Posted By Dan Greenfield on Aug 28, 2025 | 14 comments

DON’T ASK! JUST READ IT! A birthday salute to the King!

By JIM BEARD 

There are some comic book creators who almost defy ranking.

You know how it is. You want to quantify your love for your favorite artist or writer by making a list and checking it a billion times, but somehow you just can’t seem to feel right about placing the items on that list in an order that accurately illustrates said love. Your ardor just can’t be ranked. You’d sooner rank your own kids—or your Funko Pops. Or something.

That’s the way I am about Jack Kirby, who was born 108 years ago, on Aug. 28, 1917. When I sat down to outline my new book, Jack of All Comics!, I needed to quantify a good chunk of his career, the ’60s and the ’70s, but there were a few titles he worked on in that period that just didn’t make the cut. I wanted a book of a certain length with a certain amount of essays, and I was lucky because nearly everything he did ended up in the book. And I didn’t have to rank the series, just set them in chronological order. Thank the Source for that.

But, along comes this article. “Hey, Dan! I’ll pick my 13 most-favorite Kirby series from those two decades! It’ll be fun!” And then to heap more self-abuse on it, I decided to rank the series I picked. Yeah, right. Sheesh.

Here’s what I came up with. Mother Boxes vs. Ultimate Nullifiers. Vibranium shields vs. Boom Tubes. Goody Rickels vs. Celestials. It’s all here, bunky.

It had to be done. It had to be ranked. Opinions will vary. These are mine. And I did it without a net.

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13. Journey Into Mystery/Thor (1963-70). The memories of sitting down with those two big ol’ Mighty Thor Marvel Treasury Editions in the ’70s are burned into my brain. Hercules! Pluto! Hades! Mangog! The Odinsword! Ragnarok! The glory and the passion still resonate in me, but it hits the list here because, yeah, Colletta inking.

This cover was inked by Frank Giacoia, though.

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12. The Eternals (1976-78). I came to this series late, reading it after the fact, but I’m a sucker for Ancient Astronauts, and I love that Jack wanted it to be its own thing, not part of the bigger Marvel Universe. The concepts are wild, even for Kirby, and the scale is just so big.

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11. Amazing Adventures (1970-71). Pretty much the last thing Jack did for Marvel before leaping off to the Distinguished Competition. It’s on the list because I love the Inhumans and the four-part story offered a rare chance in that era for the King to script as well as pencil.

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10. The New Gods (1971-72). Sure, you might be a little surprised to see this one so low on the list, but it isn’t because Jack didn’t try hard enough to sway me with the characters, the situations, the flights of fancy, and some of the best damn stories he ever told — one of which, “The Glory Boat,” he later said was one of his personal favorites. Mine, too.

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9. The Forever People (1971-72). There’s an argument here that this is Jack’s greatest kid-gang ever. I certainly might support such an argument. The Forevers are so cool, so kooky, so wild and wonderful, it’s a damn shame that Jack had to leave them where he did with an ending that just didn’t feel right then and still doesn’t now.

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8. Machine Man (1978). I love that Aaron was able to spin off from the 2001 series into his own book, despite some of the heavy competition he had there. My love for this title is very prominently slanted toward Jack’s visuals — I just can’t get enough of all the popping eyes and extending limbs and all that great Kirby-Tech here.

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7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1976-77). It was so improbable that Jack Kirby would have done an adaptation of the Kubrick film, let alone put together an actual spin-off series with the concepts, but that’s what makes this little gem of 10 issues special. One of Jack’s least-known and appreciated titles, it looms so large for me. If you haven’t ever read it, go and take a look.

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6. Tales of Suspense/Captain America (1964-69). Gorgeous visuals. Exciting action. Amazing slices of life. It’s all here in Jack’s return to one of his greatest co-creations. Probably some of his best fight scenes ever, too, as well as the fantastic achievement of making the Red Skull even more evil and wicked than in his Golden Age days. I also love the WWII flashback stories.

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5. The Avengers (1963-65). Some might say the stories are lacking in the early issues of the title, but Jack infuses those tales with such energy and in the end he just can’t be beat for juggling multiple characters and making each one of them shine visually. Compare his work here to, say, the same amount of issues at the kickoff of Justice League of America and I think you’ll see why it lands here so high on the list.

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4. The Sandman (1974-75). I know what you’re saying: You think I’ve been puffing too much Dream Stream. Hey, I’ll admit that this one is very personal, but Issue #1 ranks for me up there with the single greatest pieces of work Jack has ever done. The Werblinks still haunt me to this day, as does the frightening surrealist landscape of the entire story.

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3. The Demon (1972-74). Have you ever really curled up with this one? Really? It’s a Kirby tour de force of gothic nightmares, medieval shadows, and one of the most unique central characters of Jack’s entire body of work. Etrigan is a force of nature, harkening back to the original monster-hero, the Hulk. If you haven’t ever spent the time with this series, do it now.

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2. Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen (1970-72). Laugh, clowns, laugh. Get it out of your system. When you’re done, let’s talk about the Mountain of Judgment, the Cadmus Project, the Hairies, the Whiz Wagon, Dubbilex, the Guardian, the Newsboy Legion… all that and Superman, too, just for good measure. And then… Darkseid. If you keep me going, I’ll also tell you all about why I love Goody Rickels so much. And then we’ll all laugh together and have one helluva good time with this amazing Kirby run.

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1. Fantastic Four (1961-70). It had to be here. It had to be Number One. It has to go down in comics history as The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine. I will brook no debate or argument. The achievement here is stunning; so many characters, stories, concepts, drama, humor, pathos and bathos. There’s a reason why Jack and Stan spent so much time on this book, so many years and so many tales: It’s fantastic. I can’t say it any clearer and more concisely than that.

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MORE

— The TOP 13 JACK KIRBY GIANT MONSTERS, 1954-1961 — RANKED. Click here.

— 13 Fantastic Facts About the FIRST FANTASTIC FOUR Film — From 1962! Click here.

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When JIM BEARD’s not editing and publishing through his two houses, Flinch Books and Becky Books, he’s pounding out adventure fiction with both original and licensed characters. In fact, he’s put words in the mouths of Luke Skywalker, Superman, Fox Mulder, Carl Kolchak, Peter Venkman and the Green Hornet… and lived to tell about it.

Check out his latest: Jack of All Comics! is 28 essays by some of today’s most engaging comic historians and fans on nearly every series Jack Kirby worked on for Marvel and DC from 1961 to 1978. It’s better’n a Boom Tube to Supertown, True Believers! Click here to order.