Atomic Romance

I had strange dream last night that went on and on. During one part of it, I was in a grade school classroom. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with kid paintings of the Avengers. They were very colorful and garish as you’d expect them to be and of course She-Hulk figured prominently in most of them (it was my dream after all). In a kind of booth in near the door was man sitting at a drawing table. Ignoring the kids running around the class, I walked over and sat down near him and watched him sketch. Suddenly, I realized that it was Jack Kirby because he was drawing pictures of Captain America! He looked like he was in his thirties but his clothes were something you might see somebody wearing in the 1960s. I mumbled a few lame questions before I realized “hey, I’ve got Jack Kirby here. It’s not everyday that you get to meet him, so you better ask him something worthwhile.” (Especially since he died in 1994). So I tried really hard to concentrate through the haziness of the dream and I finally came up with a good query. “What was it like to work with Joe Simon?” Jack seemed happy with that question and began to respond when the dream morphed into something else and thus I never got to hear his answer.

I must have been thinking about Joe Simon because I recently watched an old news story about him from last year during the whole death of Captain America thing. He’s pretty old now (but still sharp as a tack) and I guess I’m worried he’ll be gone soon. Jack Co-created Captain America with Joe, so it all connects I guess.




-Swinebread