In one year alone, 1962, at the height of his popularity at Marvel Comics, Kirby produced 1,158 pages of art--or three pages a day--creating over half the art for eight different titles.
Known for his square-jawed superheroes as much as for the visual pyrotechnics of his graphic perspective--which made "fists seem to fly off the page in dramatic battles," as Myrna Oliver wrote in a Los Angeles Times obituary for Kirby--the well-respected comic book creator also is credited as the first to make his super heroes capable of human emotions, portraying them as complex and often vulnerable individuals. "He created not only artwork, but ideas," commented Tom Christopher of Marvel Comics to Oliver. "Another person of his particular talent and innovation is not going to come along again." "Kirby's art was just from a world apart," wrote Leonard Pitts, Jr. in a remembrance of the artist for Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. "His line was bold and garish, his figures bigger, more dramatic than anything the medium had ever seen before or since. But that was just the beginning. He originated concepts and ideas that stretched imagination into wondrous new shapes." Wyman, speaking with Valerie Takahama in a Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service article, further commented, "I think a lot of what makes Jack [Kirby] special is that he put humanity into his books.
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