Joseph Henry "Joe" Simon was an American
comic book writer,
artist,
editor, and
publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s–1940s
Golden Age of Comic Books and served as the first editor of
Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into
Marvel Comics died he was 98..
With his partner, artist
Jack Kirby, he co-created
Captain America, one of comics' most enduring
superheroes, and the team worked extensively on such features at
DC Comics as the 1940s
Sandman and
Sandy the Golden Boy, and co-created the
Newsboy Legion, the
Boy Commandos, and
Manhunter. Simon and Kirby creations for other comics publishers include
Boys' Ranch,
Fighting American and the
Fly. In the late 1940s, the duo created the field of
romance comics, and were among the earliest pioneers of
horror comics. Simon, who went on to work in advertising and commercial art, also founded the
satirical magazine
Sick in 1960, remaining with it for a decade. He briefly returned to DC Comics in the 1970s.
Simon was inducted into the
Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1999.
(born
Hymie Simon; October 11, 1913 – December 14, 2011)
Early life
Joe Simon was born in 1913 as Hymie Simon
[1] and raised in
Rochester,
New York, the son of Harry Simon, who had emigrated from
Leeds,
England, in 1905, and Rose,
[2] whom Harry met in the
United States.
[3] Harry Simon moved to Rochester, then a clothing-manufacturing center where his younger brother, Isaac, lived
[4] and the couple had a daughter, Beatrice, in 1912.
[3] A poor
Jewish family, the Simons lived in "a first-floor flat which doubled as my father's tailor shop."
[5] Simon attended
Benjamin Franklin High School, where he was art director for the school
newspaper and the
yearbook — earning his first professional fee as an artist when two universities each paid $10 publication rights for his
art deco,
tempera splash pages for the yearbook sections.
[6]
Career
Beginnings
Upon graduation in 1932, Simon was hired by
Rochester Journal-American art director Adolph Edler as an assistant, replacing Simon's future comics colleague
Al Liederman, who had quit.
[7] In-between production duties, he did occasional sports and
editorial cartoons for the paper.
[8] Two years later, Simon took an art job at the
Syracuse Herald in
Syracuse, New York,
for $45 a week, supplying sports and editorial cartoons here 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 the
Syracuse Journal American,
[9] although the
Syracuse Journal and the
Syracuse Sunday American, were the separate weekday and Sunday papers, respectively. The paper soon closed, and Simon, at 23, ventured to
New York City.
[10]
There, Simon took a room at the
boarding house Haddon Hall, in the
Morningside Heights neighborhood of
Manhattan, near
Columbia University. At the suggestion of the art director of the
New York Journal American, he sought and found freelance work at
Paramount Pictures, working above the
Paramount Theatre on
Broadway, retouching the
movie studio's publicity photos.
[11] He also found freelance work at
Macfadden Publications, doing illustrations for
True Story and other
magazines. Sometime afterward, his boss, art director Harlan Crandall, recommended Simon to
Lloyd Jacquet, head of
Funnies, 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-page
Western.
Four days later, Jacquet asked Simon, at the behest of
Timely Comics publisher Martin Goodman, to create a flaming superhero like Timely's successful character the
Human Torch. From this came Simon's first comic-book hero, the
Fiery Mask.
[11] Simon used the pseudonym
Gregory Sykes on at least one story during this time, "King of the Jungle", starring Trojak The Tiger Man, in Timely's
Daring Mystery Comics #2 (Feb. 1940).
[12]
Simon and Kirby
During this time, Simon met
Fox Feature Syndicate comics artist
Jack Kirby, with whom he would soon have a storied collaboration lasting a decade-and-a-half. Speaking at a 1998
Comic-Con International panel in
San Diego,
California, 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 from DC [Comics]' and Fox [Feature Syndicate]'s offices, and I was working on Blue Bolt for Funnies, 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 of Blue Bolt...[13]
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's
Blue Bolt, surfaced. Simon published the story in the 2003 updated edition of his autobiography,
The Comic Book Makers.
After leaving Fox and landing at
pulp magazine publisher
Martin Goodman's
Timely Comics (the future
Marvel Comics), where Simon became the company's first editor, the Simon and Kirby team created the seminal patriotic hero
Captain America.
Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941), going on sale in December 1940 — a year before the
bombing of Pearl Harbor but already showing the hero punching
Hitler in the jaw — sold nearly one million copies.
[14] They remained on the hit series as a team through issue #10, and were established as a notable creative force in the industry.
[15] After the first issue was published, Simon asked Kirby to join the Timely staff as the company's art director.
[16]
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,
[17] (later named
DC 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.
[18]
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.
[19] At some point during this time, the duo also produced
Fawcett Comics'
Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (1941), the first complete comic book starring
Captain Marvel following the character's run as star of the superhero anthology
Whiz Comics.
[20]
Kirby and Simon spent their first weeks at National trying to devise
new characters while the company sought how best to utilize the pair.
[21] After a few failed editor-assigned ghosting assignments, National's
Jack Liebowitz told them to "just do what you want". The pair then revamped the
Sandman feature in
Adventure Comics and created the superhero
Manhunter.
[22][23] In July 1942 they began the
Boy Commandos feature. The ongoing "kid gang" series
Boy Commandos, launched later that same year, was the team's first National feature to graduate into its own title.
[24] It sold over a million copies a month, becoming National's third best-selling title.
[25] They also scored a hit with the homefront kid-gang team, the
Newsboy Legion in
Star-Spangled Comics.
[26]
Harry Mendryk, art restorer on
Titan Books' Simon and Kirby series of hardcover collections, believes Simon used the pseudonym
Glaven on at least two covers during this time: those of
Harvey Comics'
Speed Comics #22 and
Champ Comics #22 (both Sept. 1942),
[27] though the
Grand Comics Database does not independently confirm this.
[28] Mendryk also believes that both Kirby and Simon used the pseudonym
Jon Henri on a handful of other 1942 Harvey comics,
[29] as does
Who's Who in American Comic Books 1929-1999.
[30]
Simon enlisted in the
U.S. Coast Guard during
World War II.
[31] He said in his 1990 autobiography that he was first assigned to the Mounted Beach Patrol at
Long Beach Island, off
Barnegat, New Jersey, for a year before being sent to boot camp near
Baltimore,
Maryland, for basic training.
[32] 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 met
New York Post sports columnist
Milt Gross, who was with the Coast Guard Public Relations Unit, and the two became roommates in civilian housing.
[33]
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 by
Parents magazine in Sunday newspaper comics sections, under the title
True 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
produced
Adventure Is My Career, distributed by
Street and Smith Publications for sale at newsstands.
[34]
Returning to New York City after his discharge, Simon married Harriet Feldman,
[35]
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 in
Mineola, New York, on
Long Island, where Simon and Kirby each worked from a home studio.
[36] The Simons would have a son, James,
[37] and, later, three daughters.
[38]
Crestwood, Black Magic and romance comics
As superhero comics waned in popularity after the end of
World War II, Simon and Kirby began producing a variety of stories in many genres. In partnership with
Crestwood Publications, they developed the
imprint Prize Group, through which they published
Boys' Ranch and launched an early
horror comic, the atmospheric and non-gory series
Black Magic. The team also produced
crime and
humor comics, and are credited as well with publishing the first
romance comics title,
Young Romance, starting a hugely successful trend.
At the urging of a Crestwood salesman, Kirby and Simon launched their own comics company,
Mainline Publications,
[39][40] in late 1953 or early 1954, subletting space from their friend
Al Harvey's
Harvey Publications at 1860
Broadway.
[6] Mainline published four titles: the
Western Bullseye: Western Scout; the
war comic Foxhole, since
EC Comics and
Atlas Comics were having success with war comics, but promoting theirs as being written and drawn by actual veterans;
In Love, since their earlier
romance comic Young Love was still being widely imitated; and the
crime comic Police Trap, which claimed to be based on genuine accounts by law-enforcement officials. Bitter that
Timely Comics' 1950s iteration,
Atlas Comics, had relaunched Captain America in a new series in 1954, Kirby and Simon created
Fighting American. Simon recalled, "We thought we'd show them how to do Captain America".
[41] 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 the
Army-McCarthy hearings and the public backlash against the Red-baiting
U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy.
[39]
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."
[42] Simon turned primarily to
advertising and
commercial art,
while dipping back into comics on occasion. The Simon and Kirby team
reunited briefly in 1959 with Simon writing and collaborating on art for
Archie Comics, where the duo updated the superhero the
Shield in the two-issue
The Double Life of Private Strong (June-Aug. 1959), and Simon created the superhero the
Fly; they went on to collaborate on the first two issues of
The Adventures of the Fly (Aug.-Sept. 1959), and Simon and other artists, including
Al Williamson,
Jack Davis, and
Carl Burgos, did four issues before Simon moved on to work in commercial art.
Silver Age of Comics and later
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.
[37] Concurrently, in 1960, he founded the
satirical magazine
Sick, a competitor of
Mad magazine, and edited and produced material for it for over a decade.
During this period, known to fans and historians as the
Silver Age of Comic Books, Simon and Kirby again reteamed for
Harvey 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, with
Unearthly Spectaculars #1-3 (Oct. 1965 - March 1967) and
Double-Dare Adventures #1-2 (Dec. 1966 - March 1967), the latter of which introduced the influential writer-artist
Jim Steranko to comics.
[43]
In 1968, Simon created the two-issue
DC Comics series
Brother Power the Geek, about a
mannequin given a semblance of life who wanders philosophically through 1960s
hippie culture;
Al Bare provided some of the art.
[44] Simon and artist
Jerry Grandenetti then created DC's four-issue
Prez (Sept. 1973 - March 1974), about America's first teen-age president
[43][45] and the three-issue
Champion Sports (Nov. 1973 - March 1974).
[43] That same year, Simon returned to the romance genre as editor of
Young Romance and
Young Love and oversaw a
Black Magic reprint series.
[46]
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
the
Sandman.
[47] Simon and Grandenetti then created the
Green Team: Boy Millionaires in the DC try-out series
1st Issue Special #2 (May 1975), and the freakish
Outsiders in
1st Issue Special #10 (Jan. 1976).
[43]
21st century
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 in
Captain America vol. 5, #25 (March 2007), stating, "It's a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now".
[48][49]
For a concept called ShieldMaster, created by Jim Simon, Joe Simon
provided prototype art. A ShieldMaster graphic novel was in production
by
Organic Comix in 2010 and is scheduled for release 2011.
[50]
Death
Simon died in New York City on December 14, 2011, after a brief illness.
[38][51][52]
Awards
To see more of who died in 2011
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