It’s come to my atten­tion that today marks 20 years since the pass­ing of Jack Kir­by. That brings a lot of things to mind.

I know where I was when I got the word. I’d start­ed a new career, work­ing in ani­ma­tion, and was not quite into my first full year at it. I was work­ing at Graz Enter­tain­ment on X‑Men, for my first boss in the busi­ness (who I also con­sid­er a men­tor and friend), Lar­ry Hous­ton. In those pre-inter­net days, Lar­ry was the one who first got word, and passed it to us. Obvi­ous­ly, for those of us on the crew who knew and loved Kirby’s work, our minds and our con­ver­sa­tion were occu­pied the rest of the day.

When I got home, I had a sud­den com­pul­sion to go to the long­box­es, and pull out every com­ic I had that Jack Kir­by had worked on. Then I sur­veyed what was left. There were a lot of big holes! I could have gone even fur­ther and pulled out all the titles that he’d had a hand in cre­at­ing, and that would’ve left an even big­ger hole. There would prob­a­bly be few­er comics in the box­es than out of them.

Jack has most def­i­nite­ly left his mark on comics, whether peo­ple want to see it or not. And he’s left behind a great lega­cy of work in all kinds of gen­res that we can still enjoy today. I can say he cer­tain­ly enriched my life with his work.

RIP, Mr. Kir­by. Your work lives on.