• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Titan Books
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1845769309
• ISBN-13: 978-1845769307

Synopsis: In his own words, this is the life of Joe Simon, one of the most important figures in comics history, and half of the famous creative team Simon and Kirby. Joe Simon co-created Captain America, and was the first editor in chief of Marvel Comics (where he hired Stan Lee for his first job in comics).

Simon began his prolific career in the Great Depression, and this book recounts his journey to New York City, his first comic book work, his meeting with Jack Kirby, and the role comics played in wartime America. He remembers the near-death of the comics, and the scramble to survive. And he reveals what it was like to bring comics out of their infancy, as they became an American art form.

When Captain America #1 hit newsstands in 1941, the U.S. was a year from participating in World War II, with no plans of entering the fray. But when that comic hit shelves featuring the iconic image of a star-spangled hero delivering the coup de grace to the leader of Nazi Germany it sold over a million copies and subtly changed how Americans saw themselves on a global scale.  It’s an odd turn of events, when a funny book becomes a symbol for a nation but that is exactly what Simon and Kirby did with that first issue. They created an image that would help define the United States as it stepped into the conflict.

Joe Simon: My Life in Comics is an autobio that covers a lot of subjects and does a decent job of it. From its historical perspective to its accounts on the industrial development of the comic book medium, Simon calls it like he sees it in an easy, conversational style that is both endearing and infuriating at times. He’s an interesting man, who has lived through some of the most interesting eras in post modern human history. As one of the first creator’s to negotiate for ownership stakes in his work, he fought for artists’ rights in a business that was unabashedly exploitative.

But reading this book is also like talking to Grandpa at times (a really cool grandpa, but a grandpa nonetheless); and while you can always bring Grandpa back on point when he goes off on tangents, you have to suffer through Simon’s anecdotes which are occasionally amusing, but often have little bearing on the subject of the novel. He barely touches on certain aspects of his career, particularly his professional relationship to Jack Kirby. This was something I was really looking forward to delving into and was disappointed by the lack of content on the subject. You would figure a decade-long partnership with a guy would get bigger billing in the story of a man’s life in comics, but Simon missed the boat.

At nearly 98 years old, Joe Simon one of the oldest living legends of the comic book industry. Joe Simon: My Life if Comics is a solid account of a man who helped shape an industry, and how his role in that industry accidentally helped shape America. Though his book is less meat and more potatoes, it has its moments of true insight and historical impressions that can only be given by someone who lived through the post modern movement in art and literature.

I give Joe Simon: My Life in Comics: The Illustrated Autobiography of Joe Simon Three out of Five Stars.

 

 

You can pick up your copy of Joe Simon: My Life in Comics: The Illustrated Autobiography of Joe Simon at Amazon today.

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