Jack Kirby, born Jacob Kurtzberg on New York’s Lower East Side, was one of the most influential creators in the history of American comics. His experiences as a working-class Jewish kid and as a frontline infantry scout in World War II—where he witnessed fascism firsthand—deeply shaped the moral urgency, brutality, and mythic scale of his art. From Captain America’s punch against Hitler to the cosmic struggles of The Fourth World, Kirby consistently framed power as something to be confronted, not worshipped.

Beyond superheroes, Kirby helped invent entire genres, including romance comics, and fought long, often bitter battles over creative credit and labor rights within the comics industry. His legacy spans Marvel and DC, pop culture and politics, realism and cosmic allegory. Today, Kirby is widely recognized not just as a prolific artist, but as a visionary storyteller whose work fused history, trauma, imagination, and resistance into modern American myth.