One of the artifacts on display in the show is the original \u201cCaptain America\u201d comic books, issues 1 through 10. Joe Simon, who co-created the character and many more with Kirby, owned the issues on display.<\/p>\n
The iconic first issue of \u201cCaptain America,\u201d published in March 1941, shows the superhero punching Hitler in the face, before the United States entered the war.<\/p>\n
Many Americans had not yet come to support the idea that the Nazis needed to be vanquished.<\/p>\n
Its publication led to death threats to both men by the German-American Bund, Roy Schwartz, a board member of AJHS and the person who drove the effort to get the street co-named in Kirby\u2019s honor, told JNS.<\/p>\n
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The police, when contacted by Kirby and Simon, refused to do anything to help, according to Schwartz.<\/p>\n
Then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia contacted the comic book artists and promised them personally that they would be kept safe. LaGuardia\u2019s mother, Irene Luzzatto-Coen, was a Sephardic Jew.<\/p>\n
As a little boy growing up in Tel Aviv, Schwartz was obsessed with comics, including Kirby\u2019s, he told JNS.<\/p>\n
American relatives would mail him new releases, and he learned English by reading them.<\/p>\n
Now employed by day as \u201ca mild-mannered chief marketing agency for a large law firm,\u201d as he told JNS, he is the author of \u201cWas Superman Circumcised?\u201d and other books and essays exploring Jewish aspects of comic book history.<\/p>\n
Schwartz was the driving force behind the labyrinthine bureaucratic process by which city agencies approved a co-named New York City street.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was enough red tape to circle Galactus several times,\u201d Schwartz told JNS.<\/p>\n
Captain America was and remains his favorite superhero, Schwartz told JNS, a few feet away from the newly-renamed street sign.<\/p>\n
‘Medium that Jews invented’<\/p>\n
The comic book business was always heavily Jewish, which appeared to be a point of pride among many of the roughly 250 people who attended the unveiling of the Jack Kirby Way street sign.<\/p>\n
The crowd was dominated by middle-aged men wearing superhero t-shirts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a medium that Jews invented, basically,\u201d said Paul Golin, an attendee from Park Slope, Brooklyn, who wore an Avengers t-shirt for the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuperman, Batman, almost all of it,\u201d he told JNS. \u201cStan Lee and Jack Kirby did all of these Marvel superheroes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Golin, executive director of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, is a long-time, major Kirby fan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love all of his work. It continues to blow me away, and he was so prolific,\u201d he told JNS. \u201cHe is so Jewish, so if you take pride in the accomplishment of fellow Jews, then he\u2019s someone you should know about.\u201d<\/p>\n
A handful of superfans, dressed as if they had just come from Comic Con as Jack Kirby characters, including members of the Fantastic Four, an X-Man, Galactus and Dr. Doom, were also in attendance.<\/p>\n
Less elaborately dressed but honored with seats on the dais were Schwartz, Tom Brevoort, executive editor and senior vice president of publishing at Marvel Comics; Marvel artist and writer Jim Steranko; and former DC Comics president and publisher Paul Levitz.<\/p>\n
Kirby\u2019s three adult grandchildren spoke about his legacy to them, saying that their grandfather was a comic-book superhero in his own right.<\/p>\n