Young Kurtzberg - easy read version (King Kirby 041)

If you didn't read the previous post (King Kirby 040), you might wish to do so before reading this one. The interviews with Jack Kirby give background and perspective to this strip which was drawn back in 1983, and eventually published in Argosy #2 in 1990. The Kirby Museum lists this as being an 8 page story. I guess they skipped the two-page spread that brings the page count up to 10, as you can see here:

Street Code by Jack Kirby for Argosy magazine (1990)

Young Kurtzberg (King Kirby 040)

Let's return to the Jack Kirby interview in The Comics Journal #134. Last time, Kirby spoke of his early art career. This time, let's jump back before that to his days growing up before he started his career.

For a bit of extra perspective, here's an excerpt from the interview in The Jack Kirby Treasury, Vol. 1 covering the same period:

Here's a photo of the Boy's Brotherhood Republic that ran with both interviews:

 ...and a cartoon from the BBR Reporter's 3rd Anniversary:

And, lastly, we have a sample of young Jacob Kurtzberg's first weekly strip, K's Konceptions:

Jack Kirby interviews by Gary Groth and unknown (Greg Theakston?) for The Comics Journal #134 and The Jack Kirby Treasury Vol. 1 (1990, 1982)

Early Art Days (King Kirby 030)

I mentioned previously Gary Groth's massive interview with Jack "King" Kirby back in issue #134 of The Comics Journal. Let's start digging into that a bit. But just a bit at a time with over 40 pages, it's an epic interview. Even better, Roz joins in partway through. If that name isn't familiar to you, Roz Kirby was Jack's wife for nearly 60 years. If you ever met them, you know she was very much a part of him. Also, quite conveniently for the interview, she acted as something of an external memory storage bank for Jack at times.
That's later, though. We're going to start not quite at the beginning, but close. We'll come back to Jack's early days growing up and the street code.

Today we'll focus on The King's beginnings as an artist.
(NOTE: The excerpted interview segments below sometimes skip over portions of the conversation that were less relevant to today's topic, so this is not a complete transcript of the article. Some of the skipped bits are linked to other topics we'll be covering later, and will appear at that time.)

excerpts from Gary Groth's interview with Jack Kirby for The Comics Journal #134 (1990)

Joe & Jack aka The King & I (King Kirby 010)

In 1990, Gary Groth ran an interview with Jack Kirby in The Comics Journal #134. We'll be taking a look at the interview, but not yet. It's pretty amazing, at over 40 pages(!) it's a lot to break down. But in that same issue, he also interviewed Jack's long-time partner, Joe Simon. Much of the interview is given to the business of comics and to Joe's new book, The Comic Book Makers. A fair chunk is, quite naturally, dedicated to his relationship and work with Jack. The rest is well worth reading for those interested in comics history, but this is King Kirby month, so let's just excerpt those bits of the conversation, eh?
(Yeah, i know the text images below are presented rather large, but if i scale them down the system here scales by height, not width, so they keep shifting sizes making reading even more awkward. I'll take that into account when prepping the next scanned text piece.)

Bonus Pic: Here's the 1941 photo of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby they used for the introductory image on the article:

Joe Simon interviewed by Gary Groth for The Comics Journal #134