While learning his trade in the early 1930's, he progressed from assembly-line animation jobs at the Max Fleischer animation studios to developing newspaper strips under a range of pseudonyms, sometimes providing an entire page of strips, each with a different style.  His trademark method evolved gradually, using only enough dramatic light and shade for the eye to immediately grasp the dynamics of an image.  His storytelling relied on the same dynamic, highlighting clearly defined characters in imaginative situations.  By the mid thirties, he was already a reliable and respected professional. 

By his own admission, he was unable to grasp the intricacies of business, always leaving these to a partner.  This was initially one Joe Simon, with whom he collaborated in producing 30's and 40's characters such as the Sandman, Stuntman, Captain America, the Boy Commandos, and later a host of special feature comics such as Black Magic and True Love. Their comics sold well in the face of plentiful competition.  Before being enlisted, Simon and Kirby turned out enough advance work to satisfy the market for the entire time they were overseas during World War 2. On his return, Kirby found the industry in a slump, but continued to turn out comics.  This continued until the crash of the late 50's, caused by fears that comics were responsible for the corruption of American youth.  With nothing to lose, he joined forces with Timely-Atlas' Stan Lee, and started producing stories with a flair which gradually proved irresistable to the market, as the pair forged closer bonds and gathered momentum.  Lee's business acumen and popular literacy combined with Kirby's raw creativity proved synergistic, and very successful. 

The Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the Avengers, the X-Men, Sergeant Fury, Thor, and a host of re-launched characters, including his original Captain America , all appeared in the new setting of the Marvel universe.  University students and professors took an interest, and the Marvel characters became known across America, gathering TV fame and much critical acclaim.  Despite his talent, the lack of capability for the business side of comics was to prove unfortunate, since by all accounts, it was Kirby who gradually created almost the entire stable of characters which re-launched comics as a new, exciting, and even relevant force, but it was Lee who retained much of the credit for this, and Marvel Comics which retained ownership and copyright. Merely naming Kirby's creations is deceptive; Thor, for example, was an epic series which brought to life the Norse Gods mythology, including the regal Odin, evil Loki, noble Balder, beautiful Sif, buffoon Volstagg, the mystical city of Asgard, the wilderness of the Norn Queen and the Trolls, the Enchantress, and the world of Limbo, where the lost souls of condemned gods dwelled.  This world of immortals was linked to Earth by the mystical Rainbow Bridge, guarded by Heimdall, whose senses could detect movement a galaxy away.  The end of the Universe, Ragnarok, would come when the Odinsword was drawn from its scabbard, bringing to an end the worlds of both man and immortal.

At the same time, in his Fantastic Four series, he launched an unbelievable array of characters in a never-ending spiral of complexity.  From it emerged villains such as the psychotic Dr Doom and Moleman, the Skrulls, the Wizard, the Black Panther, and the strange Inhumans, led by the silent Black Bolt, and, gradually, figures with a more universal dimension, such as the Watcher, a strange being bound always to record momentous events throughout the Universe, but forbidden to interfere.  Then appeared Galactus, a colossal being who declared himself above mere good and evil, but who sustained himself by feeding off the energy of living planets, leaving desolate, lifeless husks in his wake:  "I bear no malice; emotion is for lesser beings."  Lee's imagination was clearly fired by Kirby's magical images, and his scripting was never bettered. 

Galactus' emissary was the Silver Surfer, one of Kirby's best creations, and one which most typified his humanist philosophy.  The Surfer had the gift of universal travel, and cosmic power, but finally rebelled against Galactus when the Earth became at risk.   He was condemned to live on Earth, but never to leave it.  For a being with a cosmic dimension, this was an intolerable imprisonment.  Hence the intensely appealing marriage of great power and great difficulty which always characterised Kirby's best work.  Today the Surfer remains among the most popular comicbook characters ever created.  Marvel flourished.  But behind it all, Kirby was a relentless engine of creativity, whose power would only wane towards the end of his days.

True to genius' tendencies, Kirby always preferred to create anew rather than copy what he had done before.  Fellow artist John Romita remembers that, while other pencillers might work on a design for a soldier and retain it as long as possible, Kirby's approach was more unusual.  Rather than design one new uniform for an entire army, he would design different ones for each member, discarding the entire set of images once the story was told.  Even regular characters would often vary in the details of their costume, requiring the work of clean up artists, quietly maintaining visual consistency between the pages Kirby had submitted.  His knowledge of anatomy was non-existent, and each image was drawn according to the needs of the story at that moment.  Kirby was competent to adjust perspective, proportion and scale as the story required, and was impatient with publishers who insisted on exact and realistic detail, which he saw as a hindrance to telling stories.  "You have to decide what you want," he was to say later, "a book of great pictures, or a fantastic story."

During the mid sixties, Kirby was nearing 50 years of age.  He recalls always being tired while turning out so many comics, so it is certain he was working at peak capacity, and it is doubtful his output will be equalled.  Even among other successful artists of the time, such as Romita, Buscema, Steranko and Ditko (creator of Spiderman), he outperformed them by a factor of two or three times.  When taken over the entire period of his career, his output is unbelievable.  2,500 complete comics, usually 20 pages or more each, 487 separate characters, and fifty years of continuous storytelling.

For all the Marvel work, Lee wrote the dialogue, but the way in which the comics were produced guarantee that Kirby was the creator, for with Marvel, it was the artist who first drew the story, often without the benefit of a written brief, designing and pacing it as he saw fit.  The dialogue would be added afterwards, providing a perfect fit with the image; thus each comic reflected the individual ability of the artist to tell stories.  But it was Lee who was billed as the writer.  Years later, Kirby was to argue with Lee over the copyright and the credit; Lee is reported to have told Kirby he realised the contribution Kirby had made, but that the interests of the now-juggernaut Marvel Comics, and the possibility of lawsuits, prevented Lee from saying so. 

In his declining years, Kirby had no income from his creations, and was forced to sell off large amounts of his original artwork, which was only returned from Marvel after much effort, to supplement his income.  Even by the standards of an industry where a co-creator of Superman could die in poverty (after a futile sixty year struggle to regain some earnings from the multi-million dollar property), this seems harsh.  It was not only business matters that Kirby was a stranger to; according to family friends, he was never competent to drive a car safely, and never learned how to write a cheque.  His wife carried out all these tasks, leaving Kirby free to create. And create he did; whereas the average production rate for an artist is a page per day, Kirby would average four, and maintained this pace for years at a time.  His professional record spanned fifty years, during which he was never out of print.

During the 1970's, Kirby broke with Marvel and joined rivals DC comics, owners of the Batman and Superman creations.  It was clear that he had been holding back a torrent of creation, for in the space of only two years launched the New Gods (Orion, Lightray, Kalibak, Darkseid, Metron, Highfather ) , the Forever People, Mr Miracle, Kamandi, the Demon, the Sandman, and Omac.  With all these comics, he edited, wrote, and drew the lot, effortlessly interweaving the characters once again in plot after plot, which often proved too complex for the market at the time.  With absolutely no check on his creativity, the need for simplified and abbreviated storylines was sometimes ignored; while the comics were unrivalled for storytelling and dramatic artwork, many were cancelled by editor Carmine Infantino for commercial reasons, and a restraining hand laid upon his successive work.  Kirby had taken the opportunity to present his philosophical ideas, and his concept of the future, but had strayed from what was marketable to a mass audience.

Kirby eventually grew disenchanted with the fact that, even after all those years, not one of his creations was owned by him, and in the case of Marvel, had often been attributed to someone else.  He left DC to draw for the smaller Pacific Comics, creating Silver Star and Captain Victory, but the fire had gone out of his work, and by this time, Kirby was entering his sixties and was tiring of the endless work schedule.   His characters often seemed to reflect anger and frustration, and were sometimes involved in horrific storylines unthinkable in his mainstream products of years gone by.  He continued to turn out covers, stories, and pieces of art for various publications, but it was clear that his important work was over.  In his last few years, he suffered from a tremour in his hands; his wife assisted with some of his last works by holding his hand steady, but the handicap grew worse, and eventually made it impossible for him to draw. He found this very hard to deal with; sometimes his wife would search the house for him, only to find him sitting in front of his drawing board, crying.

The sensitivity of the man cannot be understood without reference to the characters he created over such a huge and consistent body of work.  Kirby is the most prolific artistic talent of the 20th century.  The work may well be unknown to art scholars, nevertheless his characters and storylines have permeated the mass mind and his style of imagery can be found almost anywhere today. Modern cinematic storytelling, with its dramatic angles and lightning fast editing, can be found in stories drawn by him as far back as 1940, long before these methods became mainstream devices. His dramatic foreshortening was unheard of anywhere else, but is now an established method, not only in comics but in cartoons, graphic illustration, and so on. Even the central premise of the hugely successful Star Wars trilogy is clearly based on Kirby's DC work; Lucas has borrowed from many sources and this is no detriment to the final product, but it is surprising to see how far Kirby's ideas have become enmeshed in popular culture.

Fortunately, he also managed to find a focus for his talents, and an audience receptive to his unique skills, in his own lifetime.  Sixty years after his first creations were born, many are still reprinted, and, in general, form the basis of what remains of the comics industry today.  His comics are prized among collectors, and there are dozens of books dealing with his life's work. His original pages change hands at up to $5,000 each, and original covers as much as double that. One estimate places the current value of all his life's original artwork at around 80 million dollars. The cheaply printed comics themselves, numbering in the hundreds of millions, sell for between a few dollars and as much as $25,000 for mint condition early editions. The total value including reprints, character copyrights and marketing spinoffs (still produced today) could, even conservatively, easily reach 40 billion dollars!

Without the support of his wife and family, and the insulation from a commercial environment, afforded by collaborators Simon and Lee, he might well have been an example of tragic, erratic genius, fluctuating between periods of sterile infertility and great creativity. His happy, and remarkably productive life is an example of the productivity that can be extracted from a sensitive, finely tuned and talented brain when kept in a supportive and stimulating environment, relatively free from the raw pressures of modern life.