Welcome to the 943rd installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. This is a special all-Jack Kirby “comic art outside of comics” installment of legends! This time around, learn whether Jack Kirby actually did a story about the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald for Esquire Magazine.

Soon after becoming sworn in for his second term as President of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order announcing the declassification and release of all files on the assassination of the late U.S. President, John F. Kennedy…

PROVIDING AMERICANS THE TRUTH AFTER SIX DECADES OF SECRECY: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order entitled Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.

• The Executive Order establishes the policy that, more than 50 years after these assassinations, the victims’ families and the American people deserve the truth.
• Specifically, the Order directs the Director of National Intelligence and other appropriate officials to:
  • (1) Present a plan within 15 days for the full and complete release of all John F. Kennedy assassination records; and
  • (2) Immediately review the records relating to the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations and present a plan for their full and complete release within 45 days.

This speaks to how much interest there still is in the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, over sixty years after he was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas. However, if you see how much interest there is in this stuff NOW, you can only IMAGINE how much interest there was in all of this back in the 1960s, and that was when Esquire magazine hired Jack Kirby to write and draw a comic book depicting the days in the life of Jack Ruby before he assassinated Kennedy’s assassin, Oswald, two days after Kennedy was killed!

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How did Jack Kirby event get on to the radar of Esquire Magazine?

I imagine your first reaction is likely something along the lines of, “Huh?” As in, why would Esquire magazine even THINK to bring Jack Kirby in on something like this, as while Kirby was obviously an AMAZING artist, he wasn’t necessarily the first guy you would associate with either Esquire magazine OR the John F. Kennedy assassination.

As it turns out, Kirby got on to their radar a year earlier when Esquire decided to do one of those articles that became all too common in the mainstream media circa 1965-66, which was the earliest version of “Bam! Pow! “Comics are not just for kids anymore!” In this 1966 issue, covered by a strange cover riff involving Jerry Lewis (Kirby had actually done a cover for the issue, but the magazine decided not to use it for whatever reason, so there’s possibly an unpublished Jack Kirby cover somewhere in Esquire‘s files that they could probably get MILLIONS for if they so chose to do so)…

there was a spotlight on Marvel Comics, and the growing popularity of the company’s comics among the college crowd at the time….

The great Mark Evanier would later explain in TwoMorrows’ Jack Kirby Collector #56 that there was a bit of a dispute over the pages that Kirby drew for that feature about Marvel. Kirby was under the impression that since they were created for Esquire, that Esquire would be paying him for them, and obviously, Esquire’s page rates were a lot better than Marvel Comics’ page rates. Esquire, though, was under the impression that Marvel was supplying the pages to the magazine gratis to help promote its comic books, and that Kirby would be paid by Marvel. It ended up that Kirby DID end up just getting his Marvel rates for the pages, but Esquire at least promised that it would look to find some work for the brilliant artist.

And true to their word, they DID find some work for Kirby the following year.

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How did Jack Kirby tell the final days of Jack Ruby?

Jack Ruby had died in January 1967, less than four years after he killed Lee Harvey Oswald outside a police station where Oswald was being taken to an armored car that was going to transport him to a nearby jail. So Esquire decided that there was enough new public interest in Ruby to do a whole spotlight on him in this 1967 issue, with a striking cover noting that it really WAS likely that a lot of kids saw a guy get murdered live on television…

Kirby’s assignment was to detail Ruby’s final two days before he killed Oswald, and Kirby was actually given a copy of ALL 26 volumes of the Warren Commission’s report on the Kennedy assassination for research purposes (someone at Esquire had written the skeleton of a script for the story, but Kirby basically wrote it himself). The great Chic Stone inked Kirby on the three-page historical look at Ruby’s final days of freedom…

That’s a well-done story by Kirby, and it is also one of the most unusual assignments that i imagine that Kirby ever worked on, and that includes the futuristic NFL team designs that I featured the other week! Evanier noted that Esquire planned to do more of these historical comics features, but it never came to be.

Thanks so much to Mark Evanier for the information behind this fascinating story!

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Be sure to check out my Entertainment Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film and TV. Plus, Pop Culture References also has some brand-new Entertainment and Sports Legends Revealeds!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com.