♪ (heroic music) ♪ ♪ ♪ - Live from New York, it's Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

We are in New York City for the dedication of Jack Kirby Way.

On May 11th, 2026, hundreds of people gathered on the corner of Essex and Delancey streets on Manhattan's Lower East Side for the dedication of Jack Kirby Way, close to where the legendary artist grew up.

Jack Kirby was one of, if not the most, prolific creators in the history of American comics.

His career started shortly after the birth of the industry, and by 1940, he co-created one of comics most iconic characters, Captain America.

After serving his country during World War II, Kirby returned to comics, creating hundreds of characters and stories in a wide variety of genres before pairing up with writer Stan Lee in the early 1960s to create the Fantastic Four, and with that comic, the Marvel Universe.

Soon after, the Hulk, Thor, the Avengers, the Black Panther, the Silver Surfer, and the X-Men, to name but a few of Kirby's creations, turned Marvel into a comics powerhouse.

The team of Lee and Kirby has been the subject of much debate.

- Stan Lee never drew a line, okay?

That's the first thing.

The artists never get the credit they deserve, and for somebody that spent their life cranking out six pages a day, you know, still never got all the credit that he deserves.

- It is generally accepted that, while Stan Lee may have come up with the basic plot for a comic, it was Jack Kirby who fleshed out the idea, refined the conflict, the story beats, the characters, and even wrote some suggestions of dialogue.

Eventually, Kirby wanted more credit for Marvel's success than he was given, and he left for DC Comics.

In his five years at DC, Jack Kirby had the chance to write and draw comics his way.

He created dozens of new characters in books like "Mr.

Miracle," "Jimmy Olsen," "Commandee," "OMAC," and "The New Gods."

These characters have become the foundation of DC's comics, animated series, and films in the decades since.

Jack's career in comics goes beyond the books he created.

He innovated a visual language to tell stories, more dynamic, more exciting, and more bombastic than his peers.

- Jack Kirby is the first, right?

He creates the Marvel style.

He creates so many of the idioms that we expect in comics, Marvel comics, but also other comics.

Kirby had a way of telling so many stories at one time.

He really knew how to unfold them in each panel.

His instinct was incredible, and he makes it so you can read through and learn this complicated story through speech bubbles or thought bubbles or just narrative text combined with the image.

- While there may have been better draftsmen than Jack Kirby, no one could tell a story with as much impact and energy, so much so that newer artists were told to study his comics to learn how to do it right.

- I owe my life to Jack, basically.

If Jack wasn't the creator of such wonderment, I would have never had my imagination so thoroughly captured and gone into the life I did.

And so maybe he didn't pull me from a river or anything like that, but Jack really was the guy who made my life for me.

- Jack pulled a piece of board off the shelf, and he started to draw Captain America.

And this is what really stunned me.

I'll never forget this.

He started drawing at the belt buckle.

(audience laughing) This is the secret to Kirby artwork.

Start with the belt buckle.

And if you're curious, that drawing is on a full page of volume one of the "Steranko History of Comics."

- Kirby and his cohort were making it up as they went along, inventing it as they went along, and no one ever told them what they couldn't do.

So he drew, he did draw on other media, but he recreated it in a form that was through his filter and just entirely new.

I mean, he took cinematic influences.

He had this ocean of information, old like Alexander Dumas books and "Dead End Kid" movies and stuff, and translated that through his own consciousness and his imagination.

So he didn't perceive limits, and he opened things up so that a lot of us understand how limitless creativity can be.

- Jack Kirby's career spanned more than 50 years, and his work has grown in appreciation in the decades since his death in 1994.

Films from Marvel and DC feature his creations and timeless designs, and it all started on the streets of the Lower East Side.

A hundred years ago, Essex Street was a rough place to grow up.

Young Jacob Kurtzberg, the son of Austrian Jewish immigrants, saw his share of fights and hard times living in a tenement apartment, but he also saw the beauty and through art found his way to achieve the American dream.

And while he changed his name to Jack Kirby, he could never change who he was or where he came from.

- So this platform we're standing on reminds me of Dr.

Doom's time machine, (audience laughing) as Jack originally drew it.

And if we stand on it and we concentrate for a minute, we go back to when these streets were teeming, where every spot around here was as crowded as this little groove.

And there wasn't a sign of where the rest of it was.

- The reason he's Jack Kirby and not Jacob Kurtzberg is the name Jacob Kurtzberg would have been an anchor holding him down from doing what he dreamed and what he wanted to do.

So he Americanized his name to be able to get work and to be able to break through.

And then he did something that almost no one ever does.

He unleashed his imagination and he created in many ways, an art style and an art form, not just in comics, but that permeates animation, film today, the style of visual exaggeration, visual action, maybe it had something to do with the fights Jack had around the corner on Melancie Street, but he knew how to draw people in action in a way that maybe nobody ever had before.

And lots of people have been imitating since.

- Essex Street and the Lower East Side are the pulse that beats through the Marvel Universe.

- Today, this dedication of the street and this recognition of Jack Kirby as an important figure in the arts world, in the comics world, to me, it's important, not just because it recognizes his contributions, but because there's a kind of back and forth influence between the city of New York on Jack Kirby and Jack Kirby on the city of New York.

And not just Jack Kirby, but the entire comics industry.

I feel like having streets that pay homage to the universe of comics, having especially that corner, which is on the Lower East Side in a Jewish neighborhood, at least during the mass migration period, and is featured in Fantastic Four as kind of this birthplace and this important moment.

It also highlights the fact that the city of New York is indebted to comics as much as comics are indebted to the city of New York.

- And it's only fitting that New York City renamed the corner near his childhood home, Jack Kirby Way.

But getting the street renamed wasn't easy.

It started years ago with Rand Hoppe of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center.

What did the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center do to get this, I guess, started?

- The great story about it is that back when Jack was, when it was getting close to his centenary in 2017, maybe a year before then, we were like, hey, maybe we should look into trying to get something like that to happen, a street corner, a street sign.

And we actually did the research and filled out forms and did some applications, and we were completely and utterly rejected.

And it was very disappointing.

But what was great about that was that years up until just recently when Roy Schwartz was like, hey, we need to do this street naming thing.

And I shared with him our correspondence with the community board and whoever else we might have emailed or filled out forms.

And he goes, aha, so that's not how to do it.

(laughing) So he learned from our terrible failure.

He's really done a lot to make it happen in pulling everybody together for Team Kirby.

- I'm Roy Schwartz, I'm a pop culture historian and author, and it has been my honor and privilege to lead the street naming campaign.

Jack Kirby isn't just the, arguably the most important artist in the history of comics, he's one of the most important artists in the history, in the 20th century.

Right?

Absolutely.

(cheers and applause) He is a founding father of pop culture, New York.

He's a founding father of pop culture and of a beloved American mythology.

And he was born right here, up the block, at 147 Essex Street.

(cheers and applause) Right, he's a low-rise high kid.

But believe it or not, it's not easy changing a street name in New York City.

(laughing) So I really couldn't have done it without our team of Avengers.

A huge, endless thank you to New York City Council Member Christopher Marte.

(cheers and applause) And his Deputy Chief of Staff, Max Deutsch.

They have championed this street naming campaign from the very beginning to the vote in City Hall.

- Planning an event like a street dedication takes a lot of patience, a lot of skill, and the help of a city councilman.

Councilman Marte, what goes into getting a street named after someone like Jack Kirby?

- It takes a really long process.

It takes on the ground work, like collecting signatures from people who live in the community, businesses, going in front of the community board, getting their approval, and eventually going in front of the city council and having the city council pass it.

- This is a different type of neighborhood than it was when Jack Kirby was growing up.

But it still seems like it is a vibrant immigrant community.

So what is it about this district that makes it so special?

- Yeah, the Lower East Side is the best neighborhood in the world.

I grew up here, son of immigrants, just like Jack Kirby.

My mom was a garment worker, similar to his dad.

And this is what this community represents.

It's been a gateway for generations of immigrants to come and get their American dream.

And I think Jack Kirby's a perfect example of that.

I remember when I was a kid, opening up my comics, reading about the Thing, Captain America.

I would have never thought that my political job would be able to interact with my childhood dreams and goals of being a superhero.

And today, we're gonna bring it all together.

And so this is a day, not just for New York City history, but really for the fans who were inspired, who are dedicated to this.

Many of the people here have created a career off their passion for comics and superheroes.

And so this is about them.

This is a celebration for his family to recognize their grandfather.

And so I'm so glad that we're a small piece of this.

- Jack Kirby and his wife, Roz, married in 1942 and had four children.

Three of Jack's grandchildren were on hand to represent the Kirby family.

I spoke with Tracy Kirby before the ceremony about her memories of her grandfather.

- Oh, I spent more time at their house than my own house.

So I was born in Thousand Oaks, where they wound up moving to.

And yeah, my brother and I, Jeremy, we grew up, not just 'cause they had the pool, but I just loved being there.

And my grandparents babysat me a lot.

So it was fun.

I spent a lot of time in the studio and we did a lot of storytelling.

I'd watch him draw a lot.

He'd let me draw, not very well, but he was always very nice.

And yeah, it was just, that was just me.

That was just my, he was just a normal grandpa for me, you know, so I didn't really ever pick up later on in life that he was very special to so many people, you know.

- The youngest Kirby granddaughter, Jillian, spoke at the ceremony, reading a message from her father, Neil, who was unable to attend.

- Growing up on the Lower East Side, a veritable crucible of cultures was not easy.

Everyone was poor and most likely an immigrant.

The streets were full of push carts, horse-drawn wagons, and people, lots of people.

Being in a local street gang and fighting were part of growing up.

I guess that's why my father was often described as a, air quotes here, "scrappy little guy."

My only visit to the Lower East Side was for a cousin's bar mitzvah in 1962.

My father's side of the family, being of very modest means, had a kiddush service in a small buffet set up in the foyer of the synagogue.

I sat with the other kids, my cousins being the only one I knew, at one of a few small tables, with my father sitting a few tables away.

About a half hour had gone by when I noticed an old man who was gaunt and bearded standing in the open door of the synagogue, looking in at the celebration.

My father apparently noticed him as well.

Getting out of his seat, he walked over to the door, took the old man by the arm, and walked him to an empty table and sat him down.

Dad then went and filled a platter with food, brought it to the old man, put his hand on his shoulder, and left the man to eat his meal.

The two men never exchanged any words.

There was no need to.

I didn't realize it then as a 14-year-old, but the stereotype of the Lower East Side producing nothing but tough guys was a myth.

When you grow up and every family is as poor as yours, and your friends and enemies alike are as poor as you are, I believe that breeds a compassion and empathy that most of us cannot understand.

If you examine my father's characters and you peel away the muscles, peel away the sinew, and peel away the superpowers, you are left with a character of compassion, tolerance, and empathy for his fellow man.

- The Kirby family was presented with a replica Jack Kirby Way street sign by Council Member Marte.

After the ceremony, I spoke with Jillian and her brother Jeremy Kirby.

You're in New York.

This enormous crowd shows up to honor your grandfather.

What's it feel like?

- It feels amazing.

My grandparents would have absolutely loved every second of this, and I'm just glad and just absolutely stunned to be here with everyone, and it feels great.

- And now you made a really powerful speech today.

So again, you're here.

You probably flew in from across the country.

What's it like getting up in front of that crowd, feeling the love?

- It's amazing.

I think, I'm not a public speaker, but just knowing that the crowd has your back and has taken the time out of their mid-Monday to come here, celebrate our grandfather, and have so much love for him and his legacy in their hearts, it's something probably you could feel from the crowd.

So I think that really, that energy was really jazzing me up.

- After the unveiling of Jack Kirby Way, we took a subway to the Center for Jewish History for a sneak preview of an exhibition exploring the life of Jack Kirby.

There, I spoke with organizer Roy Schwartz.

- The exhibition is a tie-in exhibition to the street naming.

We call it the Jack Kirby Way.

How a boy from the Lower East Side became the king of comics.

And what it does, and nobody's done this before, which is why we're so excited.

It's not a huge exhibition, but we look at Kirby's childhood and all the cultural influences of his childhood and how that manifested in his work later on and how you can find that today in Marvel Comics and in movies and in video games and in all these things.

It all goes back to early 20th century Lower East Side New York.

And I know this is sort of your milieu.

I mean, you are a pop culture historian.

You've written the award-winning book, "Is Superman Circumcised?"

And you are one of the co-founders of JewCE, not only the documentary, but the convention.

So what is it about having this exhibition in this space that makes it extra special?

- So the space is the Center for Jewish History, which is a very august institution.

And it's so important to show that comic book art is art.

It's serious, and it's a piece of history.

And it's important to put it in a museum that is taken seriously as a historical art museum.

The exhibit is a co-production of the American Jewish Historical Society.

I'm a board member, which is the oldest, largest ethnic historical society in the United States.

I've been around since 1892.

Co-production with the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center.

So we joined forces and we went to this space and they accommodated us and we created this exhibit.

And it's really, the idea is to show just how diverse and culturally rich and historically significant Kirby was.

- And one of the other things that you've done recently is, I mean, you said that you were just in Cleveland last week doing an event, I'm assuming Superman related.

And here we are doing this event.

How much time do you actually have to kind of figure out what projects you want to work on and then put that laser focus on it to get it achieved?

- That's a good question.

I haven't slept since 2019 is really the answer.

I photosynthesized.

No, the exhibit in Cleveland is called Icons in Ink.

And it's actually the largest comics exhibit in Cleveland history.

It's 4,000 square feet featuring over 100 physical artifacts, original art, rare comics, historic artifacts.

So we opened that Thursday.

Then we had today's Monday, we had the Kirby street naming and the exhibit opening as well today.

So it's a lot going on for one week.

But here's the secret sauce.

If you absolutely love what you do, it's not a problem.

It's easy.

- I was gonna say, I mean, clearly you do love this.

You are, you've been going all day talking to a multitude of people, you were on stage speaking to a large throng of enthusiastic fans.

So what has been the reaction that you've gotten from just this one day, half day opening of the exhibit?

- It's unbelievable.

At the street naming, we had 513 people counted and 31 or 32 press outlets.

The exhibit is drawing, you know, not just a good crowd, but really a crowd that you wouldn't see in a comic book exhibit otherwise.

Who wouldn't know who Jack Kirby is otherwise.

That's the exciting part to me.

These are museum goers, these are donors, these are cultural movers and shakers that come and say, "Oh, oh."

And that's what I want.

And the reaction, the reception has been so positive across the board that it just makes me so happy that we were able to give Kirby back.

You know, he's given us so much, it's a little bit of giving back.

- Co-curator of the exhibition is Rand Hoppe from the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, whom I spoke with earlier in the day.

What does the Kirby Museum do to sort of let everyone see maybe a glimpse into the person, a glimpse into the hand that created the work?

- We do a lot of work with, we've actually scanned his personal copies of the photocopies of his pencil art that he took since about 1973 on through the rest of his career.

He had a photocopier in his studio.

So we have 8,000 scans of those photocopies.

We've had a significant project since 2006.

We've been scanning the original art.

We go to comic book conventions.

We've talked to art dealers and collectors where we've built a collection of scans of Kirby's art, also about 8,000 pages.

So one of the great results for that is that like, DC Comics wants to publish a "Superpowers" book, you know, one of those big things that they publish.

And they're also doing the same for "The Demon" right now.

Well, they'll contact us and we have great images that they can include in their books.

So we can offer that.

We set up exhibits.

We've done pop-ups here in New York City.

We have these kind of week-long exhibits in a gallery, which are very well attended and people just love Jack.

'Cause people really do, like you say, get a sense that Jack Kirby really was the creative font you know, of Marvel and kind of the cosmology that DC, not all of the cosmology of DC, but a lot of the fun stuff with Darkseid and the Fourth World.

- And if the folks at home are watching and wanted to find out more about the museum, where can they find you on the web?

- On the web, we're at kirbymuseum.org.

We also have our social is @jackkirbymuseum.

- One of the DC creators whose body of work - One of the DC creators whose body of work includes a now classic Darkseid story attended both Kirby events.

Paul Levitz, you were part of the dance today.

You spoke at the Jack Kirby Way dedication.

You had a chance to work with Jack Kirby, at least with some of his characters.

What was it like for you as a fan growing up, now as a comic professional, to see Jack get the recognition he deserves?

- You know, it's wonderful.

I have over a 50-year history with Jack.

He did the cover for my last fanzine when I was a kid.

I don't remember whether I paid him 15 bucks or whether he did it as a thank you for his free subscription that he read it.

As an editor, I was involved in getting him some of the projects he worked on at DC Comics.

As a writer, the most enduring work that I've done is a story that was dedicated to him because it used Darkseid as the principal villain.

I got to know him over the years, and Roz.

This is so deserved and so wonderful, and he's such a unique story in the history of comics and in how comics affected the world culture.

It's so rare to find an artist in any medium whose work escapes that media form and permeates how we see the world, and he's really one of the great rarities.

- And you know, as a comic fan, lifelong comic fan myself, I never thought I'd see the day when not only were comics mainstream, but that comics were inspiring movies, and not only that, that we were taking the characters seriously.

So when you see Darkseid on the screen and it's his design, Jack's design, or you see Hela on the screen in one of the Thor movies and it's Jack's wild headpiece, what does that say to you about the way the American population loves comics?

- Comics have been an integral part of American culture.

Cartooning has been.

You know, this is a country that goes back to the, remember the little snake cut up into the 13 pieces, Don't Tread on Me, in the era of the revolution.

Thomas Nast as, quote unquote, Lincoln's best recruiting agent during the Civil War.

When I teach the graphic novel as literature, I teach it about a block away from the Tweed Courthouse, who was brought down by Nast.

And then onward through the Yellow Kid, through comics being a universal experience in my childhood, and now again a universal experience as we're watching the effect of things like Dogman and Smile on a whole new generation.

I see it with my grandchildren.

It's a primal, powerful form, cartooning.

It's how kids begin to learn to understand the world.

And we do a great job of it in this country.

It's a golden age of it.

- Another comics professional in attendance was historian and former Marvel editor, Danny Fingeroth.

- It's kind of amazing, you know, like Will Eisner, like Stan Lee, a few other people, Jack's career and life defined the history of the medium of comics and, you know, and several genres.

And the one that's stayed with us the most, of course, is the superheroes.

But what made Marvel great, and Jack and his peers, was taking those different genres, you know, kind of amalgamating them into this unique American art form of the superhero, which had started years before, and Jack was one of the people inventing it then.

And then to, you know, to turn around and then reinvent it decades later, and have it be still fresh, or even fresher, it's kind of an amazing thing.

You know, it's a unique once or twice in a generation achievement.

- Jack Kirby's achievements go beyond his incredible legacy in comics.

All afternoon, you could feel the energy and spirit of Jack Kirby everywhere.

And now, his name will forever be part of the city and neighborhood that shaped him.

(heroic music) ♪ - While we were here in the press area, I couldn't help but notice that there was one reporter doing something kind of unique, which was sketching rather than standing here with a camera or taking notes.

So, Ellen, what is it that you were doing?

- So I was drawing the, well, mainly the talk as the feature, of course, but even the whole event as it was happening.

Trying to get it, I guess, in real time as it's happening.

Kind of like event photography, but more of a interpretive way of doing that.