Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics [A Graphic Biography]

I knew Kirby was a WWII infantry veteran but there’s one story about his war experiences that shows just how tough he was. It’s from Tom Scioli’s graphic novel biography of him. Kirby often had duty as a scout, because he could come back and make accurate drawings of what he had seen. He was exploring a bombed-put village in France and went into a bar hoping to find something to drink. When he got inside, he found out it was occupied by four German soldiers, and he assured he had been captured. The Germans examined his dog tags, noticed his name was Jacob Kurtzberg, and started making anti-Semitic remarks. After that, they moved on to insulting his mother. He noticed one of them had a knife in his boot and went for it. He then saw red and all he remembered afterwards was that he walked out of the bar and the Germans didn’t. The man killed four enemy soldiers in hand-to-hand combat.