Captain America, no. 1, cover

Comic-book artists Jack Kirby and Joe Simon are best known for cocreating the iconic superhero Captain America. Simon grew up in Rochester, New York, and Kirby (born Kurtzberg) on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They each worked for various comic publishers before coming together to produce their groundbreaking comic in 1941. The sensational cover of the debut issue features Captain America slugging Hitler while deflecting Nazi bullets with his shield. Kirby and Simon collaborated on several other superhero comics and, in the late 1940s, created a new genre of romance comics with True Romance. To this day, many of their characters remain pop cultural icons in comic books and films.