Jack Kirby may have been a legend in Marvel Comics, but his particular art style didn’t immediately mesh with DC’s editorial staff.
Jack Kirby continues to live on as one of the biggest names in comic book history. Having co-created most of the iconic characters in the Marvel Universe, he also had a stint at DC Comics. Although his tenure there saw DC win over perhaps its greatest villain, it also caused controversy regarding its greatest hero.
One of the titles Kirby worked on was a Superman spin-off book, albeit one that primarily focused on the Man of Steel’s friend Jimmy Olsen. While the artist/writer would indeed “wow” the geeky Olsen, his artistic portrayal of Superman was so controversial that DC was forced to redraw him. This is how the proverbial King of the comics became a pauper when it came to the last son of Krypton.
Jack Kirby’s time at DC Comics was monumental
As mentioned, Jack Kirby spent much of his comics career at Marvel Comics, having co-created Captain America with Joe Simon in the Golden Age of Comics. During the Silver Age, he and Stan Lee introduced fan favorites like the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Thor, and Black Panther. As these properties became wildly successful with readers, Marvel quickly came to threaten DC’s status quo. This was thanks to a heightened sense of realism, both in art and writing. No matter how wacky the stories may have been, the Marvel characters were much more human than the DC cast thanks to Kirby’s more nuanced characterization and “realistic” angular faces. Unfortunately, Kirby’s working relationship with Stan Lee deteriorated further and when a new contract went equally unfavorable for the artist, he left Marvel for DC.
Due to his popularity, he was given complete freedom in which books he could work on. Not wanting to cost another artist or writer his job, he took over. Superman’s friend Jimmy Olsen, a book that lacked a consistent creative team. Kirby went to work bringing all sorts of cosmic wonder and his trademark “Kirby crackle” to the DC Universe, with concepts he had begun developing for the likes of the Inhumans and other cosmic Marvel properties, transforming them into characters like the villainous Darkseid. This was tempered with some inspiration from his time at Marvel, as Jimmy Olsen went from wide-eyed kid to rebellious young man. Kirby’s art style was also known for giving characters angular, spiky features. While this may have worked at Marvel, it wasn’t as welcome at DC.
Jack Kirby’s Superman was redrawn by other artists
Superman’s design and depiction in DC’s books at the time was still very much defined by the work of artist Curt Swan. Therefore, anything that deviated from this aspect was a problem, even if the problem was caused by Jack Kirby. Despite making a big deal out of Kirby’s move to the company, DC Comics didn’t like how it drew its starring hero. His rigid form and his face under Kirby’s feather were too rough and too different from Swan’s. As a result, artists Murphy Anderson and Mike Royer went in and cleaned up the art, erasing the faces from the Kirby drawings and giving Superman a more traditional look.
While not ideal for Kirby, such a situation arguably made sense, as even Marvel’s most successful properties have eschewed the grandiose stories in favor of the relatable ones. With his power diminished from him, Kirby would eventually return to Marvel. Many of his unused ideas of his for the New Gods would be reborn as the eternal property, which only recently achieved some kind of notoriety. However, he would continue to work for DC in later years, continuing his work on the fourth world stable while also drawing a comic tie-in with Kenner’s Superpowers Ironically, this would be where his art, even on Superman, stood alone, giving him some degree of unfiltered legacy in DC’s main superhero.
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