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Kirby eventually found himself at Timely's 1950s incarnation, Atlas Comics, later to be known as Marvel Comics. There, in the 1960s, he and writer-editor Stan Lee co-created many of Marvel's major characters, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Hulk.

Kirby's approach to comics was to make the pages explode with brilliant, dynamic life-- comics had never looked the way they did under Kirby's command, nor would they be the same thereafter.

For almost a decade, Kirby provided Marvel's house style. At Stan Lee's request, he often provided newly hired Marvel artists with penciled "breakdown" layouts, over which they would apply their own pencil work-- in order to become acquainted with the Marvel look; Kirby's unprecedented style.

As artist Gil Kane described:
"It wasn't merely that Jack conceived most of the characters that are being done, but... Jack's point of view and philosophy of drawing became the governing philosophy of the entire publishing company and, beyond the publishing company, of the entire field... Jack was like the Holy Scripture and [the bullpen of artists] simply had to follow him without deviation."


The Lee-Kirby titles met with high sales and critical acclaim, but Kirby felt that he was being treated unfairly, and so he left Marvel Comics in 1970 for rival DC. There, Kirby created his Fourth World saga, which spanned several comics titles. While these series proved commercially unsuccessful and were canceled, several of their characters and the Fourth World mythos have continued as a significant part of the DC Universe.

Kirby returned to Marvel briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s, then ventured into television animation and independent comics. In his later years, Kirby gained recognition in the mainstream press for his career accomplishments, and in 1987, he, along with Carl Barks and Will Eisner, was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.


He died on February 6, 1994, at the age of 76.

_{SOURCES: Kirby, King Of Comics by Mark Evanier; Tales To Astonish by Ronin Ro; The Jack Kirby Museum; Wikipedia.}