Jack Kirby's early collaborator Joe Simon can be credited with the initial idea for Captain America, but Kirby's electric take on the sentinel of liberty was essential for the character to take hold. And his brother, Loki - created again by Kirby and Lee - made his solo spotlight debut with the hit Loki Disney Plus streaming series.Ĭheck out the best Thor stories of all time. The character is now one of the MCU's tentpoles as well, with the impending Thor: Love and Thunder marking the hero's fourth solo film. Thor was one of Marvel's first tentpoles, with his enemies and supporting cast proliferating throughout the Marvel Universe from its earliest days. Thor's cosmic corner of the Marvel U was populated by gods, monsters, living planets, epic heroes, and seemingly unstoppable threats, all anchored by Kirby's unique interpretation of ancient myths. Though Kirby and Stan Lee developed the idea of Thor together, Lee tasked his brother, Larry Lieber, with scripting many of Thor's early adventures, leaving Kirby to mastermind much of Marvel's vision of Asgard. Though he explored this idea more in-depth with later creations such as the Eternals and his Fourth World, Thor marks Kirby's first major exploration of this deific ideal.

Jack Kirby had a deeply-held fascination with the Norse myth cycle, the story of death and rebirth bolstered by larger-than-life characters and bold adventures. Along with the five original X-Men and their mentor Professor X, Kirby's all-too-brief tenure on Uncanny X-Men also included the creation of Magneto, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch - characters that have gone on to be mainstays of Marveldom in both comic books and film – as well as numerous other classic X-Men villains.īefore anyone thinks we're selling the X-Men short, remember, they may be in the lowest rank of Kirby's top ten creations, largely due to his brief time on the title - but that still puts them in the top ten best Kirby creations out of literally hundreds if not thousands of possible choices.Ĭheck out the best X-Men stories of all time. Still, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created a dynamite idea in the story of five teenagers with ingrained powers that set them apart from the rest of the world.

Sure, they stuck around long enough to see a reinvention in the '70s that launched the franchise into the stratosphere, but their early adventures didn’t quite take hold with readers. It's hard to imagine now, but at the time they launched, the X-Men weren't particularly a hit for Marvel Comics.

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