Beginnings
Upon graduation in 1932, Simon was hired by Rochester Journal-American art director Adolph Edler as an assistant, replacing Simon's future comics colleague Al Liederman, who had quit.[8] Between production duties, he did occasional sports and editorial cartoons for the paper.[9] Two years later, Simon took an art job at the Syracuse Herald in Syracuse, New York, for $45 a week, supplying sports and editorial cartoons there as well. Shortly thereafter, for $60 a week, he succeeded Liederman as art director of a paper whose name Simon recalled in his 1990 autobiography as the Syracuse Journal American,[10] although the Syracuse Journal and the Syracuse Sunday American, were the separate weekday and Sunday papers, respectively. The paper soon closed, and Simon, at 23, ventured to New York City.[11]
There, Simon took a room at the boarding house Haddon Hall, in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, near Columbia University. At the suggestion of the art director of the New York Journal American, he sought and found freelance work at Paramount Pictures, working above the Paramount Theatre on Broadway, retouching the movie studio's publicity photos.[12] He also found freelance work at Macfadden Publications, doing illustrations for True Story and other magazines. Sometime afterward, his boss, art director Harlan Crandall, recommended Simon to Lloyd Jacquet, head of Funnies, Inc., one of that era's comic-book "packagers" that supplied comics content on demand to publishers testing the new medium. That day, Simon received his first comics assignment, a seven-page Western.
Four days later, Jacquet asked Simon, at the behest of Timely Comics publisher Martin Goodman, to create a flaming superhero like Timely's successful character the Human Torch. From this came Simon's first comic-book hero, the Fiery Mask.[12] Simon used the pseudonym Gregory Sykes on at least one story during this time, "King of the Jungle", starring Trojak The Tiger Man, in Timely's Daring Mystery Comics #2 (Feb. 1940).[13]
Simon and Kirby
During this time, Simon met Fox Feature Syndicate comics artist Jack Kirby, with whom he would soon have a storied collaboration lasting a decade-and-a-half. Speaking at a 1998 San Diego Comic-Con panel, Simon recounted the meeting:
"I had a suit and Jack thought that was really nice. He'd never seen a comic book artist with a suit before. The reason I had a suit was that my father was a tailor. Jack's father was a tailor too, but he made pants! Anyway, I was doing freelance work and I had a little office in New York about ten blocks from DC [Comics] ' and Fox [Feature Syndicate] 's offices, and I was working on Blue Bolt for Funnies, Inc. So, of course, I loved Jack's work and the first time I saw it I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He asked if we could do some freelance work together. I was delighted and I took him over to my little office. We worked from the second issue of Blue Bolt ...[14]"
and remained a team across the next two decades. In the early 2000s, original art for an unpublished, five-page Simon and Kirby collaboration titled "Daring Disc", which may predate the duo's Blue Bolt, surfaced. Simon published the story in the 2003 updated edition of his autobiography, The Comic Book Makers,[15] co-authored with his son, Jim.[16]
Crestwood, Black Magic and romance comics
As superhero comics waned in popularity after the end of World War II, Simon and Kirby began producing a variety of stories in many genres. In partnership with Crestwood Publications, they developed the imprint Prize Group, through which they published Boys' Ranch and launched an early horror comic, the atmospheric and non-gory series Black Magic. The team also produced crime and humor comics, and are credited as well with publishing the first romance comics title, Young Romance, starting a successful trend.[45]
At the urging of a Crestwood salesman, Kirby and Simon launched their own comics company, Mainline Publications,[46] in late 1953 or early 1954, subletting space from their friend Al Harvey's Harvey Publications at 1860 Broadway.[7] Mainline published four titles: the
Silver Age of Comics and later
Through the 1960s, Simon produced promotional comics for the advertising agency Burstein and Newman, becoming art director of Burstein, Phillips and Newman from 1964 to 1967.[52] Concurrently, in 1960, he founded the satirical magazine Sick, a competitor of Mad magazine, and edited and produced material for it for over a decade.
During this period, known to fans and historians as the Silver Age of Comic Books, Simon and Kirby again reteamed for Harvey Comics in 1966, updating Fighting American for a single issue (Oct. 1966). Simon, as owner, packager, and editor, also helped launch Harvey's original superhero line, with Unearthly Spectaculars #1–3 (Oct. 1965 – March 1967) and Double-Dare Adventures #1–2 (Dec. 1966 – March 1967), the latter of which introduced the influential writer-artist Jim Steranko to comics.[53]
In 1968, Simon created the two-issue DC Comics series Brother Power the Geek, about a mannequin given a semblance of life who wanders philosophically through 1960s hippie culture.
21st century
In the 2000s, Simon turned to painting and marketing reproductions of his early comic book covers. He appeared in various news media in 2007 in response to Marvel Comics' announced "death" of Captain America in Captain America vol. 5, #25 (March 2007), stating, "It's a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now".[61][62]
For a concept called ShieldMaster (1998), created by Jim Simon, Joe Simon provided prototype art. Shieldmaster, under the direction of Joe's son, Jim, was also published in the comic books Futura and Étranges Aventures. A graphic novel format ShieldMaster was published in 2015 by Future Retro Entertainment. ShieldMaster comics have also been published by Jim's son, Jesse Simon.
Simon is among the interview subjects in Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle, a three-hour documentary narrated by Liev Schreiber that premiered posthumously on PBS in October 2013.[63]
Simon's grandchildren attended the Los Angeles premiere of Captain America: The First Avenger and phoned Simon from the red carpet when his name was announced as the creator of the character.[64]
