Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby is the most influential creator in American comics — co-architect of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Avengers, Thor and Captain America, and sole author of some of the medium's most ambitious mythologies. In omnibus form, his solo 1970s work finally regains the scale it was drawn for: a cosmic story bursting with ideas in every panel, reading like a modern myth.

His major solo runs are worlds unto themselves. At Marvel, he wrote and drew the Eternals, redefining Earth's gods as beings shaped by aliens and introducing the Celestials — lore that still underpins cosmic Marvel today. His visual language — the crackling energy, the machinery, the power of his figures — is the foundation nearly every super-hero artist has built on since.