Today, I was sad to hear that one of my biggest heroes in comics passed away. Joe Simon was the man who not only co-created one of my favorite characters (Captain America), and countless others (Fighting American, Stuntman, Private Strong, The Fly, Bullseye, The Boy Commandos, The Newsboy Legion, The Guardian etc.) but also pioneered the Romance Genre (with Kirby), and was on the cutting edge of every genre in American comic books for 20 years.Other publishers could only attempt to emulate the greatness of Simon and Kirby's work. They were the best.
Here, I will attempt to put together my rambling tweets on Mr Simon, so they can be read a little clearer. But really, I urge you to track down some books. The first, is called 'The Comic Book Makers', co-written by his son Jim. The second is Joe Simon's recent Autobiography, written with help by Steve Saffel. The third, is the Simon and Kirby Superheroes Hardcover. It contains not only unpublished material and carefully crafted restorations, but also all of Simon and Kirby's superhero work that wasn't Timely or DC. It was pure creator owned. I still hope to chase down all of the 10 issues they did on Captain America and their DC work too, plus their wonderful work on Western books, war, Sci-fi....Hell, anything these two did in those pre-Silver age was wonderful.
So,here's my tweets below. It's ramble-y, but at least in some sort of order.
I am sad to hear one of my biggest heroes in comics passed away today. So I'm just going to take a moment to tweet some thoughts.
Joe Simon was huge in comics. This was the guy who even Stan Lee did, and even today, still calls "Boss".
I had the fortune to meet the man who helped Joe Simon write and develop his autobiography, including all the Simon and Kirby reprint HCs...
We chatted for a while in San Diego, where he told me a few nights before SDCC, he''d taken Mr Simon to see "Captain America" (a Preview)..
...he said Mr Simon loved it. Remember now, Mr Simon had first come across the "Captain America" film waaaay back in 1944, while he was....
...with the US Coast Guards. He and Kirby had basically created the character in 1940 for Timely (pre Marvel) Comics, and blown the ...
...competition out of the water, outselling DC's Superman and Batman. After 10 issues, they left Timely and were wooed to DC, where they...
...again led industry sales with Boy Commandos, The Sandman and Manhunter. But then they were sent to War, Kirby to Normandy, &...
...Simon to the Coast Guards. Meanwhile, Timely Publisher Martin Goodman had been approached by Republican Pictures to Licence...
Captain America into a 12 eps film series. The character would be used as a shell only, where Steve Rogers in the film was replaced by...
District Attorney Grant Gardner. The Uniform was used (without the little head wings from memory), but he carried a pistol instead of shield
...that's the only resemblance to the character! The script was written BEFORE they bothered to get the character Captain America...
...and the price Timely charged for the licence? $1...So, Simon was walking down an empty boardwalk one night on patrol, looks up to see...
...the movie poster to one of his characters! And of course, it was terrible. And the next few incarnations in the 70's and 80's was...
...just as bad. So it's fitting to know he was able to see, and enjoy, a rather faithful interpretation of one of his biggest creations...
...before he passed away. I will treasure the copies of his Autobiography &the oversize HC of his Superhero reprints signed by him....
...don't forget, this guy was on the cutting edge of American comics for over 20 years. No including his 70's concepts...
...He and Kirby invented the 'Romance Genre" in comics in "Young Romance". They knew the value of getting the female readership too.
...When Superheroes died off after the war, they worked on Western, War, Funny comics, Horror, Romance, even some fantastic...
...pre-Silver age heroes, such as my favourites: Stuntman and The Fighting American. Also, The Double Life of Private Strong, and the Fly.
The Fly was the pre-Spider-man concept. You guys know that Spider-man was Joe Simon's name creation, yeah? Without the Hyphen.
Spider-man is said to be created by Lee and Ditko. They were the guys who did the FINAL work on the concept, but it was Joe Simons' first...
CC Beck even worked on a few pages of the concept (The original Captain Marvel artist), before Kirby reinterpreted the pages....
...back then, 'Spiderman' was changed to 'The Silver Spider", before the concept was shelved, and retooled for Archie Comic's 'The Fly'.
It was only that when Lee and Kirby were creating new books which was the development of Marvel's Silver Age, Kirby brought...
...Joe Simon's original logo to Stan Lee. Kirby even did the original concept and a few pages before the idea was handed to Ditko...
...Ditko of course added his own unique spin on the visuals and threw out some of the Simon and Kirby concepts (with Lee), to have...
...the "Spider-man" we see today. Well, I've clogged Twitter big time, my apologies. I just lost an inspiration today, and wanted to ...
...share some rambling thoughts. Maybe I should have blogged it :S Honestly didn't think I'd take up much time. Woops :P
Pssst! Wanna know where some of the earliest examples of Double Page spreads came from? http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/simonandkirby/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/SplashCap06L.jpg
My thoughts and prayers are with him, his family and friends. As someone who just lost someone recently who was a man who helped me on my career path, I can imagine the loss right now.
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