Kirby was inimitable, and the Simon-Kirby team was inimitable. These are things that people who love comics know. But you know something else? There’s never been another Joe Simon. Neil Gaiman March 26 2010 ______________________ Neil Gaiman is the author of many highly acclaimed and award-winning books for children, including the New York Times #1 bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning novel The Graveyard Book , the internationally bestselling Coraline , adult novels such as the New York Times bestselling American Gods and Anansi Boys , and award-winning comics including Sandman and 1602 . He is also the author of the picture books Blueberry Girl , illustrated by Charles Vess; and Crazy Hair , illustrated by Dave McKean; and The Dangerous Alphabet , illustrated by Gris Grimly. Originally from England, he now lives in the United States. .