The Comics Journal

I’ve always been mildly discombobulated by the question of who inked Kirby. In the early years of their partnership, we’ve all assumed that Kirby penciled (because that’s where the energy in the pictures originated, in the pencils, and Kirby was notorious for not wanting to ink his work (like drawing it twice, he’d say) and Simon inked. In various places, however, I’ve read that the only authentic Simon and Kirby collaboration, with Simon inking Kirby, was in the Blue Bolt stories, the first of their joint endeavors. Simon’s contribution to the partnership was to write the stories and to market their product. Very soon, apparently, these assignments had elbowed any possibility of inking out of the studio, and the two recruited inkers from whoever was walking by the door, which, in those early days, included a lot of highly talented artists.