http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_America_(Marvel_Comics)
The modern parable that Captain America represents is one so ugly, it is hard to tell, and even harder to see people gloss over the shockingly ugly historical facts. Facts that lead us right up to today's despicable abandonment of creative intellectual rights.
When Joe Simon and Jack Kirby designed a knockoff of the future Archie Comics publisher MLJ's Shield character to Martin Goodman's request, they became the co-creators of Timely Comics breakout success, Captain America.
With Goodman's shoestring relative by marriage hired on and birddogging these creative giants of 1940's comic books, Stan Lee/Stanley Lieber begged to accompany the pair after hours to their hotel room sidework efforts on other companies characters, possibly Fawcett's Captain Marvel or Harvey Comics, a longtime associate of Simon who married the sister of the publisher or some such.
Right after Stan Lee's tagalong, Simon and Kirby were confronted by the Goodman family members and informed of their termination, AFTER they finished issue #10 of Captain America, a significant percentage of the profits to this million selling title having been promised by Goodman to the two titans of comic books early years.
Never again would Joe Simon work for Timely or Marvel. the team of Simon and Kirby went to DC were they were well received and compensated for their numerous characters, boys teams like the Boy Commando's, the Newsboy Legion and the Guardian, and a reworking of the Sandman, who ultimately was retooled into a very popular title by Neil Gaiman much more recently.
As the years went by and comics fell into very hard times during the 50's, Simon and Kirby broke up their partnership and Kirby sought work on his own, always trying only to support a family and working as much as he could.
Eventually, difficulties at DC pushed Kirby back into Timely/Atlas/Marvel Comics doorway, and he began what was the greatest phase of comic book superhero creativity ever seen, with the help of Stan Lee.
Within ten years Marvel Comics had not only recovered the good name and popularity of comic books, they were the top dog by far,
due to many extremely popular characters, almost all of whom had their start on the drawing board of Jack Kirby.
Again, promises of renumeration were verbalized by Martin Goodman, but not to materialize, costing the company the talent of Steve Ditko and eventually Jack Kirby.
Before that earth shaking change occurred, one more massive treachery played out-
Joe Simon came looking for his rights to the character Captain America after the 27 year copyright period lapsed (feel free to correct any errors copyright lawyers, Disneyanaphiles, etc) and Marvel put Jack Kirby in the suckers seat. Telling him that Simon was only looking out for himself, and no doubt making other whispered promises, Marvel persuaded Kirby to testify in their favor, and managed to convince Simon to take a payoff of perhaps 10,000 dollars (no references on hand, I believe this is correct) securing also a gag order, forcing Simon not to tell Kirby of the terms of the agreement. Somehow Kirby was uninformed of his automatic status as a co-creator of Captain America, and instead of being privy to his half of the settlement, received much much less as his share of the purported settlement amount. In the end, Joe Simon ended up owning those first 10 issues of Captain America, and upon his next attempt 27 years later presumably made another deal for the rights to those.
Kirby died in 1994. Left Marvel in 1970. Returned for a couple of years in the mid 70's and ended up in animation for a while being treated as a professional, with health care benefits and NOT as a golden goose fit for slaughter.
What Marvel did to Kirby over Captain America should make every American ashamed.
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