Joe Simon and Jack Kirby of the
Golden Age in American Art
The Superhero is about as American as you can get. No other country, including Australia and the UK, have ever been as successful with them. Gaudy costumes and plenty of biff was how it all started. One of the reasons why the 1930s and 1940s was called the Golden Age was because there was little in the way of censorship. Anything went that might get sales.
In 1930s USA, jobs for artists were hard to come by up until Superman and then Batman hit the newsstands in the latter half of this decade, opening up new, exciting possibilities. Not every costumed character was set to last long and neither was every publisher in the field who thought comic books were the way to make money. Pulp magazines were still flourishing but they were a hit and miss gambit. Most people in the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand had radios. There was music and comedy. Also adventure stories containing mystery men such as The Shadow.
Joe Simon and Jack Kirby teamed up, grabbing whatever work in the relatively new field of comic books that was going. They had a rugged style in which there was plenty of action, moving what were then simple plots along.
Not every costumed character created by Simon and Kirby would be gold just as not every publisher they came to work for stayed in the game long enough to be a success. Characters such as The Black Owl, Stuntman and The Vagabond Prince are best remembered by collectors and comic book historians.
One thing they are best remembered for is the creation of Captain America for Timely which eventually became Marvel. There were other patriotic heroes but this particular one has outlasted many of his contemporaries.
Even before the USA came into the 2nd World War, comic book artists, writers and editors had plenty to say about what was happening and had been going on in Europe. Many of them were the sons and daughters of migrants and still had relatives living in countries being taken over. Also, many of them were Jewish and were well aware of the NAZI dislike for Jews.
The artists and writers of the 1930s and 1940s were mostly young men. When they reached the right age they enlisted in the military. Gene Colan, who became popular from his work in the 1970s Tomb of Dracula series for Marvel, was an MP stationed in Hawaii during the war.
Stan Lee's contribution to comic book patriotism, during the war, was a costumed spy called The Destroyer who worked with the German underground and other underground agencies to bring an end to the Nazi reign of terror.
It can be noted that not all Germans were considered by the artists and writers to be bad but that was not true, as far as I am aware, when it came to the Japanese. They were depicted as yellow and evil. Back before the war, the Chinese, in some comic book and pulp magazines, were depicted this way but, since the Chinese were allies during the war, that changed.
After the war, the interest in costumed characters faded. In search of the next big thing, Simon and Kirby invented the Romance comic book which, for a while, was popular. In the 1950s there was a short lived revival of the superhero since someone, like Simon and Kirby's Fighting American, had to take on the Reds. Sales, however, were not good. Then there was self imposed censorship. Simon got out and went into advertising. Kirby teamed up with Stan Lee, launching the Marvel superheroes of the 1960s in the Silver Age of comics. Simon worked briefly with Kirby on The Fly for Archie comics but that, as far as I know, was their last team up in the comic book field. They remained friends even though they did go their separate ways.
