Came across this on the Paste Magazine website. Quote - In the late ‘60s, a discontented Jack Kirby thought long and hard about the industry he helped build. For the co-creator of Captain America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men and countless other super properties, the arena of mutants, mayhem and escapism had lost its lustre . . " “You fellas think of comics in terms of comic books, but you’re wrong,” Kirby told a crowd at a California convention. “I think you fellas should think of comics in terms of drugs, in terms of war, in terms of journalism, in terms of selling, in terms of business. And if you have a viewpoint on drugs, or if you have a viewpoint on war, or if you have a viewpoint on the economy, I think you can tell it more effectively in comics than you can in words. I think nobody is doing it. Comics is journalism. But now it’s restricted to soap opera.” This statement by Jack Kirby caught my imagination for a number of reasons. It was a side to Jack Kirby I had not previously encountered and would not have suspected. It is a 'comics as more than entertainment' point of view I have a lot of sympathy for. Jack Kirby's statement was 50 years ago and things have changed somewhat - many journalistic and personal comic book creators are now given due recognition - but I get a Google Alert thing for comics and comic conventions and the vast majority of them are about super-heros or gossip about people who make super-hero comics, so it often appears that the changes are peripheral. Jack Kirby was a terrific comic book artist - Stan Lee was lucky to have him - but one does wonder why he seems not to have applied these views in his own work. It suggests a tension between personal belief and earning a living, between art and commerce, that must be common for those in the comic book marketplace. And confess it is a pleasure having an excuse to post Jack Kirby work. https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/05/why-comics-meant-more-a-…