Comic book artist and creator Jack Katz has passed away.
Jacob (Jack) Katz
September 27, 1927 – April 24, 2025
Andrew Kunka, close associate of Jack Katz, let fandom know that the creator has passed away:
Jack Katz passed away yesterday. He was 97. I had gotten to know Jack after I wrote an article that discussed how his series The First Kingdom was important to the conception of the “graphic novel” in the 1970s.
I honestly thought Jack could live forever. He had a supernatural level of energy and enthusiasm for the things he loved. I feel lucky to have known him and privileged to have heard his stories.
The First Kingdom was Jack Katz’s magnum opus, a story that would engage the cartoonist for the last half of his life, and a story that readers would have to invest time and effort to appreciate the details of both plot and art.
Jack Katz began his professional comics career while a teenager. He joined various comic shops in 1942/43 and broke out on his own later in the 1950s. One of those early groups employing Jack was the King Features Syndicate bullpen where he was on staff from 1946 to 1951 doing touchups and corrections for the syndicate’s comic strips before they went out to client newspapers.
I first became aware of Katz when he returned to comic books ion the late 1960s after going the advertising/commercial art route for a while. Coming back to DC and Marvel comics he became a big part of Sol Brodsky’s Skywald company in the early 1970s. And then came Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom.
The First Kingdom was a twelve year, twenty-four issue effort by Jack that was, as Lambiek’s Comiclopedia says, “a complex science fiction epic that tells of man’s migration into space, the ensuing galactic battles, and the great mystery of mankind’s origin before the fall of civilization.”
In 1978 Jack joined with writer Thomas Scortia to create another science fiction comic Galactic Prime – this was a short limited run comic strip that appeared in their local newspaper the Berkeley Gazette.
Further reading:
The Jack Katz Comic Art Facebook page
A 2019 East Bay Times Jack Katz profile/interview
Comixjoint on The First Kingdom:
The complex plot begins shortly after a worldwide disaster, leaving nothing more than a charred planet inhabited by small bands of human survivors, mutant monsters and dinosaur-like beasts. Our hero is Darkenmoor, a brave hunter from the Coaltag tribe, who falls in love with the beautiful Nedlaya. Reminiscent of ancient Greek literary works, there is a very large cast of characters spanning multiple generations and centuries of time. In fact, Katz produced 24 books (two per year) to match the number of books in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
The First Kingdom serial is often overlooked for breaking new ground, but certainly nothing like it had been seen before. It’s debatable whether the books qualify as undergrounds; they’re more alien-world fantasy than anything else.
But The First Kingdom wasn’t just groundbreaking; it’s also a pretty damn good story, as it winds its way through generations and conflicts, delivering parables and heroism. It does take time to get comfortable with the typewritten narration and dialogue, which often appears above the illustrations. The writing, like the artwork, is dense and heavy, but it’s capable of drawing you in and making you hungry for more.
