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Dan Nadel Writes New Biography Of Jack Kirby, Comics Universe Creator

Dan Nadel is writing a new biography of Jack Kirby as a comics universe creator, but it may take some time

Published Tue, 13 May 2025 12:57:09 -0500

Article Summary

Dan Nadel is writing a new Jack Kirby biography, titled "American Marvel," for Scribner.
Kirby is credited as the creative force behind Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk, Iron Man, and more.
The biography will explore Kirby's impact on comics, American culture, and the Marvel cinematic universe.
Dan Nadel is a noted curator, author, and comics historian known for works on Robert Crumb and others.

Dan Nadel is to write an biography of comic book legend Jack Kirby, called American Marvel: Jack Kirby and the Comic Book Universes He Created, which will portray Jack Kirby as the creative force behind the likes of the Fantastic Four, Captain America, the Hulk, the X-Men, Iron Man, and Black Panther, and "tells the remarkable story of a man and an art form that at once reflected and invented the image of the American century, as well as gave birth to the cinematic Marvel Universe and the wider culture of fandom".

World rights to American Marvel: Jack Kirby and the Comic Book Universes He Created were bought by Kathy Belden at Scribner, and will publish later this year. Dan Nadel was represented by his agent Elias Altman at Massie McQuilkin & Altman.

Dan Nadel Writes New Biography Of Jack Kirby, Comics Universe Creator — By Susan Skaar – Kirby Museum website, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

No publication date has been set yet, Dan Nadel writes, "I've been wanting to write the biography of his genius artist for many years. It'll take in Depression-era New York, Jewish culture, World War II, the business of fantasy, visionary art, wary optimism, legal tangles, and why we need Kirby now more than ever. Yes, it'll take me a few years, but I'll get there."

Dan Nadel is the Curator-at-Large for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, and a co-curator for Sixties Surreal, a large-scale rethinking of the art history of the 1960s at the Whitney Museum of American Art opening in September. His biography of Robert Crumb, Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life, was just published, also by Scribner. He also writes for Blau, Artforum, and The New York Review of Books.

Between 2000 to 2014, he founded and ran PictureBox, co-founded the magazine Comics Comics which ran from 2005 to 2011, and is a former editor of The Comics Journal from 2011 to 2017. Other books include It's Life As a I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940-1980, Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945-1976, Return to Romance: The Strange Love Stories of Ogden Whitney (with Frank Santoro), The Collected Hairy Who Publications, Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900-1969, Gary Panter, Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980, and co-authored (with Norman Hathaway) Electrical Banana: Masters of Psychedelic Art, and Dorothy and Otis: Designing the American Dream. He was also a 2021-2022 fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, at the Graduate Center, CUNY and a Dora Maar House Fellow in 2023. It all adds up…