Joe Simon | |
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Simon at the 2006 New York Comic Con with a fan dressed as Captain America
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Born | Hymie Simon October 11, 1913 Rochester, New York, United States |
Died | December 14, 2011 New York City, New York, United States |
(aged 98)
Nationality | American |
Area(s) | Writer, Penciller, Editor, Publisher |
Pseudonym(s) | Gregory Sykes |
Notable works
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Captain America, Fighting American, Boys' Ranch, Sick, Young Romance |
Collaborators | Jack Kirby |
Awards |
Inkpot Award, 1998 Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, 1999 Inkwell Awards Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame (2014) |
Spouse(s) | Harriet Feldman |
https://www.facebook.com/joesimonstudio |
Joseph Henry "Joe" Simon (born Hymie Simon; October 11, 1913 – December 14, 2011) was an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s–1940s Golden Age of Comic Books and served as the first editor of Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into Marvel Comics.
With his partner, artist Jack Kirby, he co-created Captain America, one of comics' most enduring superheroes, and the team worked extensively on such features at DC Comics as the 1940s Sandman and Sandy the Golden Boy, and co-created the Newsboy Legion, the Boy Commandos, and Manhunter. Simon and Kirby creations for other comics publishers include Boys' Ranch, Fighting American and the Fly. In the late 1940s, the duo created the field of romance comics, and were among the earliest pioneers of horror comics. Simon, who went on to work in advertising and commercial art, also founded the satirical magazine Sick in 1960, remaining with it for a decade. He briefly returned to DC Comics in the 1970s.
Simon was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1999.
Joe Simon was born in 1913 as Hymie Simon and raised in Rochester, New York, the son of Harry Simon, who had emigrated from Leeds, England, in 1905, and Rose (Kurland), whom Harry met in the United States. Harry Simon moved to Rochester, then a clothing-manufacturing center where his younger brother Isaac lived, and the couple had a daughter, Beatrice, in 1912. A poor Jewish family, the Simons lived in "a first-floor flat which doubled as my father's tailor shop." Simon attended Benjamin Franklin High School, where he was art director for the school newspaper and the yearbook – earning his first professional fee as an artist when two universities each paid $10 publication rights for his art deco, tempera splash pages for the yearbook sections.