Jason Sacks posts 10 thoughts about Jack Kirby’s career.
The rise of the Marvel Universe in the 1960s was basically unplanned
It’s striking how haphazardly everything developed at Marvel in the 1960s. Few things were ever planned in any detail; especially the brilliant Fantastic Four run. As Hatfield reports, the Silver Surfer first appeared because Kirby simply felt that a near-omnipotent being like Galactus would need a much smaller helper to lead the way to the planets that he would eat ? and that Kirby thought a shiny alien guy on a surfboard would be a brilliant concept for that character. The whole Marvel Universe grew in that same sort of random helter-skelter headfast no-holds-barred sort of ramshackle manner ? which is part of why early Marvel is so wondrously wacky.
I think for Jack just doing the work was the most fulfilling aspect of his career. He was (is) his comics work.