For fifty years, Jack Kirby drew more pages than any other comic book artist. As talented as he was prolific, Kirby was responsible for many of the best-known and most beloved superheroes in popular culture. With his first writing partner, Joe Simon, he created Captain America, DC Comics' Sandman, and the lucrative genre of the romance comic. In the 1960s, Kirby paired with Stan Lee to develop a pantheon of heroes that included, among others, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, the Avengers, and the Silver Surfer.
Together with Lee, this artist and writer forever changed the American comic book by introducing angst-ridden heroes, sympathetic villains, and a dynamic visual style that has influenced every artist who followed.
In TALES TO ASTONISH, Ronin Ro chronicles Kirby's poverty-stricken origins in New York's Lower East Side, his early commercial triumphs and failures, his renowned partnership with Stan Lee, his continuing artistic innovations, and his lengthy legal battles with Marvel Comics over the ownership of his original art. An insightful portrait of one of its most enduring--and overlooked--artists, TALES TO ASTONISH is also a lively, novelistic account of the comic book industry, from its inauspicious origins to its sensational successes.
