The Best of Simon and Kirby

Description

This is a collection of complete comic book stories from the legendary team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, covering every genre in which they made their mark. From the very beginning in the late 1930s, Simon and Kirby produced the finest stories around, creating dramatic new super heroes ("Captain America", "Blue Bolt", "Fighting American", and "The Fly"), western action ("Boy's Ranch"), gruesome horror ("Black Magic"), explosive detective fiction ("Justice Traps the Guilty"), and the very first romance comics ("Young Romance"). They were the dream team. This is the only edition authorised by both Joe Simon and the estate of Jack Kirby; each story is hand-picked by Joe Simon himself.

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created one of the most enduring American heroes in 1940 with the first issue of Captain America Comics from Timely Comics - the company that became Marvel Comics. Simon proved to be a brilliant editor, writer, penciller, inker, and businessman, serving as an editor for Archie, Harvey, Fox, Crestwood, and Mainline Publications - Simon and Kirby's own company. Jack Kirby is one of the most famous illustrators in comic book history. Having begun in the Fox Comics Bullpen in 1939, he teamed with Joe Simon on such seminal series as Blue Bolt and Captain Marvel Adventures. In subsequent years they worked in every genre imaginable, often seeing their titles sell in excess of one million copies.

"Joe Simon and Jack Kirby are comics' Lennon/McCartney dream duo. Teaming in the 1940s, Simon was the seasoned writer/editor/inker and Kirby the hot young artist who ultimately became one of the industry's most influential and creative personalities. They invented Captain America, received the first cover bylines, and their jump-off-the-pages action told the story as strongly as the words, changing comics forever. This first in a six-volume series offers a broad look at their collaborations. They worked in many genres, and chapters spotlight heroes, science fiction, war and adventure, crime drama, Westerns, horror, sick humor, and romance (future volumes will cover some subjects individually), each with a background intro by Kirby biographer Mark Evanier. The book sports 25 gloriously restored comics selected by Simon plus five additional covers-the art is absolutely killer!-and is capped with a checklist of all the comics they produced together/apart. Dazzling from beginning to end, The Best of Simon and Kirby is a monumental piece of comics' history and a hunk of Americana that is a dream come true for legions of fans. Buy it for your graphic novels, art, or pop-culture collections, but buy it. Essential." - Library Journal