Happy Jack Kirby Day

Mark Evanier writes:

Had he lived, he would have been 89 years old today...and still brilliant. Oh, his amazing creative powers might have dimmed with time and health. The last few years he drew, failing motor skills caused him to not draw anywhere up to his old standards. But that was okay because nobody else was drawing up to his old standards, either.

We're talking Kirby here...Jack Kirby, owner of (arguably) the most fertile imagination ever seen in adventure and fantasy comic books. People referred to him as a great artist, and he was...but I always thought that compliment kind of missed the point. It wasn't just that he drew so well but that he thought of wonderful things to draw that no one else would ever have imagined. Another pretty good artist, Al Williamson, once said, "If you told me or most of my buddies to draw fifty spaceships, they'd all look like they were built in the same plant. If Jack drew fifty spaceships, they'd look like they were built by fifty different alien races."