Kirby Collaborators: John Berendt

by BK Munn

John Berendt, the writer of the 1967 Esquire piece Kirby illo'd about Jack Ruby, one of my favourite Kirby art jobs, was later the bestselling author of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil".  I suspect Kirby and Berendt came together for the first time a year earlier when Jack and Marie Severin did the illustrations for the 1966 Esquire feature on the Marvel Comics phenomenon. At the time of the Kennedy Assassination described in the comic, Berendt, a junior editor at Esquire, was doing a six-month hitch in the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Polk, Louisiana.You can read Berendt's account of his time in the army, including how he heard about Kennedy and Ruby, here. 

(Kirby gives credit to Berendt as writer in the famous 1969 Mark Herbert interview, published in the Nostalgia Journal in 1976, reprinted below as well.)