“Co-created by” is such an awkward phrase. It accurately describes that middle school science project on which your parents “absolutely, positively did not” provide any assistance. It correctly describes Captain America, who was co-created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Both wrote. Both drew. A few years later, the pair co-created the unbelievable genre of romance comics. Simon and Kirby went their separate ways in the early fifties. Kirby continued producing freelance art, ultimately hooking up with Marvel Comics.

In 1961, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee co-created the Fantastic Four. Having worked together for two years, the pair had developed a very pragmatic approach to producing comics. Lee would give cursory instructions about the next issue (something like “giant bug stomps LA”) and Kirby would go home and develop a story, illustrate it, and annotate the panels. After receiving the finished pages, Lee would add the dialog. The pair used this methodology throughout the genesis of the Marvel universe, institutionalizing it as the Marvel Method. Kirby was the artist/storyteller on the first appearances of the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, the X-Men, and a host of others. Within a few years, the corporate cronies realized that Kirby had never signed over his rights to all those characters. Almost 20 years later, Kirby agreed that Marvel owned all rights to the characters forever and Marvel returned his artwork, which they had been holding hostage. A phenomenal worker, Kirby had regularly produced 15 pages of comic art per week. During the decades of legal posturing, Marvel had destroyed or lost all but 1900 pages.

Recently re-released, Essential Fantastic Four, Volumes 1-3 includes the first five years of Kirby’s work on the title. Volume three contains “This Man, This Monster” from Fantastic Four #51, which some have called the single best comic book ever published. For those people of a more obsessive stripe, issue 43 of the Jack Kirby Collector (Twomorrows Publishing) is scheduled to hit comic shops on July 20.

June, 2005