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Live on tape from my house in Los Angeles, I'm Jesse Thorn and this is the Sound of Young

America from MaximumFun.org.

It's the Sound of Young America, I'm Jesse Thorn, America's radio sweetheart.

My guest on the program is Mark Evanier, his new book is called Kirby, The King of Comics.

It is a large format, spectacularly beautiful collection of the work of Jack Kirby, the man,

probably best known for creating among others Thor, the Fantastic Four, Captain America

and lots of other beloved comic book characters but also above and beyond the characters

that he created and co-created monumental force in the aesthetics and the history

of the comic book industry, Mark, welcome to the show.

Thank you. It is a pleasure to have you here. One of the things that I was struck by,

I knew Jack Kirby as a casual comic book's fan, I knew Jack Kirby as the creator of those characters

and to some extent I knew the style that he was so well known for especially in the 60s

with the Fantastic Four books and everything like that. I had no idea of his early history.

You have a page in the book where you show some of the comic strips that he drew in the 1930s

and the breadth of styles that he was working in at the time, under also a breadth of pen names.

How did he get into the comic strip industry? Well, Jack got into the depression era

just by taking his samples around. One of the nice things about comics in the early days

it was an easy entrance business. They actually advertised in the New York Times for comic book artists

...