King Kirby's Centennial

It's the 100th birthday of the late Jack Kirby, and Tech Crunch wrote some history about his career, starting with Captain America, and extending to some of his Bronze Age work like the New Gods and Kamandi.

On the other hand, a writer at the Austin American Statesman chose to exploit the occasion for making subtle attacks on the Trump administration:

To contemporary audiences, these characters are best known on the silver screen in movies such as “The Avengers” and “X-Men: First Class” and “Thor” and “Hulk,” their adventures generating billions of dollars around the world. They were all created or co-created by one dude — a small, tough, brilliant New Yorker named Jacob Kurtzberg, aka Jack Kirby, who was born Aug. 28, 1917.

There is no doubt in my mind, and the minds of others, that he is easily one of the most important artists of the 20th century, up there with Picasso, Louis Armstrong, Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Beatles and Andy Warhol.

And in a world where actual white supremacists are given tacit approval from the highest offices in the land, his work — as inherently anti-fascist as it gets — feels as important as ever.

Well now, what's this, somebody's implying the Trump administration actually gave approval to the neo-nazi gang that caused all that trouble in Charlottesville, along with Antifa? And I thought Kirby's centennial was supposed to be an occasion for celebration, not attacking local politicians you don't agree with. What a shame somebody over in Austin has to sully what was meant to be a week for entertainment by remembering the contributions of a man who never got enough compensation and residuals for his past work with needless political jabs.

If we really want to admire Kirby's memory, that's why it'd be better not to exploit his contributions for the sake of a dopey political beef. A shame if the columnist who wrote the newspaper article won't ever understand that.