| Joe Simon | |
|---|---|
 Simon with a fan at the 2006New York Comic Con | |
| Born | Hymie Simon (1913-10-11)October 11, 1913 Rochester, New York, U.S. |
| Died | December 14, 2011(2011-12-14) (aged 98) New York City, U.S. |
| Area | Cartoonist, Writer,Penciller,Inker, Editor, Publisher,Letterer,Colourist |
| Pseudonyms |
|
Notable works | Captain America,Fighting American,Sick,Young Romance, TheFly,Blue Bolt |
| Collaborators | Jack Kirby |
| Awards | Inkpot Award, 1998 Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, 1999 Inkwell Awards Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame (2014) |
| Spouse | Harriet Feldman |
| Children | 5 |
Joseph Henry Simon[1] (bornHymie Simon;[1] October 11, 1913 – December 14, 2011) was an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s–1940sGolden Age of Comic Books and served as the first editor ofTimely Comics, the company that would evolve intoMarvel Comics.
With his partner, artistJack Kirby, he co-createdCaptain America, one of comics' most enduringsuperheroes, and the team worked extensively on such features atDC Comics as the 1940sSandman andSandy the Golden Boy, and co-created theNewsboy Legion, theBoy Commandos, andManhunter. Simon and Kirby creations for other comics publishers includeBoys' Ranch,Fighting American and theFly. In the late 1940s, the duo created the field ofromance comics, and were among the earliest pioneers ofhorror comics. Simon, who went on to work in advertising and commercial art, also founded thesatirical magazineSick in 1960, remaining with it for over a decade. He briefly published with DC Comics in the 1970s.
Simon was inducted into theWill Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1999.
Joe Simon was born in 1913 as Hymie Simon[1] and raised inRochester, New York, the son of Harry Simon, who had emigrated fromLeeds, England, in 1905, and Rose (Kurland),[2][3] whom Harry met in the United States.[4] Harry Simon moved to Rochester, then a clothing-manufacturing center where his younger brother Isaac lived,[5] and the couple had a daughter, Beatrice, in 1912.[4] A poorJewish family, the Simons lived in "a first-floor flat which doubled as my father's tailor shop".[6] Simon attendedBenjamin Franklin High School, where he was art director for the school newspaper and theyearbook – earning his first professional fee as an artist when two universities each paid $10 publication rights for hisart deco,tempera splash pages for the yearbook sections.[7]
Upon graduation in 1932, Simon was hired byRochester Journal-American art director Adolph Edler as an assistant, replacing Simon's future comics colleague Al Liederman, who had quit.[8] Between production duties, he did occasional sports andeditorial cartoons for the paper.[9] Two years later, Simon took an art job at theSyracuse Herald inSyracuse, New York, for $45 a week, supplying sports and editorial cartoons there as well. Shortly thereafter, for $60 a week, he succeeded Liederman as art director of a paper whose name Simon recalled in his 1990 autobiography as theSyracuse Journal American,[10] although theSyracuse Journal and theSyracuse Sunday American, were the separate weekday and Sunday papers, respectively. The paper soon closed, and Simon, at 23, ventured to New York City.[11]
There, Simon took a room at the boarding house Haddon Hall, in theMorningside Heights neighborhood ofManhattan, nearColumbia University. At the suggestion of the art director of theNew York Journal American, he sought and found freelance work atParamount Pictures, working above theParamount Theatre on Broadway, retouching themovie studio's publicity photos.[12] He also found freelance work atMacfadden Publications, doing illustrations forTrue Story and other magazines. Sometime afterward, his boss, art director Harlan Crandall, recommended Simon toLloyd Jacquet, head ofFunnies, Inc., one of that era's comic-book "packagers" that supplied comics content on demand to publishers testing the new medium. That day, Simon received his first comics assignment, a seven-pageWestern.[13]
Four days later, Jacquet asked Simon, at the behest ofTimely Comics publisherMartin Goodman, to create a flaming superhero like Timely's successful character theHuman Torch. From this came Simon's first comic-book hero, theFiery Mask.[12] Simon used the pseudonymGregory Sykes on at least one story during this time, "King of the Jungle", starring Trojak The Tiger Man, in Timely'sDaring Mystery Comics #2 (Feb. 1940).[14]
During this time, Simon metFox Feature Syndicate comics artistJack Kirby, with whom he would soon have a storied collaboration lasting a decade-and-a-half. Speaking at a 1998San Diego Comic-Con panel, Simon recounted the meeting:
I had a suit and Jack thought that was really nice. He'd never seen a comic book artist with a suit before. The reason I had a suit was that my father was a tailor. Jack's father was a tailor too, but he made pants! Anyway, I was doing freelance work and I had a little office in New York about ten blocks fromDC [Comics]' andFox [Feature Syndicate]'s offices, and I was working onBlue Bolt forFunnies, Inc. So, of course, I loved Jack's work and the first time I saw it I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He asked if we could do some freelance work together. I was delighted and I took him over to my little office. We worked from the second issue ofBlue Bolt ...[15]
and remained a team across the next two decades. In the early 2000s, original art for an unpublished, five-page Simon and Kirby collaboration titled "Daring Disc", which may predate the duo'sBlue Bolt, surfaced. Simon published the story in the 2003 updated edition of his autobiography,The Comic Book Makers,[16] co-authored with his son,Jim.[17]
After leaving Fox and landing atpulp magazine publisherMartin Goodman'sTimely Comics (the futureMarvel Comics), where Simon became the company's first editor,[18] the Simon and Kirby team created the seminal patriotic heroCaptain America.[19]Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941), going on sale in December 1940[20] – a year before thebombing of Pearl Harbor but already showing the hero punchingHitler in the jaw[21] – sold nearly one million copies.[22] They remained on the hit series as a team through issue #10, and were established as a notable creative force in the industry.[23] After the first issue was published, Simon asked Kirby to join the Timely staff as the company's art director.[24]
Despite the success of the Captain America character, Simon felt Goodman was not paying the pair the promised percentage of profits, and so sought work for the two of them at National Comics,[25] (later namedDC Comics). Simon and Kirby negotiated a deal that would pay them a combined $500 a week, as opposed to the $75 and $85 they respectively earned at Timely.[26] Fearing that Goodman would not pay them if he found out they were moving to National, the pair kept the deal a secret while they continued producing work for the company.[27] At some point during this time, the duo also producedFawcett Comics'Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (1941), the first complete comic book starringCaptain Marvel following the character's run as star of the superhero anthologyWhiz Comics.[28]
Kirby and Simon spent their first weeks at National trying to devise new characters while the company sought how best to utilize the pair.[29] After a few failed editor-assigned ghosting assignments, National'sJack Liebowitz told them to "just do what you want". The pair then revamped theSandman feature inAdventure Comics and created the superheroManhunter.[30][31] In July 1942 they began theBoy Commandos feature. The ongoing "kid gang" seriesBoy Commandos, launched later that same year, was the team's first National feature to graduate into its own title.[32] It sold over a million copies a month, becoming National's third best-selling title.[33] They also scored a hit with the homefront kid-gang team, theNewsboy Legion inStar-Spangled Comics.[34] In 2010, DC Comics writer and executivePaul Levitz observed that "LikeJerry Siegel andJoe Shuster, the creative team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby was a mark of quality and a proven track record."[35]
Harry Mendryk, art restorer onTitan Books' Simon and Kirby series of hardcover collections, believes Simon used the pseudonymGlaven on at least two covers during this time: those ofHarvey Comics'Speed Comics #22 andChamp Comics #22 (both Sept. 1942),[36] though theGrand Comics Database does not independently confirm this.[37] Mendryk also believes that both Kirby and Simon used the pseudonymJon Henri on a handful of other 1942 Harvey comics,[38] as doesWho's Who in American Comic Books 1929–1999.[39]
Simon enlisted in theU.S. Coast Guard duringWorld War II.[40] He said in his 1990 autobiography that he was first assigned to the Mounted Beach Patrol atLong Beach Island, offBarnegat, New Jersey, for a year before being sent to boot camp near Baltimore, Maryland, for basic training.[41] Afterward, he reported for duty with the Combat Art Corps in Washington, D.C., part of the Coast Guard Public Information Division. He was stationed there in 1944 when he metNew York Post sports columnistMilt Gross, who was with the Coast Guard Public Relations Unit, and the two became roommates in civilian housing.[42] Pursuant to his unit's mission to publicize the Coast Guard, Simon created a true-life Coast Guard comic book that DC agreed to publish, followed by versions syndicated nationally byParents magazine in Sunday newspaper comics sections, under the titleTrue Comics. This led to his being assigned to create a comic book aimed at driving Coast Guard recruitment. With Gross as his writer collaborator, Simon producedAdventure Is My Career, distributed byStreet and Smith Publications for sale at newsstands.[43]
Returning to New York City after his discharge as apetty officer 2nd class, Simon married Harriet Feldman,[44][45] the secretary to Harvey Comics' Al Harvey. The Simons and the now-married Kirby and his wife and first child moved to houses diagonally across from each other on Brown Street inMineola, New York, onLong Island, where Simon and Kirby each worked from a home studio.[46]
As superhero comics waned in popularity after the end ofWorld War II, Simon and Kirby began producing a variety of stories in many genres. In partnership withCrestwood Publications, they developed theimprint Prize Group, through which they publishedBoys' Ranch and launched an earlyhorror comic, the atmospheric and non-gory seriesBlack Magic. The team also producedcrime and humor comics, and are credited as well with publishing the firstromance comics title,Young Romance, starting a successful trend.[47]
At the urging of a Crestwood salesman, Kirby and Simon launched their own comics company,Mainline Publications,[48][49] in late 1953 or early 1954, subletting space from their friendAl Harvey'sHarvey Publications at 1860Broadway.[7] Mainline published four titles: theWesternBullseye: Western Scout; thewar comicFoxhole, sinceEC Comics andAtlas Comics were having success with war comics, but promoting theirs as being written and drawn by actual veterans;In Love, since their earlierromance comicYoung Love was still being widely imitated; and the crime comicPolice Trap, which claimed to be based on genuine accounts by law-enforcement officials. Bitter thatTimely Comics' 1950s iteration,Atlas Comics, had relaunched Captain America in a new series in 1954, Kirby and Simon createdFighting American. Simon recalled, "We thought we'd show them how to do Captain America".[50] While the comic book initially portrayed the protagonist as an anti-Communist dramatic hero, Simon and Kirby turned the series into a superhero satire with the second issue, in the aftermath of theArmy-McCarthy hearings and the public backlash against the Red-baitingU.S. SenatorJoseph McCarthy.[48]
The partnership ended in 1955 with the comic book industry beset by self-imposed censorship, negative publicity, and a slump in sales. Simon "wanted to do other things and I stuck with comics," Kirby recalled in 1971. "It was fine. There was no reason to continue the partnership and we parted friends."[51] Simon turned primarily to advertising andcommercial art, while dipping back into comics on occasion. The Simon and Kirby team reunited briefly in 1959 with Simon writing and collaborating on art forArchie Comics, where the duo updated the superhero theShield in the two-issueThe Double Life of Private Strong (June–Aug. 1959), and Simon created the superhero theFly;[52] they went on to collaborate on the first two issues ofThe Adventures of the Fly (Aug.–Sept. 1959), and Simon and other artists, includingAl Williamson,Jack Davis, andCarl Burgos, did four issues before Simon moved on to work in commercial art.[53]
Through the 1960s, Simon produced promotional comics for the advertising agency Burstein and Newman, becoming art director of Burstein, Phillips and Newman from 1964 to 1967.[54] Concurrently, in 1960, he founded thesatirical magazineSick, a competitor ofMad magazine, and edited and produced material for it for over a decade.[55]
During this period, known to fans and historians as theSilver Age of Comic Books, Simon and Kirby again reteamed forHarvey Comics in 1966, updating Fighting American for a single issue (Oct. 1966). Simon, as owner, packager, and editor, also helped launch Harvey's original superhero line, withUnearthly Spectaculars #1–3 (Oct. 1965 – March 1967) andDouble-Dare Adventures #1–2 (Dec. 1966 – March 1967), the latter of which introduced the influential writer-artistJim Steranko to comics.[56]
In 1968, Simon created the two-issueDC Comics seriesBrother Power the Geek, about amannequin given a semblance of life who wanders philosophically through 1960shippie culture.[57]Superman editorMort Weisinger harbored an admitted dislike for the hippie subculture of the 1960s and felt that Simon portrayed them too sympathetically which helped to bring a quick end to the title.[58] Simon and artistJerry Grandenetti then created DC's four-issuePrez (Sept. 1973 – March 1974), about America's first teen-age president[56][59] and the three-issueChampion Sports (Nov. 1973 – March 1974).[56] That same year, Simon returned to the romance genre as editor ofYoung Romance andYoung Love and oversaw aBlack Magic reprint series.[56]
Simon and Kirby teamed one last time later that year, with Simon writing the first issue (Winter 1974) of a six-issue new incarnation of theSandman.[60] Simon and Grandenetti then created theGreen Team: Boy Millionaires in the DC anthology series1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975),[61] and the freakish Outsiders in1st Issue Special #10 (Jan. 1976).[56]
In 1999, Joe Simon regained the rights to the Fly and Lancelot Strong thanks to copyright termination.[62][63]
In the 2000s, Simon turned to painting and marketing reproductions of his early comic book covers. He appeared in various news media in 2007 in response to Marvel Comics' announced "death" of Captain America inCaptain America vol. 5, #25 (March 2007), stating, "It's a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now".[64][65]
For a concept called ShieldMaster (1998), created by Jim Simon, Joe Simon provided prototype art. Shieldmaster, under the direction of Joe's son,Jim, was also published in the comic booksFutura andÉtranges Aventures. A graphic novel format ShieldMaster was published in 2015 by Future Retro Entertainment. ShieldMaster comics have also been published by Jim's son, Jesse Simon.
Simon is among the interview subjects inSuperheroes: A Never-Ending Battle, a three-hour documentary narrated byLiev Schreiber that premiered posthumously onPBS in October 2013.[66]
Simon's grandchildren attended the Los Angeles premiere ofCaptain America: The First Avenger and phoned Simon from the red carpet when his name was announced as the creator of the character.[67] Though not present at the premiere, Joe Simon got to seeCaptain America: The First Avenger before he died in December 2011.[67]
In 2024, Shieldmaster encounters several Joe Simon characters inShieldMaster: Blast to Past, a one-shot with Shieldmaster traveling to the year 1963 and encountering several characters created or co-created by Joe Simon such as Fighting American, The Fly, Lancelot Strong, Comics. Stuntman and Captain 3-D.[63]
Simon was married to Harriet Feldman (June 18, 1923 – October 28, 1971). The Simons had two sons and three daughters.[45][68]
Simon died in New York City on December 14, 2011, at the age of 98, after a brief illness.[68][69][70] As a World War II veteran, he was interred next to his wife atLong Island National Cemetery two days later.[45]
Marvel Comics dedicatedAvenging Spider-Man #5 to Simon.[71]
"I ... was born in 1913 – on October 11 – inRochester's Strong Memorial Hospital. ... [My father] had a cousin name Hymie. ... So when my mother gave birth to me, my father completed the birth certificate without consulting her, and named me 'Hymie Simon.' ... [my mother]flipped. Turns out she wanted me named after her brother, Joseph. ... At least if it had been 'Hyman' Simon, she said, it would have rhymed. ... No, she just called me Joseph, and after a while it stuck. Yet that's not what my birth certificate says. To this day it hasn't been corrected, notSocial Security-wise, [war-]veteran-[records]-wise, or for anything else. ... We never had middle names in my family, either. ... But I took the 'H' from Hymie and I made it into Henry. .... Note: Some sources erroneously give 1915 as birth year, including:
Born October 11, 1913, in Rochester, N.Y.; son of Harry (a tailor) and Rose (Kurland) Simon
Martin Goodman hired writer/artist Joe Simon to be Timely's first Editor-in-Chief in late 1939.
Captain America was the first successful character published by the company that would become Marvel Comics to debut in his own comic.Captain America Comics #1 was dated March, 1941.
The cover ofCaptain America #1 which showed the new hero, dressed in red, white and blue, punching Adolf Hitler in the face. The date was March 1941.
Hot properties Joe Simon and Jack Kirby joined DC ... [and] after taking over the Sandman and Sandy, the Golden Boy feature inAdventure Comics #72, the writer and artist team turned their attentions to Manhunter with issue #73.
| Preceded by n/a | Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief 1939–1941 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by n/a | Captain America Comics writer/artist (withJack Kirby) 1941–1942 | Succeeded by Stan Lee (as writer) Al Avison (as artist) |
| Characters | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Publications |
| ||||||
| Storylines | |||||||
| In other media |
| ||||||
| Related | |||||||
| Publications | |
|---|---|
| Universe | |
| Lines and imprints | |
| Editors-in-chief / executive editors | |
| Adaptations | |
| Related | |
