KAPOW!

• How does it feel to have had such a pivotal role in the development of the comics industry?
  To look back and know that I have had a pivotal role in the development of comics is something I'm very proud of, although it's not something I think about unless someone brings it up. Comics have become a unique art form. When I and the other young artists were working in comics, our work carried with it a particularly American slant. After all, we were Americans drawing and writing about things that touched us. As it turned out, the early work was, you might say, a comic book version of Jazz . In the sense, that is, that Jazz too was a uniquely American art form.
  Many of today's authors, filmmakers and others are still influenced by much of the work found in the old comics as well as the newer comics. I sometimes marvel at the special effects in movies today. The movies, especially the action movies today, are doing what we did in the comics so many years earlier. But the movies, with their gadgetry and special effects, get their action across more viscerally; they make dynamically "real" what we could only illustrate statically on paper. In the 1950s we use to feel that television was taking away our comic readership; with today's exciting, powerfully visual movies I have to wonder about their effect on the kids' loyalty to the comic book medium all over again.
• What was your involvement with the creation of Spiderman?
  There's an interesting story behind Spiderman. I don't want to go into it fully here, but I can tell you that back in 1953 I created a superhero, a young man with spider-like qualities. I put the character in a presentation for a publisher and entitled it Spiderman. I designed the Spiderman logo. I had Clarence Beck do the penciled sketches. He was the predominant artist for Captain Marvel, the man who gave Captain Marvel its special comic style, and I believe he came out of semi-retirement to work with me on this. At the last minute, I changed the name from Spiderman to the Silver Spider. I thought at the time there were just too many 'man' titles around,-Superman, Batman, that stuff. I took the presentation up to Harvey Comics where it languished. I kind of forgot about it after a while. I was onto new projects. I wasn't looking back; there was no time to look back. You went on; you created.
  In the late 1950s, Archie Comics asked me to create a new line of superheroes. I gave the Silver Spider sketches to Jack Kirby and I changed the name again, this time to The Fly. Jack held onto the sketches and when Stan Lee asked Jack for new ideas, Jack brought the original Spiderman pages to Marvel Comics. Jack was busy with other work so Stan handed the pages over to Steve Ditko. Ditko, on first seeing those pages, commented, "This is Joe Simon's Fly." Steve Ditko worked up his own version of the character's costume. The comic that was published was called Spider-man. Marvel had stuck a hyphen in between the Spider and the man, for trademark reasons I suppose. Jack told me this years later. A few years before he passed on, he sent me back my original Spiderman logo. WebMaster's Note: Jack Kirby's admission is printed in Will Eisner's Spirit Magazine. Steve Ditko's "eye-witness" account is printed in Comic Book Artist/Alter Ego, Winter, 1999; Jon Morrow, Publisher and Roy Thomas/Jon B. Cook, Editors, courtesy of Robin Snyder's History of the Comics. Click here for a larger version of the original Silver Spider sketch by Joe Simon
• Captain America ... was he a reaction to the political climate in Europe?
  How could Captain America not have been a reaction to the times. The Nazis were a menace, an evil in the world. The US hadn't yet entered the war when Jack and I did Captain America, so maybe he was our way at lashing out against the Nazi menace. Evidently, Captain America symbolized, if that's the correct word, the American peoples' sentiments. When we were producing Captain America, we were outselling Batman, Superman, and all the others.
• When you first began in comics did you ever think that people would be acclaiming your work, and comics in general, as classic American Art?
  We were all young, kids almost. We were artists and writers, working at something we enjoyed while getting paid for it. There was virtually no limit to what we could do. We dreamed up new ideas, characters, concepts, stories. Today, when I look back, I am amazed at how this whole business of comics has turned out.
  At the time we were doing our work we never thought the business would be around ten, much less 50-plus years later. I guess sometimes you just never know. We did so many different things in the business. Superheroes, science fiction, westerns, war, humor, kid gang comics, but what I'm most proud of now is the romance comics genre I started with Young Romance comics. These confession-style teenage romance comics were so successful that at one point there were more than 350 imitators battling it out in the market. None ever gained the popularity of Young Romance, however.
• How do you feel comic art compares to so-called 'real' art, and which artists influenced you?
  I was influenced by many artists and writers. How could I not have been? I'm glad that my work is still celebrated, it's gratifying, but it's also puzzling to see so many of the old influences, artists who were considered masters of their days, for the most past have been cast aside or forgotten. I had a friend who was a wonderful fine artist. He did some work for me back in the 1950s. We all looked up to him for his talent and dedication to fine art. He walked away from the comic field to concentrate on his painting. And he became a wonderful painter, as I said. But if I told you his name, you would not know him. That doesn't mean that comic art is better than, as you say, so called 'real art'. Comic art is just different. It's art on its own terms.

Art copyright by Joe Simon; pages and content copyright by Jim Simon. All rights reserved.

All characters trademarked by Joe Simon (except those characters owned by DC Comics and Marvel Comics).