Jack Kirby, also known as Jack Curtiss, Lance Kirby and Ted Grey, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor. Born in New York in 1917, Kirby started out as a comic book writer at a very young age and joined Marvel Comics during the Silver Age of Comic Books. Soon after, he co-created some of the principal Marvel characters like Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and Thor along with Stan Lee. The Jack Kirby Comics Industry Award, also known as the Kirby Award, was instituted in his honour in 1985.
Widely regarded as one of the pioneers of the medium, Kirby is also credited with creating superheroes like X-Men (2000), The Fantastic Four (2005), The Inhumans, Black Panther (2018) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018).