Michael Kobre at the LARB:
IN 1975, JACK KIRBY, the “King of Comics” whose wildly kinetic art and sweeping visions had shaped the whole universe of Marvel Comics, sent a Hanukkah card to a friend, a young fan Kirby had met a few years earlier at a New York comics convention. At the time, Kirby had been living in Thousand Oaks, California, where he’d joined a Conservative synagogue, Temple Etz Chaim. An active temple member, Kirby occasionally read Torah portions at Shabbat services, visited the Hebrew School to demonstrate the art of drawing comics for the students, and later fulfilled a lifelong dream when he joined a congregational trip to Israel. So there was nothing remarkable about him sending a Hannukah card—except, that is, for the image Kirby drew on the card, which showed Ben Grimm, “the Thing,” the monstrous member of the Fantastic Four with a body that looks like it’s made of orange rocks, dressed for Shabbat services himself, in a coat and tie and wearing a yarmulke and prayer shawl. In fact, Kirby liked the image so much that he hung a copy on the wall of his studio. When guests would ask him about it, as his friend and biographer Mark Evanier remembered, Kirby would just say, “It’s a Jewish Thing.”
more here.
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