Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,917

This is the grave of Joe Simon.

Born in 1913 in Rochester, New York, Hymie Simon grew up in a Jewish immigrant family, though not from where most Jews were from at that time. His dad had come over from England, joining his brother. They worked as tailors and did not have much money. Basically, their home was a sweatshop where his father labored over clothing. But at least his son could go to school and he was really good at art, which his parents evidently supported. He started earning money for his art in high school, selling designs for yearbooks to universities. Also, not surprisingly, he did not stick with Hymie as his name.

Simon graduated from high school in 1932 and was immediately hired by the Rochester Journal-American as an assistant art director. He also covered sports some. He worked there for a couple of years and then went to a paper in Syracuse and then decided to make his way in New York City. He knew a few people and someone suggested he work as a freelancer for Paramount Pictures, working on their art. He did a bunch of other freelance work too, mostly illustrations. All of this eventually led to the comic strips. A lot of strips at this time were on assignment and so Simon started getting some of these. He was good at it and started getting more work and then came a request from Lloyd Jacquet, who headed Funnies Inc., to create a flaming superhero for a comic book. Simon agreed and created The Fiery Mask, his first superhero.

Around this time, Simon met Jack Kirby, another young illustrator. They started working together and soon enough, in 1940, came up with Captain America, which became a phenomena. They were working for Timely Comics. That would later became Marvel and so of course they chose very well.

Now, I’ve never read Captain America. In fact, I’ve never read a traditional comic book in my entire life, as far as I remember. I have read a couple of graphic novels though about historical topics. The whole thing did nothing for me. None of my friends read comic books. None of my siblings read comic books. It’s basically a totally foreign concept for me. So I just don’t care about the whole thing. I will let you all come up with whatever you want to say about the impact of Captain America per se. I recognize its cultural importance. I know there are many ways to tell stories and doing so through comics is as legitimate as any other. My problem with this world is strictly about superhero bullshit. More on that shortly.

Simon certainly did well. He and Kirby left Timely though because they were getting screwed on the payments. They moved to National Comics and made over twice as money, $500 a week combined. They made more comics, creating the Newsboy Legion for Star-Spangled Comics. World War II got in the way. Simon was drafted and ended up with something called the Combat Art Corps in the Coast Guard Public Information Division. Beats Iwo Jima! Also, the New Deal really understood the power of graphic art and so excellent artists were going to be valued by the government in a way that is impossible to imagine today.

Superhero comics went out of fashion shortly after World War II, which is good because superheroes are stupid. Working again with Kirby, Simon did all sorts of work in these years, comic material, horror comics, crime, whatever paid the bills. Of course, he did not own Captain America, which what was becoming Marvel was reviving and that made him mad. So he created something called Fighting American, which became a satire of Joe McCarthy and instead stood up for the values that made America as great as it ever could be.

Simon largely left comic books in 1955. He got bored with it. He’d occasionally work with Kirby again, including creating The Fly. But mostly he just did commercial art. He still did comic work, but a lot of it was promotional material for an advertising agency. He started his own magazine in 1960, Sick, which was basically his version of Mad.

Anyway, late in life, Simon became popular with the Comic Con and cosplaying losers. Well, he made money on it, so good for him. Might as well profit on people’s bad decisions. It most certainly did not hurt that Simon lived forever and was in pretty good health for most of it. The picture of him on Wikipedia is from 2006 with him in his 90s and an idiot dressed as Captain America. and he looks pretty good. With Marvel capitalizing on his Captain America creation with endless bad movies, he got a lot of late life recognition and was able to watch Captain America: The First Avenger shortly before his death, even if he wasn’t quite up to attending the premier. His grandchildren did though and called him as he was honored at the film.

Simon finally died in 2011, at the age of 98.

Joe Simon is buried in Long Island National Cemetery, East Farmingdale, New York.

Simon was inducted to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1999. If you would like this series to visit other inductees, which I am sure you do not given the number of commenters here who are again men with their hair in a ponytail for god’s sake and read superhero comics who are angry with me today, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Jack Cole, who created Plastic Man, is in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Simon’s partner Jack Kirby is in Westlake Village, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.