Jack Kirby Quotes

Aw, where we come from the Anti-Life Equation is one of many others--almost as awesome!! But they merely exist!!

Every father was his own man. He did what he wanted. If your mother went shopping, your father never went with her.

I write from a people's point of view. I love people because I understand them. I understand an enemy, I understand a friend, I understand grey areas, and I understand black areas.

Kid ... Comics will break your heart.

I taught myself how to draw, and I soon found out it was what I really wanted to do. I didn't think I was going to create any great masterpieces like Rembrandt or Gauguin. I thought comics was a common form of art, and strictly American in my estimation, because America was the home of the common man - and show me the common man that can't do a comic. So comics is an American form of art that anyone can do with a pencil and paper.

When Superman came out it galvanized the entire industry. It's just part of the American scene.

My style is personal, my style of writing is personal, and I believe in that. I believe what comes out of me is an individual thing, and that's why I, I believe in the individual.

Of course, mothers were very conventional, everything was very conventional. You had to have approval.

I like entertainment. I'm an innate admirer of good entertainment. I'll listen to MTV, I'll listen to Mozart, I'll listen to anything that has a good element in it.

I wouldn't call Adolf Hitler a corporal. Adolf Hitler was looked up to. He was revered almost like a God because he was feared. Adolf Hitler took all of Europe, and my generation had to confront Adolf Hitler.

I was being brought up on peasant stories; my mother came from Europe and she'd been a peasant and that was the area where the Frankensteins and the Draculas came from and it was entertainment for the people. Nobody had TV, and that was the way peasants would entertain themselves, by telling these stories.

I always enjoyed doing monster books. Monster books gave me the opportunity to draw things out of the ordinary. Monster books were a challenge - what kind of monster would fascinate people?

I'm OMAC! Evacuate this section! I'm going to destroy it!

I get a lot of comics, and I can look at a comic and tell immediately whether I'll enjoy it or not. There are elements in the stories that I have no rapport with. I see dirty language, I see sleazy backgrounds; I see it reflected in the movies, the movies are comics to me. And I don't see a sleazy world. I see hope. I see a positive world.

I couldn't draw anything that was too outlandish or too horrible. I never did that. What I did draw was something intriguing. There was something about this monster that you could live with. If you saw him you wouldn't faint dead away.

I admired anybody who could make a buck with his drawing.

I would've liked to have been a better businessman when I was younger. And of course, I couldn't, because it wasn't part of my atmosphere. I never lived with accountants, I never lived with lawyers.

If a carpenter makes a chair that's comfortable for the person who's going to sit in it, he's done his job. If a train engineer gets a train in on time, he's going to make someone happy who's waiting at the station. And if an artist draws the kind of a picture that people are going to enjoy looking at, or he makes a visual story which people are going to enjoy reading, he's done his job.

I've never done anything bad. I can't do anything bad. It's got to be professional. It's got to look professional. It's got to read professional. In other words, it serves its purpose by entertaining a reader.

I don't want to take somebody else's beating. That makes me unhappy.

I'm a happy man because whatever I'm doing, I do for myself and I do a little creating here and there for others, and they work out very well.

The people who worked in comics were terrific guys. I had a good association with them, and I enjoyed comics for that very reason.

I've never done anything half-heartedly; it's a disservice to me and the audience if I do it half-heartedly.

In the Army when we had judo classes, out of the class of 27 just me and another guy graduated. I grew to enjoy it because I knew I could do it well. I tried to do everything well.

All life on Earth is subject to the rumbles and rockings of the parent stucture which has no control over the disastrous effects of its stresses and strains on whatever thrives on its surface. The ambitions and dreams of men are irrelevant to this planetary giant which pursues its own way in its own manner. Man is its child, tenant and still, to this date, its captive.

I felt the comics grew because they became the common man's literature, the common man's art, the common man's publishing.

If America gave anybody anything it is ambition. Bad things would come out of it because some guys are in a hurry, but that doesn't mean they're evil or anything, it just means they fall into bad grace somehow.

I feel that my characters all have some part of my character. I feel that they're all me in some way, certainly not in individuality, but they all bear elements of what I feel.

Perfectionists are their own devils.

I had very high respect for the Pratt Institute, but I thought that I had done my best, and that was not their version of the best.

Superman is going to live forever. They'll be reading Superman in the next century when you and I are gone. I felt, in that respect, I was doing the same thing. I wanted to be known. I wasn't going to sell a comic that was going to die quickly.

Nobody ever asked me to do anything. Nobody knew what to do. When comics were brand new, nobody knew what kind of comics to make. So you were mostly on your own.

Some of my friends became gangsters. You became a gangster depending upon how fast you wanted a suit. Gangsters weren't the stereotypes you see in the movies. I knew the real ones, and the real ones were out for big money.

I've done my job extremely well. My only beef is that a lot of people have put their fingers in whatever I've done and tried to screw it up, and I've always resented that.

I didn't like Army life. I didn't like taking orders. I didn't like discipline. I didn't like being yelled at. You'd get 10 years for punching a sergeant so I couldn't punch a sergeant.

It's not in the draftsmanship, it's in the man. Like I say, a tool is dead. A brush is a dead object. It's in the man. If you want to do it, you do it.

Our dreams make us large.

My purpose was what my father's purpose was - to make a living and to have a family. I was going to do the right thing. My dream to me was to have money to support it and to live in the kind of house I liked.

My monsters were lovable monsters. I gave them names - some were evil and some were good. They made sales, and that's always been my prime object in comics.

I feel that every professional is the art school for the next guy. I feel that maybe a lot of the dynamism in my own work, having been felt by the rest of the artists, they'll react to it and put elements of that in their own work, feeling that it'll help it.

I was a good student in the subjects that I wanted to be good in. The curriculum in my section was excellent.

I wasn't the kind of student that Pratt was looking for. They wanted patient people who would work on something forever. I didn't want to work on any project forever. I intended to get things done.

I was an artist, but not a self-proclaimed great artist, just a common man who was working in a form of art which is universal.

If you're drawing a Western town, you can duplicate that Western town from instinct alone. Some artists may take it from other illustrations or duplicate what you've drawn, but it will never have that gut reality that's instinctive in the artist.

I feel that man can transcend himself to a point where he can accomplish greater things than he thinks.

I've never done anything half-heartedly. It's the reason my comics did well. It's the reason my comics were drawn well. I can't do anything bad.

I took a great joy with inventing new kinds of mechanisms. I invented new kinds of machines. I've been a student of science fiction for a long, long time, and I'm very well-versed in science fact and science fiction.

I began to learn about the universe myself and take it seriously. I know the names of the stars. I know how near or far the heavenly bodies are from our own planet. I know our own place in the universe. I can feel the vastness of it inside myself. I began to realize with each passing fact what a wonderful and awesome place the universe is, and that helped me in comics because I was looking for the awesome.