DC Celebrates Joe Kubert’s 100th Birthday With Special Comic Releases
DC is honoring legendary comic book artist, writer, and educator Joe Kubert with three special September releases celebrating a career that helped shape generations of comic book storytelling.
DC is preparing to celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of Joe Kubert, one of the most influential creators in comic book history.
The publisher announced on August 7 that three special releases will arrive in September honoring Kubert’s life, artwork, storytelling, and lasting influence on the comics industry. The celebration includes a facsimile edition of DC Special #5, a collection devoted to Kubert’s iconic cover artwork, and a deluxe hardcover highlighting his legendary work on Sgt. Rock.
Celebrating 100 Years of Joe Kubert
Kubert’s career stretched across generations of comics, with his unmistakable artwork helping define characters including Sgt. Rock, Hawkman, Enemy Ace, Ragman, and Tarzan.
His influence also extended far beyond the comics he personally created.
Kubert founded the school that became the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, helping train generations of artists and ensuring his impact on the medium continued through the creators who followed him.
DC group editor Katie Kubert, Joe Kubert’s granddaughter, describes storytelling as the foundation of her grandfather’s work, particularly his ability to make a comic-book cover tell a story before the reader ever opened the issue.
That ability will be at the center of DC’s centennial celebration.
DC Special #5 Returns With a New Tribute Cover
The first of the commemorative releases is DC Special #5 Facsimile Edition, arriving September 16.
The original issue was curated by Kubert himself and contains four stories he selected as personal favorites.
For the new edition, DC has commissioned an elaborate artist-jam homage cover bringing together members of the Kubert family and former students of the Kubert School.
The contributors include Adam Kubert, Andy Kubert, Emma Kubert, Jan Duursema, Tom Mandrake, Ron Wagner, Amanda Conner, Rick Veitch, Stephen R. Bissette, Lee Weeks, Ron Randall, Steve Lieber, and colorist Brad Anderson.
The facsimile will also be offered with foil and blank sketch cover variants.
Bringing Kubert’s family together with artists whose careers were influenced by his school makes the new cover particularly fitting. Rather than simply reprinting his work, it provides a visual representation of the generations of artists his career helped inspire.
Joe Kubert: 100 Years – A Life in Covers
DC’s second September release puts the spotlight entirely on Kubert’s cover artwork.
Joe Kubert: 100 Years – A Life in Covers #1 will serve as a gallery showcasing memorable covers from throughout his decades-long career.
The collection includes work from titles such as The Brave and the Bold, House of Mystery, Sgt. Rock, and Ragman, highlighting Kubert’s ability to work across superheroes, war stories, horror, and other genres.
The 40-page one-shot will also include a foreword from Katie Kubert offering a more personal perspective on the artist behind those famous covers. DC’s June solicitations list the standard edition at $4.99, alongside a $7.99 foil variant.
Joe Kubert: 100 Years – A Life in Covers #1 arrives September 16.
Sgt. Rock Gets a Deluxe Joe Kubert Collection
No celebration of Kubert’s DC career would be complete without Sgt. Rock.
The third release, Sgt. Rock by Joe Kubert: Deluxe Edition, collects a selection of stories featuring the character most closely associated with Kubert’s career.
Presented in fully restored color, the hardcover highlights both sides of Kubert’s visual storytelling—the explosive battlefield sequences for which his war comics became famous and the quieter human moments surrounding them.
DC’s solicitations list the hardcover at 352 pages for $49.99, collecting stories from G.I. Combat #68, numerous issues of Our Army at War, Sgt. Rock #302-304 and #368, Sgt. Rock Special #1, Joe Kubert Presents #5, and Showcase #45. It also includes previously unseen original Sgt. Rock artwork and a new foreword from Kubert’s son, artist Andy Kubert.
The Deluxe Edition arrives September 15, kicking off the three-release celebration.
A Legacy That Extends Beyond the Page
What makes Kubert’s centennial particularly significant isn’t simply the amount of work he produced.
It’s how far his influence traveled.
His work helped establish a visual language for DC’s war comics, while characters such as Sgt. Rock and Enemy Ace became inseparable from Kubert’s distinctive approach to action, emotion, and sequential storytelling.
Then there are the artists he taught.
That combination of creator and educator gave Kubert an unusually broad influence on American comics. His artistic legacy isn’t confined to the books carrying his name—it can be traced through generations of creators who studied his work or learned their craft through the school he established.
A century after his birth, DC’s upcoming releases offer both longtime readers and a new generation of comics fans an opportunity to revisit that legacy.
The Sgt. Rock by Joe Kubert: Deluxe Edition arrives September 15, followed by DC Special #5 Facsimile Edition and Joe Kubert: 100 Years – A Life in Covers #1 on September 16.
Read DC’s official Joe Kubert centennial announcement
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