Joe Simon started his art and writing career in the newspaper field and in the late 1930s moved to comics, doing free-lance work for the Funnies Incorporated "packaging" shop and producing art and stories for Fox, Novelty, Centaur, and others. Joe created Blue Bolt, then Lloyd Jaquet, owner of Funnies Incorporated, made a deal with Novelty Press (owned by the Saturday Evening Post) to publish it. Joe did the first issue solo. At Fox Publications, Joe met Jack Kirby. Joe asked Jack to work with him on Blue Bolt and they began working together. Joe created the concept for Captain America and then brought it to Martin Goodman, owner of Timely Comics, to publish it under a royalty arrangement. With Joe's innovative stories and layouts and Jack s dynamic penciling, which Joe inked, Captain America became a huge success, and the Simon and Kirby team became one of comics’ most important collaborations. Joe later became the first editor at Timely. When Fawcett Publications decided to give Captain Marvel his own comic book in the early 40s, company editor Ed Herron asked Joe and Jack to launch the book. The team produced the first issue of Captain Marvel -- the two creators laying out the stories and Jack tightening up the pencils with his dynamic skills. Joe, with Jack, created, among other titles, The Boy Commandos and Newsboy Legion published by DC Comics, Boy Explorers and Boys' Ranch published by Harvey Publications, Black Magic published by Crestwood Publications, and with Young Romance and Young Love, published by Prize Publications, the romance genre of comics. In 1954 the team formed their own company, Mainline Publications. During this period they produced Foxhole, Bullseye and Police Trap, among other titles. As a result of a backlash against crime and horror comics, which impacted the whole comic book industry, Mainline’s distributor went out of business, leaving Mainline Publications among the many casualties, and Joe and Jack went their separate ways, each scrambling for whatever work they could get. Joe produced a number of projects published by Harvey Publications, notably the Harvey Adventure comics. Joe was a prolific originator of ideas throughout his career. Besides superhero, action, western, supernatural, and romance comics, he captured the spirit of the late 1950s with such titles as Race for the Moon and The 3 Rocketeers as America scrambled to become the first country to launch a man into space. Some of comics’ top talents worked on these titles, including Jack Kirby, Al Williamson, Carl Burgos, Reed Crandall, Ernie Colon. Joe also created the The Double Life of Private Strong and The Fly, which Archie Comics published. Jack penciled several issues along with Jack Davis, Gray Morrow, and George Tuska. In 1960 Joe created and published Sick magazine, which ran for nearly 20 years. Joe eventually left comics for advertising, however he continued to produce comics in other genres, notably educational and commercial comics, as well as art for The New York Times and the Olympics. In the early 70s Joe produced some books for DC Comics, including The Prez, The Green Team, The Outsiders, and Brother Power, The Geek. Carmine Infantino, the publisher of DC Comics brought Joe and Jack together to do The Sandman. The Sandman, a success, was their last collaboration. Joe Simon is the author, with his son Jim, of The Comic Book Makers, an eyewitness account of comic book history.