Fred Van Lente Launches Kickstarter To Fund Stage Production About Jack Kirby

and Magnus, Robot Fighter writer Fred Van Lente has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund King Kirby, a stage play about Jack Kirby that he co-wrote with his wife, NYIT-award winning playwright Crystal Skillman. The show is set to debut next month at the 2014 Comic Book Theater Festival in New York City -- and the Kickstarter will wrap up the moment the show hits the stage at 7pm EST on June 20. Kirby will be played in the show by Stephen Rattazzi, best known to comics fans as the voice of Dr. Orpheus from Cartoon Network's The Venture Bros, and he's joined by Amy Lee Pearsall, Joe Mathers, Nat Cassidy and Timothy McCown Reynolds. The director is John Hurley, who brought Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey's Action Philosophers comics to the stage for the first Comic Book Theater Festival and also directed Skillman's The Vigil. "King Kirby has been a long-term passion project of mine," said Van Lente. "With Crystal's help, it's down on paper. Now, with your help, we'll bring this crucial piece of comics history to life on stage." King Kirby Kickstarter awards include a 60-page exclusive Evil Twin Comics Jack Kirby Comic Book Comic from their Comic Book History of Comics graphic novel, a book containing the script and production skills, an audio recording of the play, signed playbills, and a Simon & Kirby print created by Ryan Dunlavey for the show, signed by the artist.

From the Jewish ghetto of New York's Lower East Side to the battlefields of France to the Senate hearings of 1950s, this is a hysterical and heartbreaking story about a man who pours his quintessentially Twentieth Century life into his comics, only to make the fateful mistake that sends him into obscurity while his creations become known to every person on Earth. A real-life Adventures of Kavalier & Klay, King Kirby asks what happens when an artist doesn't own his own legacy? Can he ever get it back?