Joe Simon, a Creator of Captain America, Still Fighting for Comic Book Artists at 94 - New York Times

Joe Simon, a Creator of Captain America, Still Fighting for Comic Book Artists at 94 - New York Times: "“Living legend” is how Joe Simon is categorized on the list of special guests appearing at the New York Comic Con at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center this weekend. Mr. Simon, 94, has a different take on it. “I call it the old-geezer table,” he said during a recent interview at his Midtown Manhattan apartment.

Mr. Simon will take part in the “Legends Behind the Comic Books” panel at 3 p.m. on Friday, one of numerous events planned at the convention, a three-day celebration of all things comics.

Mr. Simon earned the “legend” title with his partner Jack Kirby by creating Captain America, the superhero who arrived in December 1940, just in time to play a patriotic foil to the Axis powers. The cover of the first issue even has the good captain socking Hitler in the jaw.

For Mr. Simon and Mr. Kirby, though, the biggest blow came when they were dismissed from the series, which had been selling a million copies a month, in a dispute over royalties. The team moved to Detective Comics (today DC Comics), but Captain America stayed with Timely, the forerunner of Marvel Comics.

It’s a tale worthy of its own comic (and one of many inspirations for Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”): On the frontier of a new industry, writers and artists creating scores of characters, but publishers profiting from them."