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In a previous post I wrote of my objections to arguments that Marvel is or ought to be morally obligated to turn over profits made on the work of Jack Kirby to Mr. Kirby’s heirs. As noted in that post, I chose to focus on the issue of moral “rights” rather than legal rights because, particularly since the courts have rejected claims on the latter, proponents of the Kirby heirs’ case have generally argued that whatever the law says, moral standards demand compensation for the Kirby family.

This much is pretty much plainly-stated by the plaintiffs in this matter, at any rate the informal plaintiffs. But I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb, at least, and propose that underlying even the specific moral arguments, there’s a general sense among most comic creators and many comic fans that Jack Kirby was a hero and just deserved better. I don’t think this is much of a stretch, either, really; some might argue that their claimed moral imperative on Marvel’s part exists separately from any general obligation of life to have done better by Kirby, but they would probably at least acknowledge the latter as a belief and, for what my opinion’s worth, it’s unquestionably a factor in the decision to go all-in on angst and breastbeating in the case of Kirby as opposed to the many other (and still-living) comic creators who’ve received the short end of a work for hire stick.

For whatever my opinion is worth, though, I feel like this posthumous-martyrdom campaign on the behalf of Jack Kirby is deeply, deeply misguided. Because, so far as I can tell, Jack Kirby coaxed forth from the universe a life which, on balance, is to be admired, and perhaps envied, but certainly not condemned as an unjust raw deal.

If you’re familiar with comics, certainly if you’re familiar with Anglophone comics, you already know the outlines of Kirby’s career. If you aren’t familiar with comics, well, the preceding probably tells you quite a bit.

Jack Kirby is, within the world of modern comics, generally acknowledged and widely celebrated as an innovator, a genius and in many cases as something just short of being a god. The man had, at any rate, a phenomenal career.

For one thing, he made a living drawing and writing comics. For much of his career. That, right there, is a challenging and enviable accomplishment which Kirby managed to impose upon his life.

For another thing, he was not only good at his work, but extraordinarily good. And while he definitely worked hard to achieve this, he was also working with an incredible amount of raw talent. Reminiscences of Kirby generally agree that ideas burst from his fertile imagination like a volcano, and that as an artist he could draw quickly, almost instinctively.

Kirby was not only present at the creation of concepts and ongoing works which are still thriving, today, in some cases 70 years later; he was typically a key part of the creation, and sometimes responsible for the whole thing himself.

Indeed, it’s worth pausing to remind ourselves that Jack Kirby didn’t just create or co-create some enduring characters like Captain America, the Hulk and the X-Men, which are now “franchises” valued at some number plus a lot of zeroes. That’s chicken feed. Jack Kirby created universes.

Just considering the New Gods concept, out of all the man’s vast body of work, Kirby managed to create a rich and inventive mythology which not only rivaled the Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkein, but has been extended and embellished by some of the culture’s best artists and storytellers throughout the succeeding decades, a vision allegedly entertained for his own work by Tolkein but one which, in his case, has never been realized.

And that’s just “The Fourth World;” many and perhaps most of Kirby’s creations are still alive and well, in some cases more prominent than ever, 17 years after the man’s death. That’s a pretty good legacy.

Which, admittedly, is of arguable value to someone after they’re dead, but Kirby seems to have been dealt a more-than-respectable hand by fate during his own lifetime, as well. As noted, he made a career in a creative field he was good at and passionate about. He was a legend in his own time, revered by fans and colleagues for much of his later life. When he finally had enough of the downsides of his career in comics, at an age when most people would be resigning themselves to their job and just hoping to make it to retirement, he began a short but successful second career in animation.

Outside of work, to the extent that it’s worth making a distinction for someone whose work was probably satisfying and meaningful, Kirby appears to have done pretty well, also. He saw dangerous special assignments in World War II and, though seriously injured, came home hale and recovered as well as a decorated veteran. He was married for 52 years to an amazing woman who was an unswerving partner in life as well as mother of four children. He grew up in a New York ghetto, but lived out the latter part of his life in comfortable middle class southern California. He enjoyed smoking cigars, and still lived to old age; he died at age 76 of, basically, a rich old white person’s disease (heart failure), having remained active until near the very end. (Compared with how my father met his end, those are very enviable circumstances, fwiw; moreover while I may be morbid I can’t help feeling that I myself will be remarkably lucky to see such a privileged ending, never mind the life which preceded it.)

Considering Jack Kirby’s life, then, I have difficulty seeing how anyone can get so deeply exercised about various slights or wrongs he experienced along the way. Yes, he undoubtedly experienced poor dealings on the part of various people and organizations; everyone does. So what? So what if Jack Kirby was cheated by a few little actors here and there during his life; in the big picture of life, itself, he still won. Charlie Sheen is a buffoon, but more to the point, when he talks of “winning,” next to Jack Kirby he probably has only the pettiest pee-wee league concept of victory. Jack actually knew what it’s like to wrest victory from life, in a way that most of us will never know and may have difficulty even conceiving.

And so I wonder what the fuck it is that, given our removed and thus inherently big-picture perspective on Kirby and his life, people feel Jack really deserved but did not receive from life.

What more could a man ask for, over the course of a life? What more would this particular man have asked for, for that matter?

Is Kirby not famous enough? Fame is a rather odd thing, really, a phenomenon apparently directed by criteria which make only limited recognition of merit, at best. Thomas Edison is famous, and he was a brilliant inventor. But so was John Atanasoff, and he’s an obscure footnote. William Shakespeare was (barring exotic theories) a successful working playright and producer, but for all the merit of his work his centuries of worldwide fame can only be explained through the “superstar effect,” entirely independent of anything he himself did or could possibly have done. Meanwhile, among Englishmen, James Bond is at least as famous, and he’s an imaginary cartoon invented by a decidedly less-talented author. As far as Jack Kirby’s fame goes, ultimately, one is free to rail against its inadequacy if one so chooses, but it’s rather like railing against the inadequacy of the standard visible spectrum of light; it is what it is. In any event, don’t expect me to be swayed by your call to join a moral crusade.

Maybe Kirby should have gotten more money, though? That’s an interesting premise, although I suspect it might be subject to chronological distortion; the real mega-profits from Kirby creations have mostly been collected since his demise so he couldn’t have been enriched by royalties from Hulk or X-Men: First Class even if an ideal intellectual property system were in place, anyway.

Moreover, what is an ideal system for assigning wealth, anyway? I’ve already gone through my views on the intellectual property system, but beyond that, I have to question whether an “ideal” system in a general sense would or should have made Jack Kirby vastly more wealthy than he was. How much money should Kirby have had, then? Millions? Billions?

Why? Because person x has that much money and Kirby was at least that good? Might it be that person x hasn’t really “earned” that much of the world’s total wealth, either? I don’t know how good the Harry Potter novels are, or aren’t, but are they really so much better than other works that J.K. Rowling should be sitting on a billion dollars? Steve Wozniak is undoubtedly a talented engineer, but did his contributions to society through his work at Apple really entitle him to the vast fortune they generated? Or is it possible that some people, sometimes simply fools though often sincerely talented, are all the same simply in the right place at the right time, and per a combination of fate and the systems we’ve constructed end up hitting the mother lode, having worked no harder nor made any better decisions than many other “prospectors” who received far lesser rewards?

Like fame, wealth seems to be only distantly related to actual merit. Unlike fame, there are probably many good reasons to be more concerned about unjust distribution of wealth than of fame, especially as unjust distribution of wealth is arguably much more a result of intentional formation of rules and systems than unjust distribution of fame. But in both cases, they are what they are for the time being; I daresay that most of us in modern America probably deserve a bit more wealth than we actually have, but I don’t think that each individual example of this is, personally, The World’s Tragedy. I would like to see reforms in this area, certainly, but I submit that the greater cause for outrage is the large number of people who work hard and receive less than they need, rather than the relatively small number of people who work hard and produce extraordinary work but achieve only a comfortable middle class living.

Jack Kirby had the good fortune to fall into the latter camp, and to extract a great deal of other savory matter from life, besides. So what if he had to work? So far as I can discern, a life without meaningful activity is largely empty anyway; Kirby was lucky enough to have this for most of his life, and so why would he have wanted to stop working? Did he need to have that much more luxury? Does anyone? What else is wealth for, then? Should Kirby have been a multimillionaire so his fortune would have been commensurate with his genius? You want to endorse the idea of wealth as a way “to keep score,” then? You don’t find that a little bit disgusting, or consider that, given the man’s own attitudes and those expressed in his work, Jack himself would probably have found that idea about as atrocious as I do?

Who cares that Jack Kirby never had the opportunity to retire to a life of idle luxury? I doubt he did.

Bissette, et al., would presumably protest yes, but, that’s no excuse for letting bad people get away with their badness. But y’know what, that’s life. Even for a winner. Life includes a lot of bad people getting away with badness, many of those bad people and much of that badness a whole fuck of a lot worse than anything ever done by even the most vile, despicable wretches to disgrace the comics industry, ever. Meanwhile, Jack’s dead, and has been dead for 17 years. Even if one says “well, then, with all the badness in the world the choice of anything as a target for attention is arbitrary and minor, therefore I may as well focus on the wrongs done to Jack Kirby,” the fact is that it’s too late. You can’t right the wrongs done to Jack Kirby. No matter how much it hurts to imagine that, it’s a fact. You may as well get over it and choose another battle to fight, because this one is over, permanently.

And, as far as I can tell, you needn’t even feel too bad about that. Because even if Jack Kirby was defeated in a few battles, he won the war.