Jeremy Kirby Interview

Conducted by John Morrow

(Roz and Jack Kirby's grandson Jeremy was born in 1978 in Thousand Oaks, CA. The youngest child of Jack's son Neal, Jeremy is now 21 years old, and ready to further the family name with a number of projects in the works. The latest one is a new Captain Victory mini-series, due out in July of this year. Our thanks to Jeremy for taking time out for this interview, which was conducted by phone on February 6, 2000.)

Grandpa Jack babysitting a very young Jeremy and Tracy.

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What's your earliest memory of your grandfather?
JEREMY KIRBY: Going over to the house, and seeing him on the drawing board. I would've been about two years old. He used to baby-sit me when I was really young. We lived very close to them; about five miles away.

TJKC: Your dad, Neal, published a lot of your grandfather's work in the early 1970s, under the Communicators Unlimited imprint. Do you know anything about that?
JEREMY: I remember a lot of that stuff around the house; maybe the Kirby Unleashed book. I also think that for a while, he was representing my grandfather's properties.

TJKC: Did your dad talk that much about comics? Did he tell any memorable stories about your grandpa?
JEREMY: He'd would always bring up the subject of Jack. He was probably the most aware of the Kirby children about what my grandpa did. A lot of his stories were of his very bad driving; (laughter) he'd try to drive, but would always be thinking about something else. I believe once he rear-ended a police squad car. (laughter)

There were some nice stories. Once, it was my grandfather's brother's son's bar mitzvah or something. Everyone else was inside partying, eating, and drinking. This was on the Lower East Side of New York. A homeless man walked by, and my grandfather invited him in, and had him party with everyone else—eat, drink, and be merry.

TJKC: Did you spend a lot of time with Jack and Roz?
JEREMY: Oh yeah, definitely. I used to go up to the Ruby-Spears building a lot with my grandma and grandpa when I was visiting. They had a cool video game in the lobby that'd I'd always play while my grandpa was in there. My grandma would usually stay with me in the waiting area there while he would go in. He was never in there more than an hour—or it seemed like it, anyway.

TJKC: When you'd go over to the house, was Jack usually drawing all the time?
JEREMY: Yeah, a lot. All through the afternoon, and after I'd go to sleep. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and look across to his studio from the other side of the house. You could see him with his back facing the window, just drawing at the board.

TJKC: Was he working on animation stuff at that time?
JEREMY: Yeah, that and I think some of the Pacific Comics stuff.

TJKC: Did he let you watch him draw?
JEREMY: Oh yeah, all the time—and he'd let me use some of the big animation boards to draw my horrible, horrible take-offs of Star Wars. (laughter)

TJKC: So it didn't bother him having you run all around the room?
JEREMY: Not at all. I think sometimes it was a welcome break. Other times he just didn't let it bother him.

TJKC: As a kid, what kind of stuff did you do for fun with your grandparents?
JEREMY: There was a big lake called Westlake, and they'd take me down to the duck pond. We'd feed the ducks, and that was their big thing. I think it was pretty easy to do, and it'd keep me busy for hours. We'd also do a lot of swimming in the pool; my grandma more than my grandpa, but he'd go in every once in a while.

TJKC: Didn't they have a dog at one point?
JEREMY: Back in the early 1980s they had Scruffy. He was this ugly little thing, (laughter) but he was the nicest dog. The name pretty much summed him up. (laughter) I think they found him somewhere, or Lisa might've brought him home; I can't remember.

TJKC: While you were a kid, did fans stop by the house?
JEREMY: Oh yeah. It was funny for me; he was just my grandpa, and all these people wanted to see someone I got to see on a regular basis. They'd stop by, and toward my later years, I was surprised at how they let all these strangers in the house.

TJKC: As a kid, did you read comics at all?
JEREMY: My favorite comics when I was young—and about the only ones I really read—were Sergio Aragonés' Groo books, and some of the Captain Americas, reprints of the Airboy stuff, as well as Captain Victory.

TJKC: But you weren't a fanatical comics readers?
JEREMY: No, no. I liked the ideas of everything and the imagination that went into them, but I wasn't that into reading most of them. I had a few I liked, and that was about it.

The infamous Goozlebobber! ™ & © Jack Kirby.

TJKC: In Captain Victory #4-6, there was that very odd Goozlebobber in the backup stories. There's a kid named Jeremy in there, and the prevailing wisdom is that Jack based the character on you. Is that true?
JEREMY: Yeah. Because he was always up so late, my grandfather used to sleep until about eleven o'clock. My grandma would have me wake him up at eleven. When I was younger and he was sleeping, I'd run as fast as I could into the bedroom and just jump! (laughter) He'd be all startled, but for the next half hour he'd sit me down and start telling me stories of the Goozlebobbers. They were taking over the world, and we'd hide under the covers: "There goes one now, running past the window!"

TJKC: So, first thing in the morning, he was firing away with stories?
JEREMY: Yeah, first thing—he dreamed about them or something—and sometimes that would go on for an hour. He had a better imagination than I did, and I was five years old. (laughter) That was almost an inside thing in a way. It was something to do to keep me busy. It almost seemed as if he liked playing "make believe" more than I did.

TJKC: How did the Goozlebobber actually show up on the comics page?
JEREMY: I'm not sure. Maybe he thought, "Wow, Jeremy seems to like it. Let's see if it'll work here."

TJKC: Did he tell you he was doing it?
JEREMY: My grandma told me later. I didn't really read the issues until later on. That's when my grandma said he had drawn me into it. I didn't know that until years later, when I was maybe ten.

TJKC: There was another kid in that story. Was he based on anyone?
JEREMY: It could've been, but I'm not sure. He probably just made it up.

TJKC: Did he ever do any drawings to help you with school projects?
JEREMY: Not really, only because I wasn't as good at school as my sister. He drew some pictures for her book reports. When I was younger, he'd come into my preschool class, and draw pictures for the entire class. Right in the middle of class, the teachers would let him come in, and he'd start drawing. It was on the big animation boards. I don't know if anyone still has them, or if he gave them to the school, but that's what he'd do to entertain the whole class.

TJKC: Did you ask him to do that?
JEREMY: I think it was more my grandma's idea. It was the religious preschool, so everyone knew who he was. I think they just asked him to come down. He'd have me go up there sometimes and draw in front of everyone, but my artistic abilities aren't quite what his were. (laughter)

TJKC: As you were growing up, did your friends know who your grandfather was?
JEREMY: A lot of them did. It meant more to them that he was this big comic book creator than it did to me; to me he was just Grandpa. When I moved up north to central California, I had a friend who was a big comic book fan, and it took him years to get over that my grandpa was Jack Kirby.

TJKC: As you got older, did you start going to conventions with Jack and Roz?
JEREMY: Over the years, I've been to 13 or 14 San Diego Comicons. They started bringing me before I could remember. When I was two years old, Chuck Norris happened to be down at the Con. He was a big fan of my grandpa, and he came up. My parents keep telling me about it: "Chuck Norris held you when you were little." (laughter)

TJKC: Any other memorable moments from those cons? Were you at his booths watching people come up?
JEREMY: Yeah. I remember the old convention center and going to the masquerade balls. I remember the hotels better, because that's where I would play around. Sometimes they'd let me head off by myself, and I'd go through all the booths. I'd head for the science-fiction, Star Wars, that kind of stuff. I used to love all the Star Wars stuff.

Pencils from Captain Victory #3, page 20. ™ & © Jack Kirby.

TJKC: What were your hobbies growing up?
JEREMY: I loved designing things. I designed amusement parks. In one of my grandmother's bedrooms, I built a giant-size amusement park, complete with every ride; it took up the whole bedroom. I'd find things laying around the house that looked similar, and cut things up to make 3-D models. Then in seventh grade, I started drawing giant maps. I don't know why; they'd just catch my attention. Kind of like the Sim City game, but just on a piece of paper. I still have one on my wall. It's about 14 feet long, just a giant map of a city, with complete details; little homes, freeways, airports, you name it, it's there. Whenever I feel artistically inclined, I just start drawing. It's not very good, but I just do it.

TJKC: Were you a pretty avid reader growing up?
JEREMY: Not until high school. I liked Stephen King and Michael Crichton; I liked a lot of their books. When I was younger, it was mostly just movies for me.

TJKC: Did you see them with your grandfather?
JEREMY: Yeah. In fact, my first memory of seeing a movie was The Empire Strikes Back, and I remember what he said. It was in the beginning of Empire Strikes Back, and it was the first time anyone had seen the two-legged "chicken-walkers." I remember him turning to my dad, and saying he didn't think that was supposed to come out until the third movie.

TJKC: So he must've kept abreast of the developments with Star Wars.
JEREMY: Yeah. He used to have a lot of the sci-fi books, or maybe he knew someone who was working on them, but he was just startled. He didn't think that was supposed to be in the second movie. Hasbro or Lucasfilm sent my grandpa giant boxes of Star Wars toys. They would probably be worth thousands now, but my sister and I never put them down.

TJKC: Have you always had an interest in continuing what your grandfather did?
JEREMY: Definitely. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to work with him directly, but I feel with Captain Victory, it's kind of like my chance now.

TJKC: Your first real taste of carrying on the Kirby name was the bumper sticker you produced a couple of years ago. How well did they do?
JEREMY: We sold almost 5000 bumper stickers. I still have a few left. We also did his Space Collage as a large full-color lithograph; we have a few of those left, too, available on the web site.

TJKC: Tell us about the site.
JEREMY: It's called the Jack Kirby Web Experience <www.kingkirby.com>. It was started about a year-and-a-half ago. There are message boards there, and a place you can write down your memory of my grandpa. There's a photo gallery with pictures of him and my grandmother, and a link section. There's also some audio files and an art gallery.

TJKC: And now you're releasing a new Captain Victory comic under your Kirby Comics imprint. How did this whole idea come about?
JEREMY: It was three years ago or so, and I brought it up to my grandma. I said I wanted to do something with one of grandpa's stories, and Captain Victory was one of the more popular ones. It was the one I knew more about than the rest, so I did a story way back then. It didn't really go anywhere, since I was a lot younger; but the idea has been around for a few years now.

TJKC: So it's based on Captain Victory characters, but using a story you came up with.
JEREMY: Yeah. There were some unpublished Captain Victory pages, and some other pieces that could work into the Captain Victory universe. We added that to the original artwork from some of the books that has been completely retooled, and I wrote a story to them.

TJKC: So you rearranged individual panels from the original books, and mixed them with unseen art to make sense with your story?
JEREMY: Exactly. It's a three-issue mini-series, shipping in July. Each issue is black-&-white, 32 pages. The front and back cover are full-color. Each issue has quite a few pages of art that's not been seen before.

TJKC: Are you doing the production work on it yourself?
JEREMY: Some of it. There are a lot of people who are helping out, just to be nice. Despite the fact that the art is already done, it's taking about 20 hours per page, because the art is 20 years old, and it wasn't always taken care of. Then we've got to remove the original text, and retool the pages. The finished product came out really great.

The hardest part about the book was that all the art had pretty much already been done. I couldn't really introduce new characters. I'm working on the last book now, and I hope to wrap it up with three or four pages drawn by another artist. I've talked to a few people, but I can't announce any names yet.

TJKC: Do you have any other projects coming up? Last year, Mark Evanier showed me a really beautiful unused Kirby concept you guys were planning to develop into a series.
JEREMY: Yes, the plotlines for the book are done. The whole concept was on the art; it's all Jack Kirby. I don't think we're going to have Kirby Comics publish it; we're already talking to one of the main publishers to put that out. It just a question of when we're releasing it, due to Mark's schedule. We're going to co-write that one. We've already talked to Steve Rude, and although he won't be able to draw the inside of the book because of his current commitments, he does want to do the covers. There is already another artist involved, but we're not ready to release the name just yet. Everything's a "go" except the schedules.

Other than that, we found another "Tiger 21" drawing which we're trying to come up with a concept for. It's a name that's been around since the 1940s. There are two drawings we have of the character, and although they're similar, you wouldn't really know it if you just glanced at them. It just goes to show, he came up with quite a few things with the same name.

TJKC: How would you say your grandparents have influenced you?
JEREMY: From playing together when I was younger, just the overwhelming influence of his characters on my imagination—and that he was kind and caring toward other people. That was the biggest influence from my grandmother; just always being nice, and giving money to charity. Even when she said she wasn't going to, she'd break down and do it anyway! (laughter)

Around 1996, I moved in with my grandmother. My grandfather had already passed away, and my grandmother basically raised me from that point on; she was my mother in a way. When I was thinking about doing the bumper stickers, she was the one saying, "Oh, go for it, get this done." The same thing when I wrote the first Captain Victory; she was a big influence on getting me not to procrastinate, and just get the stuff out there.H

(EDITOR'S NOTE: King Kirby bumper stickers are still available for $3 postpaid, and the Space Collage lithograph is available for $12 postpaid payable to: Jack Kirby Comics, 27 Redbud, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688, or check out Jeremy's web site at www.kingkirby.com.)

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