VIVE LE ROI
The King Yet Endures
Impossible transfer ca. 2014
In 1917 an artist named Jacob Kurtzberg was born in this building at 147 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of New York City. Twenty three years later he drew a picture of a person clothed in the flag of the United States punching a person named Adolf Hitler in the face, a full year before the U.S. would go to war against Germany, but after folks had heard murmurs of what was happening.
The artist got death threats for the picture, which was published on the cover of a newsprint magazine filled with lots of other color drawings he did as well. It sold almost a million copies. The Mayor of the City, Fiorella La Guardia, called the artist to tell him that he supported him and his drawing.
In 1943 the artist was drafted into the Army, where he served as a reconnaissance scout, because he could draw maps and other useful things. He also saw things other people didn’t see, or would never see; maybe couldn’t see, or shouldn’t see. Private First Class Kurtzberg came back to the U.S. with a bronze medal shaped like a star, just like the one on the chest of the man who punched Hitler in the face.
The artist kept drawing; drew until his body stopped being able to draw. He drew the world, he drew a universe. He drew the person in the flag, named Captain America; he gave him friends named Thor and Iron Man, made them a team, called the Avengers. He drew another team of New Yorkers named the Fantastic Four, another team of New Yorkers named the X-Men, who were hunted and feared because they were born different, even though they looked just like you and me. The Black Panther, genius king of Wakanda. So many new gods, so many New Gods!
When I say the artist “drew” these characters, I mean “dreamed.” Until he drew them, they weren’t real yet; the artist dreamed them into being, pulled these myths into our world from deep inside.
The man born in this building in 1917 as Jacob Kurtzberg had other names. Children by the billion called him “Jack Kirby.” An editor once called him “King” Kirby. There’s no plaque on the brick of 147 Essex Street with any of these names, but there doesn’t need to be. Don’t you know why? Didn’t you see the clerk at the Strand wearing the shield of Captain America on her shirt, see a graffitied and fading billboard for the Avengers in the Union Square station, see the baby in the stroller yesterday in an Iron Man onesie? New York City itself in the 21st century is a plaque to Jack Kirby. I saw the yelling-face of a Kirby Cap peeking out from the zipped-up hoodie of a kid yesterday in Jackson, Mississippi. The entire globe knows who the Avengers are, now.
But not quite 31 years after he passed, it’s wonderful to see that the intersection by the old tenement where his family was jammed is going to be renamed Jack Kirby Way.
The whole world now knows his dreams.
GORJUS is a dispatch devoted to art and life in the South, held fast with instant film. When I was growing up in Alabama you could get comic books off a rack at every grocery store and drugstore and seven eleven, and I fell in love with them with my mom’s purchase for me of Star Wars #71 in 1983 at the Forestdale Pharmacy. If you like comics or the idea of sixty cents absolutely changing the course of someone’s life, then this is for you, and I reckon we would be friends. Consider forwarding this letter to a pal who is like us. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see an archive of Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.