Take that as read. It’s true. In this book you’ll see beautiful Simon and Kirby work: you’ll watch Jack’s art move from the fluid and powerful work he was doing in the 1940s to something much closer to his later “Kirbyesque” style: jaws get craggier, anatomy and ways of representing things become more personal. You’ll see some art assists by others, as well: the Ditko work in particular is a delight (and I am sure I can see some Ditko pencils in there with Jack’s in the jungle Stuntman story).

There is praise aplenty out there for Jack Kirby. That’s not why I wanted to write this introduction. This is my chance to write about Joe Simon. I’ve never met Joe Simon, but he’s been a part of my life for over forty years. I wonder sometimes who I would be today, if not for Joe Simon.

After all, Joe Simon wrote Sandman. First he and Jack reinvented the mysterious night avenger with the gasmask (it was not they who put him into a yellow and purple skintight costume and gave him a kid sidekick, but they were the ones who made it work). And then, thirty years later, Joe Simon brought back the Sandman. He teamed up with Jack Kirby for the first time in many years for a one-shot, the Dream Stream incarnation of the Sandman, who had nothing in common with his predecessor except the name; an “eternal being, outside time” who, with the nightmares Brute and Glob in tow, rescued a boy named Jed from bad dreams and the things that were causing them. I bought my copy of Sandman #1 from a comics dealer in South London, put it into a bag, and began to wonder who this strange figure in his red and yellow costume was. The things that Joe didn’t explain were as powerful for me as the things that he did.

Nearly twenty years later, I would write Sandman.

Joe Simon (who created Captain America and so much else) was doing more, always, than just writing comics, but Joe Simon is a remarkable writer of comics. In his 1940s heyday he wrote comics that were always powerful, always filled with energy and madness, stories that simply never stopped moving. They were filled with larger-than-life characters, with strange caricature-villains. They were pure story, filled with Joe Simon’s own energy, which was unlike anyone else’s. And, very often, even if lopsidedly, they were funny.

He did little work for DC Comics in the sixties and seventies: He wrote Brother Power the Geek, the story of a dressmaker’s dummy who comes to life as a hippy, and is fired off into space, and Prez, a comic about the first teenage president of the USA. They were drawn by Jerry Grandenetti. In the only issue of Swamp Thing I ever wrote, I brought Brother Power the Geek back down to Earth. Later, with artist Michael Allred, I would retell the story of Prez, from Prez #1, as if it were a synoptic gospel. I love playing with Joe Simon’s toys. One of the first projects I pitched to DC Comics was a revival of Boy Commandos, 1987 style, another great Simon and Kirby comic from the 1940s.